Stargel, O'Neil . . . From Pier, Pawnshop

When number 21 sets up behind the Crimson line today, he will be facing more than the Princeton football team. Gil O'Neil has the problem of directing his team to victory or facing a rather dull, unprofitable summer.

It all began last summer when the 21-year-old quarterback was employed as a loader on the Boston piers. He loaded and unloaded fishing boats as they came in his duties taking him into a refrigerator where it was often 40 below zero. Considering the weather, that facet of the job wasn't bad, but the ribbing he took from his fellow workers was.

He was constantly referred to as the "collitch kid" and the well-read foreman began to rib O'Neil for his part in Crimson football fortunes. The boss finally decided that gridiron reversal contributed to making O'Neil a poor worker, so he made a threat.

"If you want a job next summer." he said. "Harvard has got to win four games next fall. And I'll be watching the Sunday papers."

So with just three games to go, O'Neil finds himself with a pair of victories and a minimum of time. Although all forecasters are inclined to doubt it, the junior-play caller figures to make it a trio this afternoon.

As the quarterback and play caller. O'Neil is in effect the "brains" of the team. He has the option of calling about 40 plays, not including an endless variety of variations. Besides calling plays in the huddle he barks signals from scrimmage, which belies his quiet, soft-spoken manner.

Today, besides wanting to win for the sake of winning, O'Neil has to think in terms of next summer. For all the obvious nasty aspects to a job on a fish pier in the summer, it apparently has its advantages for a scholarship student.

O'Neil, the passer, punter, and play-caller, today takes on the added job of spurring the team to victory--to save a job.

The Stadium hardly resembles a pawn shop, but there is a connection in the mind of tackle Bob Stargel. Once the senior was faced with the choice of being a football player or a pawn broker, and football won out.

As a youth in Cincinnati, Stargel was working after school as a stock boy in a pawn shop and doing quite well. But in the fall of his sophomore year, he was faced with the choice of giving up his pawn shop job to play football or foregoing the gridiron.

Stargel's mother and brother stepped in at this point to help him make up his mind. They persuaded the husky youth that football was more in his line than pawn shopping, and would, in the long run, do him more good. He decided to try for the Walnut Hills high school varsity, and made it with ease. For three years, he divided his time between tackle, end, fullback and tailback. The concluded his scholastic football career in the annual North-South all-star high school football game.

Stargel's persuasive brother, Willard, a pretty fair football player, himself, once again shares top honors for influencing Bob this time in bringing him to Harvard. Willard, after a fine career at end for Walnut Hills, decided to go to the local college, the University of Cincinnati. He made the U. of C. team easily, but rode the bench several times a season when the Bearcats would play Southern schools. Because Southern schools insisted that he could not play, and Cincinnati acquiesced. Willard often wondered whether he had made the right college choice.

Bob, when he was finishing up high school, was also U. of C. bound, but there Willard stepped in and told his brother to look around some more. Bod did and when he chanced to hear former football coach Art Valpey speak, he began to think in terms of New England.

Now Bob is here, an offensive tackle on the football team and a junior majoring in Social Relations. Originally, Stargel had intended to be a doctor, but now he hopes he's headed for the Business School.

At Dillon Field House, Stargel is known to all his fellow players and coaches as "Pops." The genealogy of the nickname is a long story, but Stargel admits that it stems from his high school days and was introduced locally by Dick Heidtmann, former Crimson guard.

For details, see Stargel.

These two profiles are the first in a series the CRIMSON plans to run on varsity athletes and their coaches. They will try to cover those men who are most outstanding in their sport.