Sport: Counterattack

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Only five days before the key game with Michigan, No. 2 team in the nation, gloom shrouded Army's football field at West Point. Army's swift halfback and 1955 team captain, Mike Zeigler, was under punishment, walking with his rifle in the barracks area instead of practicing plays. His offense: though a first-rate student and on the dean's list, Cadet Zeigler had drunk a beer in an officers' mess. He was stripped of his team captaincy and barred from football for the season.

Help came from, of all places, Belgium and the U.S. Navy. Prince Albert of Belgium, in the U.S. as the Navy's guest, paid a courtesy call at West Point and exercised the traditional royal prerogative to request a pardon for all cadets under punishment. The amnesty freed Zeigler, and raised the odds to even money that Army would win.

As it turned out, neither Zeigler nor any other Army player was any help against powerful Michigan. In their five meetings over the past ten years, the Cadets had beaten the Wolverines every time. But last week Michigan counterattacked with a vengeance. Halfback Terry Barr slammed through the porous Army line for the first touchdown soon after the kickoff, then sprinted 82 yards to score a second time. Michigan added two more touchdowns in the fourth quarter. Butter-fingered Army lost eight of its nine fumbles, completed only one pass all afternoon, while Michigan romped to a 26-2 triumph.

Other big games ran truer to form:

¶ Playing one of their rare night games, in sultry 80° Florida weather, Notre Dame blanked Miami University 14-0. Irish Quarterback Paul Hornung, a running star in earlier games this season, turned on his passing skill, firing the forwards that scored both Notre Dame touchdowns.

¶ Aerial warfare broke out in earnest in the Wisconsin-Purdue game at Lafayette, Ind., where the two teams threw a total of 54 passes, 35 of them completed. Only one pass, by Wisconsin's Jim Miller, was good for a touchdown. That and a field goal won for Wisconsin 9-0.

¶ Navy maintained its perfect 1955 record (unbeaten, untied, unscored upon) with a 21-0 win over Pittsburgh.