The Streak
Whittier College’s football team hasn’t won in two years. They’re not giving up and neither should you.
There are three minutes and ten seconds left on the clock in the fourth quarter. This is the quarter where champions are made and stories are told. The Whittier College Poets have a first down with the ball on the Redlands Bulldog’s twenty-yard line. The crowd is silent. The quarterback hands the ball off to the running back and he is able to muscle his way through the line of scrimmage for a three-yard gain. All the hard work at practice, in the weight room, studying film — all that preparation and then some is needed to persevere through the sweat and fatigue that drain players in the final minutes of game.
Now, it’s second and seven with two minutes and thirty-five seconds left on the clock. The crowd is hushed except for a few side conversations here and there and the sound of children playing in a patch of dead grass beyond the end zone adjacent to the baseball field. The ball is snapped, the two lines battle, the receivers take off and the defensive backs follow in pursuit. The linebackers wait, trying to get a better read on the quarterback. The quarterback drops back, goes through his progression, and throws to the end zone. The ball seems to float while the crowd watches its trajectory in awe, almost as if the scene unfolded in slow motion. Time seems to catch up with itself when the announcer proclaims, “TOUCHDOWN, WHITTIER!”
The touchdown came on a seventeen-yard pass from quarterback Matthew Valenci to receiver Lucas Leppke. It was just the sixth touchdown pass of the year, and only the fifteenth touchdown overall. For a fleeting moment, the crowd rejoiced and everything was right with Whittier football. Then, reality kicked back in, literally, when Whittier failed to convert the point-after attempt. Following the missed kick, the scoreboard read 70–16 in Redlands favor. Whittier was about to lose its 21st consecutive football game.
Unless you are from the area, there is a strong possibility you may have never heard of Whittier College, a small liberal arts school located in the small town of Whittier, California, 13 miles south of Los Angeles. Whittier has 1700 students, split evenly between those living on the idyllic campus and those commuting. It competes in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division Three, meaning it offers no scholarships simply for athletics. The three most common questions asked of a Whittier student seem to be: Is that a two-year or a four-year? Isn’t that where Richard Nixon attended school? And, is it true your mascot is a Poet?
Despite that a lot of people have never heard of Whittier College, it has a storied history. Prominent Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier founded the school in 1887. It is also responsible for producing one of the most infamous presidents in United States history, Richard Milhous Nixon, who played football, albeit as a benchwarmer (he played basketball, too!). Whittier is also known as one of the most diverse college campuses in America.
Despite its struggles as of late, Whittier’s football team has one of the most acclaimed histories in Division Three. The program was started in 1907 and has been a member of the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) since 1915. Since then, the Poets have won 26 conference championships–22 coming before 1972. The football team also won eight consecutive SCIAC championships between 1957 and 1964. That glory, though, now seems like an illusion from a time long ago. The football team hasn’t won a championship since 1998, the last year it posted a winning record.
At the top of the treacherous Earlham Drive, which sometimes feels like a one-way street, past the blind turn that leads to the parking lot, tennis courts, and the Lilian-Slade Aquatics Center, is the gym. At the bottom of the gym, past the basketball court and down the hallway is the weight room. In the weight room is a shrine dedicated to George Allen, arguably the most famous person to come out of Whittier College not named Richard Nixon. What most students refer to as “The GAC” the George Allen Fitness Center is named after its decorated alumnus. George Allen is also enshrined in Canton, Ohio in the National Football Hall of Fame for his 12 seasons as a NFL head coach for the Washington Redskins and then the Los Angeles Rams, during which he never had a losing record. As a head coach at Whittier, Allen was able to compile a 31–22–5 record from 1951–1956, winning one conference championship. One of Allen’s assistant coaches, Jerry Burns, also went on to be a head in the NFL for the Minnesota Vikings.
Once Allen left for the NFL, Don Coryell entered the picture, coaching the Poets for three seasons from 1957–1959. He posted .796 winning percentage with a 22–5–1 record during his short tenure, winning three consecutive conference championships. Coryell is best known for designing a high-flying passing scheme known as “Air Coryell” while head coach of the San Diego chargers. He is credited with changing pro football’s offensive mindset from running- oriented to pass-first. Coryell is the only coach to have won more than 100 NCAA games and 100 NFL games as a head coach.
So what lead to the Poets fall from gridiron grace? The easy answer is a lack of talent. Though a relative of one current football player, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said it wasn’t an overall lack of talent but “by position.” He also spoke to what many associated with Whittier Athletics think is at the heart of the matter. “A lot of athletes can’t afford to come here and decide to go to other schools,” he said. “The kids struggle to pay tuition, so you don’t get a good selection [of players]…been a fan for years and they have always suffered like this.”
Whittier does have a small student body, with a high tuition that’s gone up each year of the past several years. However, a junior who plays defense [all players interviewed requested anonymity], thinks it more than a matter of talent. “They (the coaches) show their lack of experience and even though they claim to make adjustments, they don’t,” said the junior football player. “I don’t feel like anything was different.”
At the most basic level, it doesn’t appear that anything has changed since a new coach and staff came in this season. The record is still winless. A junior who plays offense did say he noticed one thing that was different. “I don’t feel like the coaches cared about us this year,” he said. “The old coaching staff cared last year.”
On Saturdays during the fall, less than 30 miles away you can find tailgates and tens of thousands of fans eating hotdogs, drinking beer, and cheering on either the University of Southern California Trojans or the UCLA Bruins. At Whittier College, though, on those same Saturdays, you’ll find the overwhelming majority ostudents anywhere other than Memorial Stadium. To the uninitiated, it can come as a shock seeing the vast empty bleachers and realizing the opposing team has more supporters in attendance than the Poets. At division one schools, athletes are usually revered on campus — students want to be them, or at least party with them. It’s different here. As a sophomore football player put it, “It doesn’t matter how many people are in the stands, but the way professors go about [making] jokes sometimes, it hurts.”
“There’s no other feeling I’d rather experience than playing football on Saturdays.”
It’s true, there are some professors who will ask their class if there are any football players, if no one responds, they will go ahead and make jokes about the team. Students often regard the team as a joke, too. Players will admit at times that the lack of respect is discouraging and fails to take into account how hard it is to manage time between school, practice, weight lifting and playing. One player said he puts in about “18 hours a week, not including your full Saturday” just to go out and suffer defeat after defeat week after week. Despite all that, one player said the team hasn’t given up. “I don’t know if we are going to win, but the team wants it,” he said. “The desire is there… I just don’t know sometimes.”
You play the game to win, of course, and it’s easy to love winners, but any division three athlete is playing first and foremost for the love of the game. In division three sport, there are no scholarships, no Heisman trophies, no television time, no glory and rarely is anyone going pro. You don’t have to love Whittier College football or even fake that you think they are almost “there” in terms of winning (its an undeiable fact that they have not won a game in two years) but they never give up and that is why you should respect them. They persevere, put in the practice and go out to the field to give their blood, sweat and sometimes their bones because they love the game. As one player put it, “There’s no other feeling I’d rather experience than playing football on Saturdays.”
Next time you’re on campus, maybe wish a player luck, talk to him, go catch a game. They haven’t given up. Maybe we shouldn’t either.
