St Edwards University - Tower Yearbook (Austin, TX)

Page 99 text:

The Magic Co. was relieved to just be in the playoffs, but the Tuf-Nuts had dead aim on the Zoo, and their 30-17 pasting of the Magic Co. showed it. Burns completed better than 50% of his passes as six different Tuf-Nuts scored. Turk barely completed a third of his passes, and only drove for the Company’s second touchdown on the last play of the game. The preliminaries disposed of, the Tuf- Nuts readied at last for the only game of the year. It was a matchup to delight any purist. Kenny Garcia helmed the second best offense in the SEFL and Pete Ademski called the shots for the loop’s premier defense. When Garcia grew tired of throwing to Tom McCloskey and Tim MacCollum, there were Mike Cates or Mike Antonini for screens. When Ademski wasn’t blitzing, Joe Kelly was applying the pressure of three men and Mare Stead was playing his own brand of zone defense that looked like man-to- man. What it all added up to was a statis- tician’s delight and a bettor’s nightmare— the first offense against the first defense while the Nuts had the ball, and the second offense against the second defense when the Zoo had it. True to sports tradition defense won the ballgame as Mare Stead killed two deep threats and Jesse Fowlkes another with in- terceptions in the end zone. Stead’s first theft was perhaps the most important for it followed Rodney Tieken’s theft of Garcia’s first pass to set the Tuf-Nuts up for an early lead. In fact, the Nuts stole three of Garcia’s first four passes, yet they were not able to seize the initiative. The half ended 6-6, and some of the starch was gone from the Tuf- Nuts. If one play broke their backs it was a weirdie early in the second half. Garcia hit his safety valve Jose Cabesas over the middle for 17 yards, when Cabesas then lateraled to Tom McCloskey who stepped down the side- line 35 more yards to complete a 52 yard TD strike. The Nuts looked desperately for flags or a whistle indicating a tag, but there were none, and the dam broke shortly. Cates squeezed a 17 yard TD strike and Cabesas a 9 yarder, and the Zoo had completed their perfect season. For the first time in three years the headlines would speak, not of the upset winner, but simply of the champion. DS

Page 98 text:

94 Nick Nichols and John Barbick caught second half touchdown passes from Kevin Burns to spark the AFC (right) to a come-from-behind victory over the NFC in the 1972 All Star game. The NFC led 6-0 at the half on Kenny Garcia’s 3 yard lob to Bill Jakotowicz, and Garcia found Tom McCloskey from the one with two minutes remaining to tie at 12-12, but when the conversion failed the AFC had it won, 4 penetrations to 3. In back are Mike Barrett, Gary Kudrna, Jim McGrory, Mark White, Ed Daeger, Mike Toomey, Mike Jachimezyk, Terry Bauer, Nick Nichols, John Barbick, and Mark McDermott. In front are Joe Maguire, Kevin Burns, Dominic Cappelli, Rod Tieken, Joe Capuano, and Ted McGorty. Not pictured is Wayne Mitchell.

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Ohhh Vince! Say it ain't so! Striking their own blow for jock’s lib, a group of very liberated females wins the girls’ football title. 96 Tes always been a source of solace in defeat for frustrated athletes that “nice guys finish last.” While Muhammed Ali was heavyweight champ, it was still Floyd Patterson whom the people loved, and while the slick Yankees won every pennant in sight, New Yorkers still loved their Bums from Brooklyn. But now the Mets have won a pennant, Lee Trevino a million dollars, John Wooden an entire decade, and, yes, the Sorry Excuse has won the girls’ 1972 intramural football championship. The Sorry Excuse? Indeed, the disrespectfully precocious, irre- presibly mischievous Sorry Excuse. The ideal sports story should now detail how, after successive early season losses to the rival Lime Crush and Yur Gang, the Excuse put it together in the clutch to win their last six in a row. Sort of “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” That would be ideal except that it isn’t true. Excuse coach Kevin O’Connor’s dramatic, post- game, closed-door address to his athletes after the Yur Gang defeat went something like, “Well, you played the best you could; I’m really proud of you. When’s our next game?” It wasn’t Vince Lombardi speaking. And clutch performance? The biggest chal- lenge the Excuse faced in its two rematches with another irrepresible crew, Yur Gang, was seeing which team could have more fun. It’s just biologi- cally impossible to choke up while laughing. Exaggeration? Perhaps a little, but it serves to emphasize the key ingredient that won a championship for maybe only the second or third most talented club in the league. The Sorry Excuse had in fact negoti- ated a very formidable uphill climb after Yur Gang, having been upset by the Circus, neverthe- less retained first place by edging the Excuse on penetrations in a scoreless thriller in the season’: third week. The Circus and Goober Snatchers were” to provide no more upsets, and so the title race became a round robin affair between the Excuse, Yur Gang, and Lime Crush.