Sport: So There, Socrates

It was only fitting that the last day of an upset-filled college football season should be filled with upsets. The only game that went according to the polls was the Rose Bowl, and even that took a remarkable performance by All-America Halfback O. J. Simpson (who carried the ball 25 times for 128 yds. and two touchdowns) before top-ranked Southern Cal could eke out a 14-3 victory over a stubborn band of sophomores from Indiana. In the Sugar Bowl, thrice-beaten, unranked Louisiana State spotted unbeaten, No. 6-ranked Wyoming a 13-0 halftime lead, then bounced back to win 20-13. In the Orange Bowl, No. 3-ranked Oklahoma beat No. 2-ranked Tennessee 26-24. The most startling upset of all came in the Cotton Bowl at Dallas, where Texas A. & M.—a team that lost almost as many games (four) as it won (six) during the regular season—upended favored (by seven points), No. 8-ranked Alabama 20-16.

Shades of Plato and Socrates! Head coach of the Texas Aggies is lanky Gene Stallings, 32, who played end on the last A. & M. team to win a Southwest Conference championship, the 1956 squad that was coached by Paul (“Bear”) Bryant, 54—who currently, of course, is head coach at Alabama. What’s more, Stallings was Bryant’s assistant for seven seasons at Alabama before he took over at A. & M. in 1965. Like Bear, he talks in a soft drawl, and his Bible is a notebook filled with “everything I’ve heard Coach Bryant say in the 13 years I’ve known him.”

The pupil was tactfully restrained when he beat his old teacher last week—and the teacher took the defeat in stride. Marching over to the A. & M. bench, Bryant hoisted Stallings onto his shoulders and paraded him around the sidelines.