This my all-time favorite SU uniform:
The helmets looked like this:
The first SU Yearbook, (now called a "media guide") I ever purchased was the one prior to the 1967 season. I looked up the numbers.
39, of course is Larry Csonka. He was listed at 6-3, 230.
49 is Tom Coughlin, who was listed at 6-1 195. He's got to be 20-30 pounds less than that today.
50 is Gerry Vogt, who played center at 6-1 195.
33 is Peter Pietryka, a 6-2 195 defensive end.
86 is Steve Zegalia, a 5-10 200 defensive end.
32 is Tom Kosakowski another defensive end at 6-1 205
#12 is Frank Parrish a 5-11 190 defensive back.
This is just the fourth season after college football went to unlimited substitution and the tendency was to prepare athletes the way they were prepared in the one-platoon era, when linemen were more like freestyle wrestlers than sumo wrestlers and not much bigger than the backs, if at all. Keep in mind that a gut who, is 6-0 200 in good shape is the guy everybody at the gym wants to be. He's not a small man. Csonka was a monsters to the guys trying to tackle him. the disappearance of the fullback from the game is probably due to the increase in size of the linemen, taking away the advantage of pure power runners. Larry might be a linebacker today.
The biggest guys on the team were three 240 pounders: 6-2 John Cherundolo, an offensive tackle, 6-5 Dave Johnson, a guard, (arguably the biggest guy on the team considering everything although we did have a 6-6 230 guy and a 6-5 230 guy), 6-1 240 tackle Andy Fusco and 6-4 240 Art Thoms, who would become an All-America defensive tackle. I think it was probably a safer game with the players playing at these weights, both in terms of conditioning and collisions.
It also may have been a better game, although a lot of factors would be involved in such a determination. I remember a lot of coaches at the time saying that one platoon was a better game and players saying the preferred to play both ways. Certainly college kids had a better chance to show their skills to the pros on both sides of the ball and many guys who were more known for offense in college became good NFL defenders. Some fo them are in the Hall of Fame. Today they'd be 'typecast' on one side of the ball or the other and it might not be the one with their greatest pro potential.
I looked at the breakdown of states the players came from and that's very interesting. We had a roster of 70 players:
28 from New York State (5 from Section III: Todd Flaherty from Jamesville-Dewitt, John Kosakowski from Solvay, Dave McCard from Jordan-Elbridge, James O'Connell from Henninger and Charles Planer from Marcellus.)
13 from New Jersey
12 from Massachusetts
7 from Pennsylvania
5 from Connecticut
2 each from Ohio and West Virginia
1 each from Illinois and Maryland
That's 9 states, 6 of which re our home state or adjacent states. I can't recall a significant player from the Schwartzwalder Era that wasn't from New York or an adjacent state. I'm a little surprised that there weren't more players from the coal country of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Ben's home state of West Virginia as all the eastern teams, the Big Ten teams and the ACC teams that were successful all had a lot of guys from that region. Most of our out of state recruiting was to the east, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts. There was no recruiting from the deep south, Texas or California. there was no need for it. teams in those days were a products of the region in which they existed. Ben was recruiting players who were aware of our program for years and, due to our success, always had us on their short list or ever actually fans of the program and dreamed of playing here.
I did the same with this year's roster, which has 97 players:
23 from New York State (6 from Section III: Eric Anthony, Nick Robinson and Joe Stanard from Baldwinsville, Riley Dixon from CBA, Seamus Shanley from West Genessee and Troy Green from Skaneateles)
16 from Florida
9 each from Pennsylvania and Georgia
7 from New Jersey
6 each from California and Illinois
3 from Alabama
2 each from Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan and Ohio
1 each from England, Indiana, Missouri, Oregon, Tennessee and Virginia
Now 18 states and one foreign country are involved. Florida is our second most recruited state and Georgia tied for third. We've also got a lot of Midwestern guys because that's where most of the coaching staff comes from. There's much less from New Jersey and almost nothing from New England. Now you ahve to be a national recruiter to find the 52 guys per game that play in the average NCAA game and all the specialists that get used. That means recruiting players for whom we are just another score in the Sunday paper, made harder by 14 years of irrelevance. It's also why schools spend obscene amounts of money to build facilities that are supposed to dazzle recruits. You couldn't get by with Archbold Stadium and no weight room these days.
But I do like those uniforms. They somehow colorful and basic but unique- all at the same time.
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