The Miami News from Miami, Florida • 13

all Oakland Al didn't do after it Hey, gang. eyi inches from October to going to affect the field." The Miami news pleting the stadium but that the drainage system has been replaced. "We've considered artificial turf," Ward said, "but we've got 6' acres inside the stadium. That's a lot of artificial turf." The field is also used by the Oakland A's baseball team. It's only rained at two Coliseum games this fall, Ward said.

Unfortunately, it rained on consecutive weekends and unfortunately the Dolphins were involved the second time." By AL LEVINE Mlml News Reporter An unusually heavy seasonal rain and two football teams botched up the field at Oakland Coliseum, the stadium manager said yesterday, not removal of the protective tarpaulin three hours before Sunday's Dolphins-Oakland game. The miserable condition of the field was still an issue around town yesterday. Sunday, Oakland sloshed to the American Conference finals 21-14 in the mud. Asked in a television interview what he'd remember about Miami's playoff experience, Coach Don Shula said Initially: "I'll remember it was decided on a poor field." Some Dolphin fans have a notion that Al the Oakland general manager, was behind a sinister plot and ordered the field unprotected from heavy rains last week. -ti: It ain't so, said Ray Ward, head of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum complex.

Ward said on the phone from his Coliseum office: "It didn't rain We were confident we'd have a good field. We put the tarp down last Friday when it began to rain and took it off on Saturday for the Dolphins and the Raiders to practice for the Dolphins and the Raiders to practice and they did a job on it, "The Dolphins practiced at one end of the field and the Raiders practiced at the other end. They both prac- Tuesday December 29, 1970 Section March." -y; iV Two weeks Coliseumjhad used 20 construction heaters and helicopters to dry the field prior to the Oakland-Kansas City '-The 1 same procedure wasn't used Sunday because of the rain," Ward said; "It was raining from 9:30 to about 12:40, 20 minutes fore kfckoff. It really poured before the sun came out. You can take only so miich -of it' off ahd guys that big are "There was no standing water on the field Sunday.

It was Mud." Coliseum playing field has been taking a bad rap because it is below sea level and considered soggy most of the has nothing to do with the condition of the field," Ward said. "It never really dries out this time of the year." He said the Coliseum had a drainage problem in 1966 because of the haste in com IIIJimWlllHBH ticed in the rain. I'd have to say that damaged the field somewhat. You get 40 guys running around on your lawn under those conditions, when they leave it isn't going to be the sameV Aisp, Ward said. "We've had about.

15 inches of rain so far this season. Our rainy season begins in October. Our normal rainfall is about is LXt, I AslfS sF terttxiose'x, siP8 mtmrm Defeat rockiest hy Rqiders of a AL LEVINE About 500 people were waiting at the airport at 2:30 Monday morning when the Dolphins arrived from Oakland and the 21-14 playoff defeat. They were waiting with hastily drawn signs Still With cameras and autograph books. The players' procession down the exit ramp was single-file and slow.

The introductions held things up. As the players filed out of the ramp, a guy in the crowd would shout their names, the people would cheer and flashbulbs would pop. "I don't know what channel they were The mud and goo at Oakland caused Dolphins' Bob Griese lo fumble this one Gam after death in family es un important At halftime on opening night in Baton LSU led, 9-0, but Charlie McCIendon knew that wasn't enough and his players probably knew it, too. "Between halves," said the Louisiana State coach, "you could hear a pin drop in that locker room." McClendpn was pow WWII! CRITTEHDBi $porfs Edifor The football squad was all there. Three of the players had to be urged to leave the graveside an hour after the funeral services had ended.

The team went back to Baton Rouge, and eventually returned to the football field. "Just going through the motions for a long time," said McCIendon. "Me too." "What do you like most about football?" asked the freshman questionaire which Duhe filled out in 1967. "Competition," he replied. Competition is very important to the ambitious young men who play college football.

But there are things which take precedent over competition, as the LSU players relized at the start of the season. LSU is not a football factory. Nor Is college football so dehumanized as its critics would have us believe. Winning is not the only thing, as everybody connected with the LSU; team realized when no one could break that awful halftime dressing room silence during the first game after the wrenching death of Butch Duhe. erless to change it.

A rugged, outspdken veteran coach out of Arkansas and the IXS. Navy and the JJeac Bryant Finishing School, McCIendon know how to make rousing halftime speeches. That night" he lust' couldn't bring himself to do it. 1 Butch Duhe had been dead less than two weeks, The football team was still in mourning. In the last quarter, Texas A scored 17 points and defeated LSU.

It was probably college football's upset of the year. A held for placements while Butch kicked. The LSU trainer wouldn't let Butch practice because of his frequent headaches when fall scrimmage began, but Butch dressed for the workouts every day. By the time the doctors found out what was wrong with Duhe, it was too late to save him, but death came with merciful swiftness. McCIendon, one of his assistant coaches and four LSU players were pallbearers at Duhe's funeral in New Orleans.

