Northeastern University - Cauldron Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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Mini Mack Herron, the Patriots ' s 5 ' 5 answer to O.J. Simpson, sprints across the goal line for a touchdown with three Buffalo defenders hot on his trail. can Player of the Year, American College Football Coaches Associ- ation Offensive Player of the Year, and countless other awards. In his rookie season, Plunkett lived up to his expectations as he led the Patriots to a 6-8 record and was named the NFL ' s Rookie of the Year. He threw for 2158 yards, 19 touchdowns and completed 48.2 per cent of his passes. Things were looking up. The Pa- triots were in a new stadium in Fox- boro and Plunkett showed tre- mendous promise for the future. But the following season things went sour. The Patriots slipped to 3-11 in 1972, gave up more points than any of the 26 NFL teams and scored less than all but two other clubs. The team gave up a whop- ping 446 points while scoring just 192 and finished dead last in the Eastern Division of the American Football Conference. There was definitely a missing in- gredient in the formula required to make a winner of the New England Patriots. That ingredient was Fair- banks, the fiery coach of Okla- homa, who the Patriots lured on Jan. 26, 1973 with an offer he couldn ' t refuse. Fairbanks spent the off-season reorganizing the coaching staff and pouring over the waiver wires for football players. Immediately the Patriots showed an improvement, a slight one, but at least an improve- ment. In his first year, Fairbanks recorded a 5-9 record and felt it was a good starting year. The team showed marked improvement on both offense and defense, scoring 258 points and giving up 300. Plun- kett had his best season in three with the Pats, completing 51.3 per cent of his passes for 2550 yards and 13 touchdowns. Nineteen seventy-four was the year of Mini Mack Herron and the Patriots revival as the team ral- lied behind the explosive back that Fairbanks dug out of the Canadien Football League. The Pats finished at 7-7, but a rash of injuries from the mid-season point right through the end hurt. The team won its first five games against the best teams in the NFL. At one point the Pats were 6-1 before losing numerous players as well as six of the last seven games. Herron led the entire NFL in total yardage as there wasn ' t a single thing the 5-5 package of dynamite didn ' t do. He led the Patriots in rushing, receiving, punt and kickoff returns and touchdowns. His 2444 total yards set an all-time NFL mark for combined yards in a season, wiping out the eight-year-old stand- ard set by Gale Sayers of the once- awesome Chicago Bears. Herron was 10th among Ameri- can Football Conference pass re- ceivers with 474 yards, sixth in the rushing department with 824 years, second in the punt return category with 517 yards and 13th amongst kickoff returners with 629 yards. He scored 12 touchdowns, seven on the ground and five by passes to rank second in the Conference. Herron was joined in the Patriot backfield by Sam Cunningham, a second-year man out of Southern California. Before being injured, Cunningham teamed with Herron to provide the Patriots with a one-two punch second to none. Cunning- ham rushed for 811 yards and nine touchdowns and caught 22 passes for another 214 yards and two scores before sitting out the final two games with an injury. Rookie guard John Hannah an- chored an offensive line that pro- vided plenty of holes for Herron and Cunningham, and Fairbanks in- stalled a 3-5 defense that was the key to the Patriots ' s success. With the personnel the Patriots possess and the master mind of Fairbanks behind it all, the Patriots must rank as the up-and-coming team in the National Football League. — Kenneth G. Hughes Reggie Rucker pulls in a pass from Jim Plunkett that ended in a 69-yard touchdown. The Baltimore defender never got any closer than a waving arm away from breaking up the play.

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4-» Don Marcotte, behind Bobby Orr (number 4), scores a goal that ties a game with the Minnesota North Stars. Minnesota goalie Cesare Maniago and teammate Dennis Hextall fall on ice in vain attempt to stop puck. Bruins in the first round, four games to one, and Esposito hurt his knee, requiring off-season sur- gery. Esposito returned in October of the 1973-74 season, not in January as the doctors had predicted, and won his fourth-straight scoring championship. Esposito, Orr and goaltender Gilles Gilbert led the Bruins to an easy playoff win over McKenzie was quickly followed to the WHA by Cheevers, Derek Sand- erson, and Ted Green, leaving the Bruins both weak and disunified. To make the outlook even more dismal, Bobby Orr underwent major knee surgery, which took him months to overcome. Phil Esposito kept rolling, through, as he became a Canadien hero in the Canada-Russia hockey series. As the ' 72-73 season opened, Harry Sinden returned to his old club — giving up a position in pri- vate business to become Boston ' s Managing Director, which resulted in longtime favorite Milt Schmidt being kicked upstairs. The season began badly for the B ' s, who rallied for a short time between Thanksgiving and Christ- mas, but again nosedived into third place. Coach Tom Johnson was unce- remoniously dumped and Armand Bep Guidolin took over the coaching reins. The club, including Derek Sanderson who was less than happy in the WHA and had returned to his old team, climbed back to second place before the playoffs. The playoffs were a Boston dis- aster, as the Bruins tried unsuc- cessfully to ride 44-year-old goalie Jacques Plante to the Cup. The revenge-minded Rangers took the Toronto and followed up with a final round over Chicago. Then the roof fell in. The Bruins won the first game of the final series with the Philadephia Flyers, but lost the next three to put themselves in a hole. Boston won the fifth game, but lost the sixth — and the series — as Bruin reject Bernie Parent was out- standing for the Flyers in goal and center Bobby Clark skated circles around Esposito. Following the series, Guidolin jumped ship, citing job security, and was replaced by Don Cherry, coach of the Rochester team in the American Hockey League. By the middle of the 1974-75 sea- son, the Bruins were fighting to keep up with the Buffalo Sabres in the Adams Division of the