That was the unflattering nickname the Miami players gave to Cortez Kennedy during his first August preseason camp with the Hurricanes.

• A transfer from Northwest Mississippi JC, the 319 lb DL was so out of shape he couldn't compete for more than two downs without needing a rest in the August heat of south Florida in 1988.
• Head Coach Jimmy Johnson put Cortez on the scout team and ordered him to lose 19 pounds. "He'd kill you for two plays, then take the next 20 off," said Randy Shannon, a senior that season (and later the head coach of the 'Canes).
• Kennedy played sparingly in 1988, which turned out to be Johnson's last with the Hurricanes. Jimmy left to take the head coaching job for the Dallas Cowboys.

The new coach, Dennis Erickson, thought about redshirting Kennedy for 1989. But that didn't happen because of the intervention of two other Hurricanes.

• Shannon saw the potential in Kennedy and resolved to mold him into a force that could anchor the D-line. So in the second half of his senior year, Shannon moved in with Cortez.
• Randy made his charge get up at dawn and run three miles. At noon, Cortez lifted weights. At 5:30, more running.
• Shannon kept him on a low-fat diet of subs and salads. He also wouldn't allow Cortez to eat after 7 pm. Randy even slept on the sofa to make sure Kennedy didn't raid the fridge during the night. "I put a padlock on the fridge, and I took away his [car] keys so he couldn't leave. The only way he could go out was if I went with him."

In June, when Shannon left for the Cowboys training camp, he turned Cortez over to Russell Maryland, a junior DT nicknamed "The Conscience."

• Russell got his nickname because he nagged teammates about their grades and practice habits.
• Maryland had himself been the "fat kid from Chicago" who weighed 330 lb as a high school senior.
• Blessed with an excellent work ethic both in the classroom and on the field, Russell dropped 30 pounds when he arrived at UM to get in shape to play.
• Russell told Cortez, "If I could lose 30 pounds, so can you."

Kennedy also profited from the tutelage of a 'Cane graduate, Jerome Brown, who played DT for the Philadelphia Eagles. Brown, like many of the Hurricane pros, returned to south Florida to work out with the 'Canes in the spring and summer.

• In the spring of '89, when Shannon was working with Kennedy, Brown brust into the UM weight room and yelled, "Where's the kid who's supposed to be like me?" Introduced to Kennedy, Brown looked him over and said, "You come with me."
• Jerome taught Cortez how to read an O lineman based on his body lean, how to use his hands better, and how to navigate a double team.
• The tutelage helped Cortez lead the Hurricane linemen with 92 tackles and 7.5 sacks during the '89 season.
• Kennedy made All-American while helping lead Miami to another national championship.

Brown and Kennedy became so close that Jerome's mother referred to Tez as Jerome's twin brother.

• Kennedy bought the same model car that Brown did. (One wonders where Kennedy got the money.)
• When Tez sacked the QB, he did a dance patterned after Jerome's frolic.
• Every Monday night during the season, they compared their weekend performances by phone.

The story has a tragic ending.

• On June 25, 1992, Cortez, now a member of the Seattle Seahawks after they selected him #3 in the 1990 draft, planned to fly to Miami the next day to take a cruise with Brown.
• However, Kennedy received the horrifying news that Jerome had lost control of his Corvette and smashed into a power pole, killing Brown's 12-year-old nephew as well as the driver.

Kennedy wore number 99 for the remainder of his 11-year NFL career to honor his mentor.

• In 1992, he was named NFL Defensive Player of the Year.
• In February, 2010, Kennedy was one of 17 finalists for the NFL Hall of Fame.
• Although he wasn't selected, his story was recounted to serve as an inspiration to players trying to succeed against the odds in any sport. As Jorge Milian wrote in The Palm Beach Post, "By the end of his junior season at Miami, the only Hall of Fame that Cortez Kennedy seemed destined to make was for eating."

Howard Griffith is the only college player to score eight TDs in one game.

• He did it for Illinois on September 22, 1990, against Southern Illinois.
• Griffith scored on runs of 5, 51, 7, 41, 5, 18, 5, and 3 yards in a 56-21 victory.
• For the game, he totaled 201 yards on 28 carries.
• He broke the record of five TDs in a game by the hallowed Red Grange in 1924.

Griffith later played in the NFL.

• After two seasons with the Los Angeles Rams, he spent two seasons with the Carolina Panthers.
• Then he played five seasons for the Broncos, primarily as a blocker for Terrell Davis. He won two Super Bowl rings in Denver.
• He retired from the NFL in 2002 because of a neck injury and is now a studio commentator for the Big Ten network.

Reference: Touchdown: Great Moments and Dubious Achievements in Football History, John S. Snyder

Bill Snyder is credited by many observers with orchestrating the greatest turnaround of a college football program in history.

• When he was hired at Kansas State following the 1988 season, the Wildcats possessed one of the most dismal histories in the game: 510 losses and only 299 wins in 93 years of football.
• The school had been to only one bowl game, the 1982 Independence Bowl (which they lost to Wisconsin 14-3).
• They had won only one conference title in 1934 when the Big Eight was still the Big Six.

In this 17 years at KSU until his retirement after the 2005 season, Snyder led the Wildcats to eleven consecutive bowl games (1993-2003), winning six of them.

