The Little Trophy Comes to Life

A passing delight, Doug Flutie winds down a career too short

Because the biggest, greatest and best are tossed about so easily in sports, like footballs in the Miami rain, the most articulate superlative left may be just a gasp changing to a sigh, such as Doug Flutie brought to college football last week. The most cuddly player in history, or at least since Eddie LeBaron, appears about to run away with the Heisman trophy. Mindful that there have been stirring football finishes for 100 years, and rip-roaring games the equal of Boston College's 47-45 victory over Miami, it can be fairly stated that never have a forward pass and a statue's unveiling been more favorably timed.

As devoted as sportsmen are to collecting shiny gewgaws, this is the only athletic mantel piece that would be noticed at Westminster Abbey, and the thought of it cradled under the arm of Flutie, or vice versa, brings a smile. Exactly 25 Ibs. of bronze immortality, the Heisman figurine depicts a stiff-arming ballcarrier, a suggestive pose these past 49 years to a literal-minded electorate that now numbers 1,050 experts, some of whom have seen a college football game this season. Although emblematic of the best player, whatever his position, the Heisman never has exalted an interior lineman, and runners have been preferred to quarterbacks. Flutie has the instincts of a runner ("I just love tucking the ball and taking off"), but he is a quarterback from head to toe, a distance of 5 ft. 9¾ in. "I don't know how I could play," he says, "if the ball wasn't in my hands and the game wasn't in my control."

Still, some four seasons and 11,000 yds. ago, he was willing to find out. Initially refused a scholarship at Boston College, then tendered the last one available after a coaching change, Flutie arrived from nearby Natick High as a fourth-stringer. By the final quarter of his fourth idle Saturday, glumly watching B.C. in its usual throes—this time trailing Penn State 31-0—he had about resolved to ask Jack Bicknell for a trial at wide receiver, when the coach turned and scanned the bench. In the best tradition of the worst movies, Flutie went in and passed for 135 yds.

While Penn State won that game, the Nittany Lions make a good touchstone for the spectacular Flutie years. He threw on them for 520 yds. the next season, 380 the year after that and 447 a few weeks ago, getting on to a mile against one team alone. He has passed for 10,303 yds. in all and has run that up to 11,054, both major-college records. But the cold figures are not what has warmed New Englanders, who as a rule show no more passion than penchant for this primal sport of Texas and Ohio. Boston College was 0-11 as recently as 1978, and while the Eagles are currently 8-2 and bound for the Cotton Bowl, no one expects that to be their standard fare from now on. Locally, the Flutie phenomenon has been regarded as an age of delight that will never be repeated, and maybe the country should share the lament.