(8 of 9)
Bird Dogs on Point. As perishable commodities go, there are few things more coveted than a good quarterback. Southern Cal's John McKay spotted Pete Beathard as a junior at El Segundo High School, hardly let him out of his sight for two years. Northwestern's Myers got VIP tours of all but three Big Ten campuses, plus Miami and the University of Florida. Midshipman Roger Staubach is a prize product of perhaps the most extensive recruiting service in college football. "We don't dodge it," says Rip Miller, Navy's assistant athletic director. "We recruit like mad."
Unlike most colleges, which have only 50 or so athletic scholarships, Navy has an open number of appointments, operates on a volume basis "in hopes that some of them will turn out to be good." Working for Miller are 100 "bird dogs," or scouts, strategically spotted around the U.S.—75 of whom, oddly enough, never had anything to do with the Navy.
The Navy bird dog who spotted Staubach was Cincinnati Businessman Rich ard Kleinfeldt, and he still comes to a twanging point every time he thinks about it. The only son of a salesman, Roger was the original Wheaties ad—neat, well-mannered, studious, and absolute murder on a football field. By the time he was a senior at Cincinnati's Roman Catholic Purcell High School (B student, nine-letterman, president of the student council), the whole city was talking about his Saturday afternoon heroics. "Purcell had a reputation for being a school where the quarterback never got dirty," says one of his high-school coaches. "After all, you don't carry coal in a Rolls-Royce." Oh no?
Against archrival Elder High, Roger crossed up the defense by tucking the ball under his arm on a bootleg and sprinting 60 yds. down the sidelines to a touchdown. College scholarship offers poured in from 30 schools. According to Roger's mother, Ohio State's Woody Hayes "must have spent a fortune in telephone calls." But the one college Roger himself yearned to attend fumbled the ball. Notre Dame gave him the polite brushoff, and when the Navy recruiters persisted with their "What you can do for your country" line, Roger signed up for Annapolis. "I decided I wanted to do something else in life besides play football," he says.
Getting an appointment was easy; getting in proved more difficult. Roger flunked the entrance exam. The Naval Academy Foundation—a private organization, says the Navy—paid his way to New Mexico Military Institute for a year of cramming in English. He passed handily on the second try, and then it was off to make Navy Coach Hardin a happy man.
The first time Hardin saw Staubach run with a football was in 1961, when the plebes scrimmaged the varsity. Staubach pursued an erratic course through the entire varsity team. "I thought Staubach was lucky," says Hardin. "It turned out that I was lucky." With Staubach as quarterback, the plebes won seven games, lost only one. The Middies started calling him "Jolly Roger," "Mr. Wizard" and "Mr. Wonderful." And last year Roger became the first sophomore ever to win the Thompson Trophy, which goes to Navy's best all-round athlete. As Hardin says, "I even like to watch this kid practice."