• The school won the 2003 Big 12 championship (when they clobbered #1 Oklahoma 35-7 in the title game) and won or shared four Big 12 North titles after the league expanded in 1996.
• His 1998 team went undefeated in the regular season to gain its first ever #1 ranking and earn him numerous Coach of the Year awards.

One of Snyder's legacies at K-State is the list of future head coaches he mentored as his assistants:

• Phil Bennett (former SMU coach)
• Bret Bielema (Wisconsin)
• Jim Leavitt (ex- South Florida)
• Mark Mangino (ex-Kansas)
• Bob Stoops (Oklahoma)
• Mike Stoops (Arizona)
• Dan McCarney (ex-Iowa State).

The day he announced his retirement, KSU renamed its stadium Bill Snyder Family Football Stadium. Former Oklahoma and Dallas Cowboys coach Barry Switzer expressed the esteem of his fellow coaches when he said: "Bill Snyder isn't the coach of the year, and he isn't the coach of the decade. He's the coach of the century."

When KSU's program slid downard under Bill's successor, the school asked him to return to the sidelines for the 2010 season.

September 15, 1940: Opening game of the NFL season.

• The Chicago Cardinals "hosted" the Detroit Lions in a game played at War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo because of small crowds in the Windy City.
• The Cardinals hoped that the attraction of Lions triple-threat TB Byron "Whizzer" White (All-American from Colorado and future Supreme Court Justice) would draw a good crowd.

Unfortunately, the game was played in a strong thunderstorm.

• According to the Associated Press, the game "had more the flavor of water polo."
• The two teams combined for only 30 yards of offense (14 for the Cardinals and 16 for the Lions). This is the lowest in NFL history by 106 yards.
• Not surprisingly, the game ended in a 0-0 tie. The Lions lost eight fumbles.

This was not the first regular season NFL game in Buffalo. The Cardinals had played the Packers there in 1938, 12 days after the Pittsburgh Pirates (with rookie star Whizzer White) played the Philadelphia Eagles in the same city.

The players unaffectionately referred to War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo as "The Rockpile."

• The stadium was built in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), one of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal agencies.
• The tunnels leading to the field were too close to the fans. Len Dawson of the Kansas City Chiefs recalls: "If they introduced the offense, you never walked onto the field during the intros because it was too dangerous. You would wonder, what would they throw at you? They threw stuff at their own players, so you knew they were going to throw stuff at you."
• Returning to the locker room at halftime and after the game posed problems as well. Dawson: "You had to walk up a ramp ... just to get to the stairs. Then you had to walk up a couple flights to get to the locker room. I wouldn't call it a locker room, not by today's standards. It had maybe two commodes, and a couple of showerheads might work."
• The only consolation for the visiting team was that the facilities for the Bills weren't much better. Buffalo S George Saimes: "We didn't have enough chairs to go around. Guys would sit on milk cartons sometimes when we ran out of chairs doing our game plan."

The field conditions weren't the greatest either.

• Dawson: "We played the championship game there in 1966, and that field had three different conditions: in some spots, not too bad. Or other spots where the sun never got to the field and it was frozen. Or one part was very sloppy where the sun hit the field."
• Ed Rutkowski, who played for Buffalo (1963-68): "The lights weren't the best. I used to return punts. I think it was Jerrel Wilson from the Kansas City Chiefs, he would punt the ball so high, it would go above the lights. So you'd see the ball, and then you wouldn't see it, and then you'd see it coming back down."
• "It was basically a baseball stadium converted to a football field," continues Rutkowski. "You got down on one end zone, and you were on a dirt infield. I played my last year as the Bills' QB, and I always said I couldn't play on artificial turf because there would be no places to draw plays in the dirt."
• "And they always had the pitcher's mound. They never really leveled it off. They had it on a rise for a quarter foot to almost a half foot." The Bills used that peculiarity to their advantage. "We used a certain pattern down there because if you were a defensive back and you were backpedaling and you hit that pitcher's mound, 9 times out of 10 you'd fall down."

Then there was the neighborhood.

• Gil Santos, longtime broadcaster for the Patriots, recalls waiting outside the stadium after a game to board the buses to the airport.
• "All of a sudden, here comes three police cars zooming up the street, and they stop in front of a house which is right where we were standing next to the buses. We're watching this, and the police go charging up the stairs. A couple of shots ring out from inside the house. Well, we tear around to the other side of the bus, and we're hiding as these shots are being fired. We hear a big commotion, and we look around the buses, and here come the police, hauling this guy out. ... He had handcuffs on behind his back, and the police are dragging him out by his feet."

Broadcasting or just watching a game at War Memorial was a challenge.

• Santos: "The stadium was built with girders, and you had to keep looking around the girders to see where the ball was and where the players were."
• Many of the spectators had a similar problem. Billy Shaw, all-star G for the Bills: "If you tried to sit underneath the roof, then you were going to be behind a pole." Shaw knew about the problem because the players' wives were stuck behind poles and couldn't see. Shaw was the first player elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame who had played his entire career in the AFL.

The Bills used the stadium through the 1972 season, which was three years after the NFL-AFL merger.