CJ A. 4 LUS offense like Wayne movie co-star 1 watching," one of the Dolphins said, ruefully, but they must have been watching Heidi." The players were embarrassed by the homecoming ceremony. They would have preferred to slip quietly back to town. They believed they should have won the game against the Raiders. That may be the biggest accomplishment of all for the 1970 Miami Dolphins in this year of unprecedented Dolphin events.

The Dolphins developed a winning atmo-sphere that had been missing the first four years. They refused to crumble in the face of adversity and mud, too Sunday at Oakland and that was a quality that had sustained them through a season that had a few rocky moments. It makes 1970 a season to remember and 1971 a season to contemplate. High finish a draft headache "I'm real proud of this football team," Coach Don Shula said. "There was a lot of progress made during the year.

They know now what it takes to win, the work involved." Work was not a four-letter word to the Dolphins. "Now they're aware of the price you have to pay," said Joe Thomas, the player personnel director. "They know what it takes and what the lucrative outcomes are from it." The season was so fruitful. A 10-4 record, the best-ever. Playoff participation for the first time.

A Coach of the Year candidate in Shula. Perhaps the only bad thing to come from all the good times is the headache it will give Thomas in the annual draft of college talent, Jan. 28 and 29. Perhaps the only bad thing to come from all the good times is the headacre it will give Thomas in the annual draft of college talent, Jan. 28 and 29.

The Dolphins' high won-lost finish has gummed up Thomas' approach to the draft. Considering that only three teams in the Na- tional Football League (Baltimore, Minneso-ta and San Francisco) finished with better records, Miami could conceivably pick 23rd among the 26 teams. Miami, of course, lost its No. 1 pick to Baltimore as compensation for wooing away Shula. So the Dolphins may have to wait until the 49th pick in the draft to make a selection.

Dolphins learn how other half live "We've always drafted according to pur needs," Thomas said. "In this particular draft we may have to go for the best athlete available. It was a little easier to draft before. We always had a high pick. Now you've just got to sit back and wait and see who's taken off the board." If the Dolphins were to draft according to need, Thomas said, they would go after a big lineman.

But linemen, Joe said, "are the skimpiest part of the draft." It's a very good year for quarterbacks, receivers, running backs and defensive backs in that order. "We haven't drafted an offensive lineman in the first 30 rounds of the last couple of drafts," Thomas said. "Doug Crusan (a No. 1 pick in 1968) was the last lineman we picked high. In Our early drafts we were going for what you call the skilled positions, quarterback and receivers.

'We'd like to draft a big lineman, offensive or defensive, and get him started so in a year or two from now he could help us. But it's a very poor year for linemen. So even though you may have enough people at a po- sition, you draft the best athlete available and then trade later according to need." This isn't a particularly unique predicament. All the winners have to live with it. It's part of the Dolphins' education of how the other half has been living, now that they've joined football's Beautiful People.

1W Hi "is 7 BUTCH DUHE didn't win another game. LSU lost only one of its last 10, to Notre Dame. There are those who have never been exposed to' the Inner workings of big-time college football including some reasonable, intelligent people who think of LSU (and Texas and Ohio State) as belonging to a network of football factories, slave labor camps in which brainwashed young brutes are taught to savage their opponents, hypnotized and drugged to ignore physical and emotional pain, as well as any other distractions which might keep them from performing their trained animal act. These are people who don't know. Football is enchanted by the terminology of war blitz and bomb and suicide squads.

Collegiate lore is filled with youngsters boasting that they will gladly die for dear old Harvard. 1 But that's bravado. The toughest college kid football player, even the one who eventually comes to think of his university as a prep school for the winning of a professional contract, is unprepared to deal with death in the football family. His coaches are equally helpless. Talk about dedicating "You talk about dedicating the season to the boy," said McCIendon.

"But those are just words." It's not something that can be put away with a cliche speech and a timely tear. "We practiced after Butch died," said McCIendon. "We worked out it was to give everybody something to do, something besides sit around and think about it. For the longest time, I wasn't coaching I was just out there." Except in New Orleans, where Duhe was a genuine star In high school (most valuable player in his state all-star game) and in Baton Rouge, where he was LSU's No. 3 quarterback in 1969 as a sophomore, the news of the death of Herman J.

(Butch) Duhe was not a front-page item. It came across the Associated Press wire, just a couple of paragraphs, and it ran on the back page in most newspapers and was quickly forgotten. There was no sensational aspect to Dune's death an autopsy showed that he died due to a growth on the brain, in no way related to a football injury. Duhe (pronounced dewey) died Sept. 8.

It was forgotten- so quickly outside of Louisiana that when LSU lost its opening game Sept. 19, the football experts trying to find reasons for the upset didn't consider Duhe's death. McCIendon didn't mention it. He felt that it would have been bad taste to bring up Duhe's death in connection with something so relatively trivial as a lost football game. "It makes you stop and think how important ev-1 erything else is, things other than football McCIendon said the other day, more willing to talk about it now that four i months have passed.

