Goal-Post Menders Have Weekly Job

Students will publicly destroy more than $70 worth of University property tomorrow afternoon--the goal posts at Soldiers Field.

Years ago, when a set of new goal posts cost about $2, happy students endangered their purses and their health perhaps two or three times each fall to grapple for the timber trophies. Since then both the cost and the mortality rate of the posts have risen to the absurd, and the job of replacing them has become a near-weekly routine.

Victory against a strong Ivy League opponent -- Dartmouth, Princeton, or Yale--was for years the signal for destruction to begin. The goal posts went first. Furniture, glassware, and Cambridge municipal property usually followed later in the wake of the triumphant undergraduate.

But times have changed. Tighter discipline around the Square has cut down the damages formerly incurred by local bars and restaurants. The ritual of pulling down the posts has, instead, become standard procedure at all games, win or lose.

Another Dollar

On Monday morning the splintered trophies are propped on a score of House mantlepieces, or have already found their way to Smith, Vassar, or Wellesley in overnight bags. And a small man, red-faced, with steel-grey hair, paces Soldiers Field and checks the damage.

This man is Jimmy Sugrue, HAA field foreman since 1937, in charge of getting new goal posts in place before the next weekend's game. For his crew it is a good half day's job. For the HAA it is now a $75 expense.

Sugrue's attitude toward the destruction of the posts is fatalistic, although he is no proponent of the custom. "We try to have a supply of posts made up at the beginning of the season. We hope we won't need 'em," he says.

Members of Sugrue's gang make up the posts in University shops. They are made of fir four-by-fours with a one-by-six cross-piece, and are painted with "outside white" house paint. Building a set of posts for both ends of the field takes a single man about a day. It takes a crew of four to raise them.

Pickpocket's Paradise

The hazard's involved in goal post grappling are considerable from the student's point of view. The avid fan may finally crawl out of the fray tomorrow proudly displaying a toothpick-like object, only to discover that his wallet full of cash, dance tickets, and vital memorabilia has been filched.

Others, more or less lucky, may leave the field feet-first with their souvenir of the game firmly imbedded in their scalp. Fir though they be, falling goal post timbers have put more than one rejoicing scholar out of the weekend picture.

While digging for the new posts after games, Sugrue has unearthed buttons, pins, broken eye glasses, and even occasional coins. The majority of the valuable loot-dropped in the scuffles is picked up by Cambridge street arabs who scavenge the field around the end zones after the Saturday afternoon games.

"Why Start a Riot?"

During the third quarter of last year's Dartmouth game, a lone and blissful drunk wobbled from the stands and threw his arms around the north goal post. While he and the post swayed in unison, Boston police swung into action. A Keystone Cops chase with a Sonnet style pile-up at the finish followed, and as the drunk was led from the field it was touch and go as to whether he or the police looked sillier.

HAA officials excuse the ineffectuality of the police in protecting the goal posts. "If we told them to draw their clubs and start swinging it would be a mess . . . It would take 200 of them to prevent it . . . Why start a riot?"

Not So Yale

For Yalies the goal post scramble is a thing of the past. The Yale Bowl was equipped with steel posts several years ago, removing a major temptation for New Haven pickpockets, drunks, and scavengers.

The University has considered the possibility of setting up steel posts in Soldiers Feld, but so far the move has been delayed because of the large initial cost. But with a present loss of $75 at almost every game, permanent goal posts would pay for themselves quickly.