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On defense. Saimes has what coaches call a "sense for the ball"—he knows instinctively where the play is going, and he gets there in time. "When I see that halfback or end come into the secondary," says Saimes, "I say to myself, 'Easy now, George, don't go too fast.' I want to rush up and get him, but it's got to be clean. I don't want to miss. If it's a short-yardage situation. I'll aim right for his shoulders to hold him back. If it's a pass completion, I keep my eyes glued to his belt buckle: he can't do much faking there. Then I go for both legs."
A superb all-around athlete, Saimes was a hurdler, a pole vaulter and an all-star fullback at Lincoln High School in Canton, Ohio, fielded scholarship offers from no fewer than four Big Ten schools. He decided on Michigan State, he says, "because I wanted to go some place close to home. Some place where if I got fed up with it all, I could pack up and get home in a day."
Need Case. Classified as a "need case," Saimes gets a full scholarship (board, room, books, tuition), works as a lifeguard during the summer to pick up money for clothes and incidentals. Quiet and shy, he occasionally does nocturnal road work to keep his legs in shape; otherwise he sticks close to his books. "I figure you've got to make sacrifices for anything you get," he says. A social-sciences major, Saimes is still undecided about his future. "I'd like to get a teaching certificate," he says, "so I'll have something behind me. But I don't know whether I want to teach, play pro football, or go into government or business. I don't want to follow what other people say is right. But if you go it on your own and don't make it, your world can come down with an awful crash."