Sport: The Specialist

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Thirteen Words. "In the days when I played, the opposition were bastards and barn-burners," Crisler says. That kind of approach, he considers, is now as outdated as the iron men. His pep talks are delivered in midweek. He boils down the basic difference between offense and defense to 13 words: "On offense, it's poise, finesse, determination. On defense, it's fury, fight, utter abandon." He gives his "offense unit" one kind of indoctrination, his "defense unit" the other. Crisler even has a "point-after-touchdown" unit—including a specialist place-kicker and seven of the biggest linemen on the squad.

No matter how far ahead they are, Michigan players always manage to look half undressed—their blue jerseys and yellow pants ripped and torn. Crisler has a reason for that too: once he lost a game at Princeton when an opposing player grabbed his halfback by the sleeve and brought him down. Now Crisler uniforms his teams in flimsy zephyr cloth so rippable that Harmon once used up 20 jerseys in one season.

Not for Hire. Where does Crisler get the specialists to make his system run? Like every other U.S. coach, he knows that Santa Claus doesn't leave them in his stocking every Christmas. Says Crisler: "I see nothing wrong with an alumnus helping a deserving athlete through college. What I object to is alumni who throw money into a kitty and say, 'Go out and get a football team.'"

About 70% of Michigan's players (including Chappuis) are ex-G.I.s and get their tuition free from the Government. Some no doubt get side help from alumni. Says Bob Chappuis: "Some boys back home ask me how much I'm being paid. When I say 'Nothing' they think I'm lying. And I'm not."

In his last year at college, Robert Richard Chappuis, 24, carries his football reputation lightly. Unlike hail-fellow Tom Harmon, he is incapable of calling everybody on campus by his first name. His snaggleteeth and sharp features earned him the nickname "Bird Face" when he was a kid. An easy way to make him blush (as his teammates do when things get dull) is to ask him for his autograph.

At the Phi Delt house, where he is president for the second year, he is a sharp bridge player and a whizz at cribbage. His card sense helps augment his G.I. allotment and the $50 a month he gets from his dad, who is an executive in a Toledo, O., porcelain-products company. On the practice field, Chappuis is very "coachable," which is exceptional in a senior. Chappuis learns easily, just as he does in the classroom, where he makes a C-plus average seemingly without ever opening a book.

When Dad Was Young. It was at the family dinner table that Bob Chappuis first heard about football. His dad had once played quarterback for Denison U., and like most fathers, liked to recall how good he was. The story Bob liked best was dad's quarterback sneak: "Mind you, I weighed only 135 Ibs. then. . . . I took the ball on my own 20, broke into the clear. The secondary had me trapped by the sidelines. . . . I spun away from one tackier . . . then another. . . ." The story grew each year; in the most recent version, dad ran from his own two-yard line, and was tackled on the enemy's one-yard line. Says Bob with a grin: "Dad has no clippings to prove it."