(9 of 9)
Graduation & Then? Off the field, Roger is a C student, ranks 620th in a class of 905 ("He has to work for everything he gets," says one instructor). His course schedule for this term: differential equations, electrical science, thermodynamics, U.S. Government, piloting and navigation, and terminal ballistics. But in military aptitude, matters such as leadership, decorum, and the cut of his jib, the quarterback comes out, and he ranks twelfth in the class. Deeply religious, he has been known to bawl out nappers in the Navy chapel's "Sleepy Hollows," once remarked when congratulated about a football honor: "That won't get me to heaven any sooner, will it?"
He is "engaged to be engaged" to Marianne Hoobler, a pediatrics nurse in Cincinnati whom he has known since the first grade. Quiet and composed as he is, his friends know that there is still some good old-fashioned tomfoolery in Navy's model midshipman. Last June he tossed a water bomb into the room where Fullback Pat Donnelly and Guard Fred Marlin were studying for exams. Marlin grabbed a glass of water and headed for Staubach's room: there stood Jolly Roger in his raincoat.
Graduation for Staubach is still a year and a half away, and he has a four-year Navy hitch to serve—probably as a supply officer (he is color-blind and tends toward airsickness). But what then? The pros frown on roll-out passing ("We've got too much money invested in our quarterbacks to take any chances on their getting killed"), but the New York Giant's Jim Lee Howell says, "We can always teach a boy to go straight back; we just can't give him an arm or a brain." Staubach has both.
Two weeks ago, after the Michigan game in Ann Arbor, Roger flicked on a television set, flopped on a motel bed, and watched a rerun of a game between the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions. Finally he got up and turned off the set. "Those Detroit Lions," said Staubach. "They sure need a good quarterback."