Football From Down Under

I DIDN'T TAKE GEOGRAPHY when I was in Hanover, but I reckon (as they say down here) that if you take a sharp stick and poke it into the earth at the 50-yard line of Memorial Field and keep pushing, it'll pop out somewhere near where I spent the triumphal 1992 football season: Sydney, Australia, where American football is "gridiron" and the two Australian versions are "footy." I had two pipelines to the Northeast: my dad, and my friend and colleague Doug Goodman '73, who works in the news bureau at Sports Illustrated. They kept me posted, and I kept a log. WEEK ONE: Why'd we open with Penn two years in a row, anyway? It doesn't matter, I guess, as long as we keeping beating'em every year. Doug sent a fax that indicated we did, 36-13. Dad said quarterback Jay Fiedler '94 was really something—five second-half TD passes. WEEK Two: Who is Bucknell, anyway—and why? WEEK THKEE: Bummer. We had'em, then we lost'em. Still, to be beating New Hampshire at half-time indicates something, I think. Neither of my feeders seemed overly concerned. This is the black-hole part of the season each year UNH, the Cross—chalk up two L's and get on with it. WEEK FOUR: What a weekend of footy! "See what you're missing!" wrote Doug on the fax reporting the 48-0 win over Holy Cross. Most points scored against the Crusaders since '86, and first time they'd been shut out since '79, said the AP. Dad told me: "That Fiedler's really something—23 of 34 for, like, 307 yards! We hadn't beaten the Cross since '77." WEEK FIVE: Fiedler continued to really be something. He connected on 20 of 31 as the Green rolled over Yale 39-27. Dad, who was there, put the homecoming crowd in Hanover at "almost fall—biggest crowd we've seen in years!" WEEKSIX: Disaster! I could see it coming. They've got that damned Astroturf in Ithaca—we ought to boot their Big Red butts out of the Ivies for that—and it always rains. Cornell 26, Green 16, in a downpour. WEEK SEVEN: Dartmouth 31, Hahvud 7. YES! Bring on Princeton. WEEK EIGHT: We beat Columbia. Bring on Princeton! WEEK NINE: We beat Brown. BRING ON PRINCETON! WEEK TEN: Right off the bat, Fiedler takes the Green on a 92 -yard march. Princeton comes back. The two teams tug this way and that way in a packed Palmer Stadium until finally, with a minute left, Dartmouth adds an insurance score and (as Doug Put it on the fax) "Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes!! 43-20!!!" Dad told me Fiedler finished the year with 175 completions in 273 attempts and an astonishing 25 TD passes. He set or tied eight school records. He said first-year head coach John Lyons called him "The best quarterback I've been around in my 18 years of coaching...He's really something."

Sure is. He was great to watch. Even from here.

The celebration wasworld-wide.