4 a. sl, 0, -v LSU's Tommy Casanova (37)' follows. Del Walker Periard oblems pi By PAUL KAPLAN Miml Ntws Reporter One of Louisiana State University's top percentage runners, Tommy Casano-va, is a first-team All-America at defensive back. And that pretty well sums up the LSU offense. Like a co-star in a -John Wayne movie, it's there, but you never hear about it.

In Baton Rouge, the defense is the roast beef and the offense is the gravy. "We've long since realized that the defense is going to play a good game," said offensive tackle Mike Wright. "We Just try to score enough to take the pressure of 'em. "A couple of times this year we made 'em sweat out little leads. It usually ended up that they'd get us the ball so many times that we'd score.

That would take the pressure off." Wright is one of the few senior members of the gravy squad. He's seen both ends of the LSU story, like past years when the offense was the prime rib. "Last year we were more experienced on offense and we ran up big scores. This year the defense turned the tables on us." Play like Bengal Tigers i Both LSU squads will have to play like Bengal Tigers New Year's Night, when the team takes on undefeated Nebraska in the 37th annual Orange Bowl Classic. The powerful Cornhuskers are six-point favorites.

The 1970 LSU story has not been all defense. The offensive unit is no slouch. It has averaged 340 yards and over 25 points per game, including 61 points in season finale against Ole Miss, when the Tigers wrapped up the Orange Bowl invitation. "You don't hear too much about us, but we have a pretty good offense," said first-string quarterback Buddy Lee. "We Tiave good backs.

They're no O.J. Simpsons, but they're good and strong." Good they are. Strong they might be. Big they're not. The five LSU running backs expected to play average around 180 pounds.

The biggest in size and output is tailback Arthur Cantrelle. The 190-pounder rushed for 892 yards and seven touchdowns in this, his junior year. "I think there's a competitive spirit but it's all friendly," said Allen Shorey, a 5-foot-9, 170-pound fullback. "We're not Continued on Page 4B, CoL 1 are all little ones By ELLIOTT HARRIS Miami Newt Reporter "We played in some tall grass once and they couldn't see me," said Nebraska middle guard Ed Periard. Such is the plight of a 5-foot-9, 201-pounder who finds himself surrounded by such defend- 1 ers as John Adkins (6-foot-3), Larry Ja-cobson Dave Walline 2), Willie Harper (6-foot-3) and Jerry Murtaugh (6-foot-3).

Even in short grass or artificial turf there are problems for Periard. "In "Meylan was about 6-1, 245 and Geddes 6-2 or 6-3, 230," Periard said. one is going to real quick people. Geddes and Meylan were real quick but I think I'm just as.quick as they probably were." Periard runs the 40-yard dash in 4.8-4.9 seconds. Not only is Periard not the prototype Nebraska middle guard, but also he is not the prototype college football player.

He wasn't highly recruited and he wasn't Siven a scholarship to attend Nebraska. "They didn't think I was big enough," 2 Dade stars sign with U-M Let me try, he said huddle they look around and say, 'Where's When they put the football Football was important to Butch. So were other things. He went to LSU wanting to major in architecture, mental design. That's too tough a major to mix with football, he was told.

Let me try, he said. He convinced his teachers, in football and architecture, that he could maintain simultaneous excellence in both pursuits. "If you couldn't get along with Butch, you couldn't get along with mankind," McCIendon said. It had been an exciting year for the 6-foot-2, 192-pound junior, who would have been 22 years old this month. He quarterbacked the winning team in LSU's spring game.

During the summer, he got the headaches which signaled the beginning of his sickness, but medical examinations couldnt find any reason. Butch and his father spent the summer afternoons playing with a football. Herman Duhe Sr. learned the LSU pass routes and his son threw passes to him. His father i Periard said.

Nebraska wasn't the only' 'i-one. Michigan and Michigan State also thought he was too small, although he -v had been an all-state halfback at Birch -Run High in Birch Run, Michigan. Be- cause "I kinda wanted to get out of state," he ended up at Nebraska. "I wasn't on scholarship. I went out for the freshman team, played middle guard, got a scholarship and worked up little by little." In fact, he worked to the point where he was an All Big Eight Conference selection and Associated Press third team member.

When Periard plays against Louisiana Continued on Page 5B, Col. 4 the ground (for a measurement) they ask me to look at it since I can get bet- ter look because closer." His teammates call him "Red Fire, plug, Stump, everything that means little." In retaliation, Periard says, "I tell, them to get out of the clouds." Any ment more incendiary and they might. step on him. Periard is not the prototype Nebraska middle guard. He is not a Wayne Meylan, or a Ken Geddes, two of Nebraska's recent outstanding middle guards.

1 All-County defensive end Rick Schubert of Jackson and Coral Gables split end Steve Marcantonio became the first Dade County football players to sign grant-in-aid football scholarships with the University of MiamL The two signed yesterday. They said a major influence for the decision was the hiring of Fran Curci who earlier this month was lured away from the University of Tampa where he built a successful football program. With the signing of Schubert and Marcantonio, Curci the former U-M quarterback hopes he is taking a step in the same direction for Hurricanes. Fojrt Lauderdale High's Dan Nugent yes- terday signed with Auburn University..