Wales Conference in the new-look NHL. Esposito was on his way to an- other scoring record, but the loss the previous year to the Flyer ' s dampened the fans ' enthusiasm, as Bruins attendance for the first time in decades fell behind that of the Celtics, who had won the 12th Na- tional Basketball Association cham- pionship the year before. — Steve Krause Patriots struggle for respectability The Boston Patriots. The Fox- boro Patriots. The New England Patriots. Coach Clive Rush? Coach John Mazur? Interim Coach Phil Ben- gston? Coach and General Man- ager Chuck Fairbanks? Such have things gone for Bos- ton ' s entry in the National Football League over the past five years. But Fairbanks, a new stadium in Foxboro and a couple of guys named Jim Plunkett and Mack Her- ron brought an end in 1974 to all the controversy that has sur- rounded the team. From 1970 to 1973 the team won 16 games and lost 40. The last win- ning season the team had was in 1966 when it compiled an 8-4-2 record in the now defunct Ameri- can Football League. Something had to be done. The team wasn ' t supposed to be that bad. It had acquired Plunkett in 1971 after finishing 2-12 the per- vious year and things were sup- posed to get better. After all, Plun- kett was the most sought after col- lege player that year, and he came to the Patriots with tremendous credentials. During his final year at Stanford, Plunkett reaped all the country ' s major awards for college players. He won the Heisman Trophy, the Maxwell Award, the United Press International Player of the Year, Sporting News Player of the Year, Sport Magazine College Player of the Year, Walter Camp All-Ameri- 17

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Subway riding etiquette The subterranean world of a large city nurtures in its intestinal maze of tunnels an art, solely the creation of modern man. A science-fiction story of H. P. Lovecraft speaks of strange creatures, the remnants of an ancient age, that inhabit the secret places of the Boylston Street subway stop. What Mr. Lovecraft didn ' t imagine is the still- stranger beings who stalk the city ' s underworld at all hours of the day and night, producing fears and fabric- ations of the mind more bizarre than his brute crea- tions, the daily commuters. The MBTA commuter has perfected the fine art of survival by public transportation, and the novice about to embark in this peculiar existence should be aware of some of the tested techniques. Initially, the most difficult technique to master is the detached unstare. On that train tomorrow morning, while standing up all the way from Quincy Square to Harvard, take notice of the expression on the faces of the other inhabitants of the cylindrical tube. Never again in the novice ' s commuter-life is he allowed to look anyone in the eye. Noting the expression is for training purposes only and not a general practice. Observe that the eye contact between two people no less than a half-inch apart and face-to-face is almost nil. These two are instantly marked as veteran commuters. Experts in their field, they manage the detached unstare in the most difficult circumstances. The technicalities of the skill include avoiding direct eye contact at all costs. Amateurs resort to the ruse of staring at the middle button on their neighbor ' s coat instead. The result is a decidedly uncomfortable feeling on the part of the person wearing the jacket. Knocking the person behind him in the eye with his elbow, he begins to check that buttons are unbuttoned and zip- pers zipped. After being reassured, the nervous com- muter starts to wonder exactly what classification of pervert is staring at his button. Obviously, this is not the desired result. The unstare also consists of a glazed look in the eye that appears to be some kind of self-inflicted blindness. It requires forcing the eyes not to focus on a single object. Another popular alternative to the unstare is a book or newspaper. Reading avoids embarrassing eye con- tact while giving the impression of intelligence. Any novice commuter will notice the popularity of written material, from Communist handouts to the latest best seller, on the train. They are merely an ingenious unstare device. Newspapers rate lowest on the commu- ter ' s reading list. They are large enough to prove a temptation to the man next to the comics-reading trav- Three commuters at the Green Line ' s Copley station protect their personal zones of privacy. Each stays a good distance from the other; all avoid eye contact with each other. eler who forgot his copy of The Decline of the Roman Empire. The next maxim for the novice to learn is his general stance in a crowded sardine can, sometimes referred to as the everybody ' s a potential pervert or Boy, they let crazies out early today attitude. In the sweaty, stagnant air of that train, the commuter is faced with being huddled together with perfect or not-so-perfect strangers. His attitude includes consid- ering all body contact, accidental or not, to be the product of some deranged opportunist. This is the time the unstare rule is broken and the wayfarer is allowed to give the suspect a chilling look of daggers. Unfortu- nately, innocent bystanders are often victimized by this modern evil-eye. Armed with the unstare expertise and a paranoia of people, comprehended only by fellow refugees from the highway, the novice is as ready as he will ever be for his first solo journey. A few admonitions should be mentioned about the initial experience. The rocking, squealing, lurching motion of the train does not necessarily mean the train is about to crash. The novice about to be initiated into the strange world of the modern subterranean nomad should be cautious not to look panic-stricken. (Masters of the commuting life, no matter how certain of impending disaster, never flinch.) Lastly, the novice is warned about the complexity of the crisscrossing, often incomprehensible, tangle of trains and trolleys. Getting where the greenhorn com- muter intends to go is an achievement in itself. It is accomplished only by first-hand experience. The strange underworld of migratory modern man holds in its cosmos all the mundane and weird ex- periences that can be part of this unique civilization. Perverts and paranoia, fantasy and freaks, await the incautious commuter at every turn of the winding cav- erns. Was the expressway really that bad? — Mary Wessling 19