ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 8, 1995 TAG: 9512080081
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NOTE: Below DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DON'T KNOW WHICH TEAM to root for in Saturday's Stagg Bowl? Here's stuff you won't read in the Sports pages.
We're getting to be old hands at this Stagg Bowl thing. Come the second weekend in December, we know just what to do - we put out the welcome mat for two colleges we've never heard of, then pack 'em in at Salem Stadium out of civic duty as if this were a miniature version of one of those New Year's Day bowl games.
True, we've also learned to bundle up for the Annual Stagg Bowl Weekend Arctic Weather Phenomenon, but we won't talk about that now, will we? (This may be the only bowl game in the country where the "fearless forecasters" predicting the outcome are meteorologists.)
But we've also come up with a tried-and-true method for figuring out which team to cheer for in college football's Division III national championship game.
Forget the point spread. Forget even the wind-chill factor. Here's how to choose up sides between Rowan College and the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse:
Just imagine these were Virginia schools: This would be like Radford University playing James Madison University.
Rowan and Wisconsin-La Crosse have a lot in common - with each other, and with many of the colleges in Virginia. Both are former state teachers' colleges that have evolved into regional universities of some note. In fact, this year marks the first Stagg Bowl that has matched two public schools. Division III teams tend to come from tiny, ivy-covered campuses with musty traditions, blue-blooded alumni and five-figure tuitions.
Rowan and Wisconsin-La Crosse are exceptions. Size-wise, they're both small colleges on steroids (Rowan has 9,000 students, Wisconsin-La Crosse has 8,600). And both boast students from pretty ordinary backgrounds. "This is kind of a blue-collar school," says W-L political science Professor Joe Heim. "A lot of our students, they're the first ones in their family to attend college." Ditto, Rowan.
Advantage: Even.
An ordinary nickname or an unusual one?
Sports is full of what-could-have-beens. This is no different.
In the early part of the century, Wisconsin-La Crosse's teams went by whatever name they fancied that year - the Maroons, the Raiders, the Hurricanes, the Peds, the Racqueteers, the Zephyrs and the Lions. After 1937, they settled on Indians. But in 1989, the head of Wisconsin's university system decreed that nickname was offensive to Native Americans.
Students voted on four alternatives: the Channel Cats (the school's located hard by the Mississippi River), the Mudbirds, the Roonies (as in, short for maroon, one of the school's colors) and the Eagles. So which won? The Eagles, the drabbest and most unoriginal of the four. "The eagle is native to this place," is sports information director Todd Clark's excuse.
By contrast, Rowan, in a nod to its teachers' college background, calls its teams the Profs. "A lot of students don't like it," says Eric Adams, sports editor of the school paper, The Whit. "They think it's a wimpy name for a football team."
Nevertheless, that's a Division III kind of name. But just think of what could have been if this were the Profs vs. the Roonies.
Advantage: Rowan, easily. After all, Division III doesn't allow athletic scholarships - the emphasis is supposed to be on academics.
Which school's hometown has the most interesting local landmark?
LaCrosse, Wis. (pop. 50,000 or so) is home to G. Heileman's Old Style Brewery, the nation's fifth-largest brewery and the makers of Old Style, Black Label, Colt-45, Lone Star, Henry Weinhard and other beers. Heileman's even painted up its storage tanks to look like beer cans. "It's the largest six-pack in the world," says Heim, the poli sci professor. "It's a tourist attraction. When you drive people around LaCrosse, that's one of the things you show them. It always shows up in post cards."
As for Rowan's home of Glassboro, N.J. (pop. 15,000), there's a glass-blowing museum to commemorate the town's founding industry, even though the glass factory closed down long ago. And there's the college president's home, which was the site of the 1967 summit between Lyndon Johnson and Soviet Premier Alexsei Kosygin.
Advantage: Wisconsin-La Crosse. Cold beer or Cold War? Which would you rather have right now?
Who's got the most famous alumni?
Mr. Wizard - Don Herbert, the star of the long-running NBC science show - is a Wisconsin-La Crosse grad. So is James Van Tassel, who invented the hand-held calculator.
Rowan claims Mary D'Arcy, who played the female lead in the Broadway version of "Phantom of the Opera," and Robert Hegyes, who played Juan Epstein on the 1970s television classic "Welcome Back, Kotter."
Obviously, it's a choice between the arts and the sciences.
Advantage: Wisconsin-La Crosse. The hand-held calculator launched a high-tech revolution. "Welcome Back, Kotter" launched John Travolta.
Intangibles.
In the world of sports, this category usually covers the underdog's determination to win one for the Gipper. What have we got here?
Well, Rowan boasts one of the biggest endowments of any college in the country. In fact, Rowan used to be Glassboro State until a few years ago, when New Jersey industrialist Henry Rowan and his wife, Betty, gave the school $100 million to start an engineering school. The college promptly changed its name, although that was not a universally popular choice. "A lot of people talk negatively about him," says Adams, from the school paper. "They say he kind of acts like he's the owner of the college." At 1993's Stagg Bowl, Henry Rowan was on the field before the game, shaking hands with the players. He's expected to jet down again in his private Lear for Saturday's game.
As for Wisconsin-La Crosse, it's not exactly a wine-and-cheese kind of school. Beer-and-cheese? Now, that's a different matter. Beer, in fact, seems to a major theme in LaCrosse. A developer recently proposed an office building shaped like a beer stein; the City Council rejected it on the grounds it might set a bad example for the youth. Of course, local legend has it LaCrosse already has more bars per capita than anywhere else in the country. "But just recently I heard Eau Claire took away that honor," says sophomore Rob Anderson.
And then there are the gaudy "cheesehead" hats that Wisconsinites wear at Green Bay Packer games and other formal occasions.
"I'm sure you'll see some cheesehead hats" at the Stagg Bowl, Anderson says.
"It seems there's one any time a TV [camera] is there. Let me tell you, that is the only time they get worn, though."
Advantage: Wisconsin-La Crosse. Come on, admit it. A new engineering school may be a fine thing for society. But you really want to see some cheeseheads in Salem.
LENGTH: Long : 129 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: WAYNE DEEL/Staff. Salem Civic Center employee Eddieby CNBJanney pushes snow off the tarp covering the field at Salem Stadium.
At the upper right, Salem firefighter Charlie Campbell washes snow
off the bleachers. More on the snow on A17 and B1. color.