Sport: The Iconoclast

The best college football player in the U.S. this season is a gangling, astigmatic, pigeon-toed son of a shoemaker who sleeps on the floor, runs in the street, dances The Twist, and quotes Sociologist David Riesman. On or off the field, Michigan State Junior George Saimes is something of an iconoclast: a B-plus student who shuns "snap" courses, scoffs at fraternities ("They only do what society tells them to"), and rouses himself to fever pitch with a kind of self-hypnosis. "Every time they send me in," says Fullback Saimes, 20, "I tell myself that the next play is going to be...

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