MONSTERS OF THE MIDWAY: The Worst Team in College Football?

Was this ragtag band of precocious intellectuals the worst, or the most courageous, team in college football? From 1892 until the 1930s the legendary Monsters of the Midway dominated college football. The University of Chicago team was coached by the most successful coach in college football, Amos Alonzo Stagg. In 1939 Chicago dropped out of the Big Ten and killed its varsity football program. But now, it's 1969 and football is back. But the resurrection of Chicago football hasn't brought the Monsters back to life, more the lab mice of the Midway.

The new Maroons are called "the worst team in college ball" by People Magazine. But this under-sized and outnumbered team is also compared to the hero of Troy courageously facing Achilles. They lose game after game. Yet, guys whose IQ is greater than their weight refuse to give up their mission to win one for their old coach.

Sex, drugs, rock and roll, the Draft Lottery, the Anti-War Movement and student rebellion the cultural revolution on college campuses in the late 60s is experienced by the team's wide receiver. Jack Blair is a small town Hoosier kid who just wanted to go to the best college in the Midwest. In Chicago Jack encounters figures as disparate as Muhammad Ali, Milton Friedman and George Halas.

Jack joins the team for resume-building. His goal is to win the Rhodes scholarship and maybe also a football game. Along with his teammates he is swept into the tumult of the late 1960s. He falls in love with a radical feminist who demonstrates against the return of football to Chicago. He rooms with a secular Jewish kid taking ballet whose father has begun manufacturing something called a computer chip.

Jack's teammates reflect the wackiness of the times. There is the 135 pound nose guard and the 295 pound Sumerian scholar. On the team bus the Maroons blast The Mothers of Invention on an 8-track, smoke pot and worry about a friend's suicide attempt.

An assistant coach rides Jack for not fully committing to the team. His favorite professor chides him to concentrate on his studies. What sustains Jack through the bewildering cultural milieu, and the pressure of balancing sports and studies, is the tolerant understanding of his head coach and the friendship of his teammates.

The book is inspired by the author's experience of playing on the resurrected University of Chicago Maroons a/k/a the Monsters of the Midway. Jeff Rasley is also the author of five other books, Bringing Progress to Paradise, Light in the Mountains, False Prophet?, Islands in my Dreams and Nepal Himalayas in the Moment.

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