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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 885809, member: 289"] THE AFTERMATH Photographic coverage of the contest was more limited than for a home game. But then there were fewer highlights. The Post Standard had a large shot of “Orange’s First Touchdown”, showing Jim brown “smashing” for the first touchdown. The picture is confusing. It looks like Jim is being tackled along the sideline and is straining for the goal line a couple of paces in front of him. But there apparent sideline is labeled “goal line” and on the other side of him is a sign saying “10”, apparently indicating the yard line. I think the “goal line” is mislabeled in the picture. One guy is falling after trying to knock Jim to the side and another is diving in front of him, trying to trip him up. The next page shows Nick Baccile leaping to catch a pass right at the now properly labeled goal line but headed for the corner between it and the out of bounds line. He was unable to stay inbounds and the pass was ruled incomplete. On page 36 there is a picture of “The Go-Ahead Tally”. The caption reads: “Jim brown smashes through four Boston U. defenders on a 4 yard bolt to his second touchdown in the second quarter.” Jim is about at the 2 ½ yard line. One Terrier has grabbed at the back of his legs. Another is in front of him but looks as if he’s being run over by a train. A third is coming in from the left, to no avail. The herald had a head-on shot of Ed Ackley who “Shreds BU Line” for a first down in the third period. On the full picture page, Jim Brown is shown making an interception that stopped a BU drive. He returned it 40 yards to the Terrier 36 but Syracuse was unable to capitalize on it. Jim is out in the open, maneuvering past a couple of prone Terriers. To the right is another shot of Jim’s second touchdown. He’s taking on a defender, shoulder to shoulder while brushing off another. “John” Stephens, (that would be Tom- we didn’t have a John), runs for “Short Yardage” before being “stopped by Larry Fennessy (21) and unidentified tackler after picking up a small gain through the line.” Stephens is upright and past the line of scrimmage and looks like he has running room but the two Terriers are bent over and honing in on him. Below that Ackley is shown straight-arming a BU defender in a picture captioned “Outa My Way, Bub”. He picked up a first down in the third quarter on the play. Next to that is “Brown on the move” showing Jim, with his shoulders hunched up and his arms swinging, running past BU’s John Regan for a first down “as quarterback Ferdie Kuczala comes over to block”. Kuczala does not appear in the picture. The only other figure is a referee. Rudy Farmer is show being taken off the field on a stretcher in another shot. The Old Scout was “still sweating” when he visited Arnie Burdick. “It was the kind of game I was afraid Syracuse was going to play…and they did. Their tackling was wanting and their blocking was worse. And for a team that was supposed to be developing a passing attack all week, they certainly forgot their lessons. The Orange coaches say they can’t get their kids interested in playing Boston University. No doubt this is true for that’s the kind of a ‘let down’ performance it was.” He also complained about the pass protection and pass defense. “At least five Boston passes should have been picked off and two or three that were completed should have been batted away. The Orange isn’t as aggressive as it was earlier in the year. Against Maryland, every time a ball went in the air, Syracuse’s pass defense felt that it had just as much right to it as the other team. Legally, it does, you know. Our pass protection will be improved when fullback Ed Coffin gets back into the line-up this week against Penn State. But our quarterbacks aren’t ducking away and slipping some of those tackles like they might. By the way, another question: What have we done in the way of passing since the Maryland game. It’s been frightful.“ Since the Maryland game Syracuse, in four contests, had completed a total of only 12 passes for an average of 47 yards per game. “You just aren’t going to defeat Penn State that way. We’ve really got to get the ball in the air for some substantial yardage and take the heat off our running game. One thing you might tell Schwartzie for me. I’d like to see him practice his pass patterns this week on a LINED gridiron. In this way, the passers would get used to throwing sooner, rather than hitting their receivers too late and out of bounds…While I’m suggesting, put a word with the coach to throw a little this week in situations other than when the whole stadium is hollering “pass”…you know, third down and long yardage. That’s the toughest time to complete one.” Fans have been saying this ever since. Bill Reddy focused on the officiating and the dim future of the series with Boston University, who would eventually be replaced on the schedule by Boston College. First he described a fourth down play that last about 3 minutes on the game clock. A Terrier punt on 4th and 6 was partially blocked, traveled only 15 yards and was returned 10 yards by Gus Zaso. But Syracuse was offsides, making it fourth and one. BU decided to go for it and ran for the first down. But they were offsides, making it 4th and 6 again and bringing out the punting team. Ed Ackley caught the punt and returned it from the SU 20 to the 36 but was driven back to the 28, where a BU defender slugged him. The ref not only took no action on the punch but placed the ball on the 28, not giving Ackley forward progress. “As Ackley protested bitterly, the official chided him for not acting like a gentleman.” But BU was guilty of an illegal formation. 4th and 11. Ackley caught this third punt at the 25 “and ran it in gentlemanly fashion, bowling over three tacklers, back to the Syracuse 43”. Then there was the holding call on the fumble. “Jerry Fitzgerald cut to his right after taking a handoff and he fumbled the ball as he was being tackled. The ball rolled free and Syracuse’s Ernie Jackson fell on it. But Boston kept the ball. The referee signaled defensive holding against Syracuse and then signaled that it had been refused. Why Boston should refuse penalty against Syracuse as long as it was retaining possession anyway puzzled all observers. At half-time an explanation was sought and here’s the explanation: After the fumble, the ball was free and one of the Syracuse players held a Boston player, preventing him from entering the scramble for the free ball. The penalty, in this case, was possession and first down at the spot of the foul. Who was held on the play? Why, it was Fitzgerald, who was tackled as a ball-carrier, dropped the ball, and who, it was ruled, should have been released by the tackler so he could scrimmage for his own fumble!” “There was wholesale hope among Orange coaches and players that this would be the last trip to play Boston University for a Syracuse team. The Orangemen obviously weren’t ‘up’ for the game, while the Terriers were high-spirited as they always are against Syracuse. It was a let-down contest after four ‘big name’ opponents and the Orange were fortunate that it got by as well as it did. It is a game that means nothing to Syracuse. Beating BU adds no prestige, losing to BU is considered a disgrace. Nowhere in the country was football played on a more horrible field than was the Syracuse-BU affair. The Braves used to own it, for baseball and since Boston University bought it more than two years ago, no effort has been made to improve it for football. The only changes have been for the worse, such as digging drainage ditches onto the gridiron. The diamond, with its humps and hollows, with drop-offs and ditches, puts players in constant danger of being hurt without being hit.” Nonetheless the SU-BU series would continue until 1960, with two more visits to the baseball field. This actually over-lapped with the Boston College series, which began in 1958. Boston University, a school that presently has 33,000 students, dropped down to the “college division” as it was called then, (major schools were the “university division”), in 1966, then became a Division II school when divisions were set up in 193 and Division 1AA when that division was created in 1978. They then gave up the sport in 1997. The remains of Braves Field still exist, in part, in what is now Nickerson Field. [/QUOTE]

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