Democrat and Chronicle from Rochester, New York • Page 60

DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE, ROCHESTER, N.Y.. FRIDAY. SEPTEMBER 2, 1983 AREA COLLEGES 25D By Milch Lawrence Democrat and Chronicle on' take Maxie Baughan wrong. Textbooks first, TDs second for Cornell's Maxie Baughan Raised in the shadows of Alabama's steel mills, nine-time Pro Bowl selection still wants Big Red to break out of Ivy League shadows, dominate He loves football. He 1 wouldn't have ac- cepted the head coaching job at Cor- nell if he didn't.

But football was not the reason he replaced the retired Bob i Blackman. .1 i I phasis was on learning the textbooks first and the playbooks second. During last year's NFL playoffs, the Cornell position opened. Baughan was recommended by Tom Matte, a former Baltimore Colts running back who once was interviewed for the athletic director's job. BAUGHAN WAS too busy preparing for the playoffs, so he never made it to Ithaca for an interview.

A team of Cornell officials went out to meet him in his BJoomfield Hills, home. A few days later he sent his wife and best friend of 23 years, Dianne, to Ithaca. "She did a very good job," Maxie said, as if Dianne came back home with the latest wrinkle in the Chicago Bears' offense. She had this report: "Honey, this job was destined for us." So here he is, far above Cayuga's waters, trying to make a listing program seaworthy again. He doesn't see the job as a dream come true, rather as the result of a pool of sweat.

Baughan works, then he breathes. He's at it morning, noon and night, whether it's refining the Big Red's new one-back offense and 4-3 defense, meeting alumni in Syracuse, or redesigning the team's helmets. "Seven days a week, 24 hours a day. It comes with the territory," he said. The territory started in the shadow of the steel mills in Alabama.

He grew up in Bessemer, where the rows of U.S. Steel sheds stretch in a line 13 miles north to Birmingham. In the soot and steel, Maxie's lather, Max toiled as an electrician. "I was going into the mills since as long as I can remember," he said. "I knew the first time I went in I didn't want to work in there the rest of my life." Unlike his high school buddies who never left the mills, Baughan had a ticket out of Bessemer, where he was an all-conference high school center at 168 pounds.

He went off to Georgia Tech to study industrial management. "I ALWAYS WANTED to work at a place where I'd wear a tie and I'd have a desk," he said. Instead he donned 12 pounds of pads; his office was 100 yards of grass. "Want the truth?" he asked, preparing to give a scouting report of his 13-year pro career. "Slow, little and dumb." Still he managed to be voted onto the all-time Eagles and Rams teams, and tied the Lions' Joe Schmidt for most appearances in the Pro Bowl for a linebacker (nine).

How? "I got the most out of what I had," he explained. "1 tried to always be one step ahead of my opponent. That meant preparation and study." Work. "Everything I've ever gotten I had to work for. Nothing's ever been given to me.

But don't get me wrong. I don't want to make it seem like I've cornered the market on hard work. I don't look to exploit that," said Baughan. "A lot of people work hard in this world. I just think everybody should feel the same way I do when I come in to work in the morning.

I can't wait to get in here and start. I'm always smiling." His assistants follow their leader. They sweat and smile, too. "He makes you work hard but you have fun doing it," said Tim Prendergast, the secondary coach and one of three Black-man assistants retained by Baughan. "YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE it, but there's something about Maxie that makes heard "it's a whole new ballgame." Those people don't include Laing Kennedy.

Kennedy, Cornell's new athletic director, is counting on Baughan to rebuild a program that has managed only two winning seasons in the last 10. "I'D LIKE to see us start winning 30 percent of the Ivy League titles," Kennedy said. Math majors will tell you that's three every decade. Pretty high expectations for a school that's never won even one. "But we're going to get the kind of leadership and hard work we need.

What we lack in talent we're going to make up in hard work," Kennedy said, standing by his goal. "Maxie's a great model to young players. We're very confident Maxie is the man who can develop a consistently win- ning program. That's what we brought him in to do." But really, just what is this man from the Heart of Dixie doing in the Heart of the Finger Lakes? Wasn't he happy in the pros, coordinating the Detroit Lions' defense? Why trade the National Football League for the Little League? "That's what everybody was asking around here," said Baldini, the bartender. Baughan has the answer.

Yes, he's turned off by the pro athletes who are turning on. The only white substance Maxie Baughan ever stuffed up his nose was cotton to stop the bleeding. The drug problem didn't drive him out of pro ball, though. He always wanted to coach a service academy team or at school where the em 5 4 "This is an opportunity to get into an academic environment that stresses the need for a degree and preparing for a young man for the rest of his life, not just football. "I have nothing against football or I wouldn't be here, but I'm not looking for a young man to be going into football when he leaves here," Baughan said recently.

That's Maxie Callaway Baughan Jr. talking, the former four-time All-Pro linebacker with the Philadelphia Eagles, Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins. Yes, the man who was runner-up for National Football League Rookie of the Year in 1960, the nine-time Pro Bowler, and the senior citizen in George Allen's Over-The-Hill Gang. Surprised? Keep listening to Maxie: "If we ever have a quarterback who gets the opportunity to keep playing after he's done here, that's fine for the young man. But we're not going to be making a habit of that.

Here, first comes academics." In Maxie Baughan 's life, football is second. To Cornell, which never has won an undisputed championship in the Ivy League, Maxie Baughan undisputably is No. 1. Ask Rochesterian Joe King, an alumnus, emeritus trustee and former player for legendary Coach Gil Dobie. "THE BEST THING to happen to Cornell athletics in the past 50 years is Maxie Baughan," King said.

"Why would at 73 years of age, be so enthusiastic if I didn't think we had something special here?" Run a down-and-out from Baughan's office outside Schoellkopf Field to Johnny's Big Red Grill in Collegetown, the commercial district of Cornell's campus. John Bal-dini, the owner and bartender, pours the beers and praise when the talk turns to Maxie. "From what players tell me, and I get a lot of them in here with their girlfriends during the offseason, he's going to make a big difference," said Baldini. Big, as in the Big Red, Ivy League champions. "When we had Ed Marinaro up here people couldn't wait for Saturday to come around.

Everybody went up to see the Big Red play. They ate, drank and slept Cornell football," Baldini said. "It hasn't been that way since. They don't sleep it and eat it like they used to. But with Maxie here now, it could be like the old days." Of course, there still are a few people around campus who don't know Baughan from Blackman.

At Collegetown Bagels, where bagels and butter are served with Brahms, they still think Marinaro is ladled onto pasta. "No, there hasn't been much talk about the new coach at all," said a counterman. OK, so some people have ivy growing in their ears. Apparently they haven't M' -A fan and former jM player, Maxie y'Jl Baughan is the Ml fl athletics in i (tear Joan Baat Democrat and Chronicle everybody smile when they're working around him. That's his No.

1 philosophy work hard but have fun doing it," he said. "At our staff meetings he's just as likely to crack a joke as anyone. Only thing is, we've got to laugh at his," Prendergast said. Baughan's philosophy is simple: "You've got to have fun, and the only way to have fun in football is if you win." And the only way to win is practice. Allen would be proud of this student.

"I know that's the old coach's axiom, but the longer I'm around football the more I know it's true," said Baughan. "Our job as a staff is to leave no stone unturned. To cover all the bases. To give the players hope. That's what practice is all about.

"There are going to be times in practice for joking and then there's going to be a time to be dead serious," he said. And there will be times after practice to let the players eat their cake, with ice cream. Maxie borrowed that recipe for success from George Allen. "George Allen had the greatest influence on me. He's so dedicated to his people," said Baughan, who played and coached for the current leader of the United States Football League's Chicago Blitz.

"We had a lot of good times back then." IT'S NOT GOING to stop now. There TURN TO PAGE 29D rrn UJ l.i. I.J.J J.i.J-t-f.