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The game brought glamour to the sons of working-class families, many from Massachusetts, who had headed north to play for New Hampshire. But football could be a tough ticket to a college education. Scholarships for college athletes, which came into vogue after World War II, were few and far between at UNH. Instead, recalls MacDonald, "we washed windows, cleaned dorms, or worked in the dining halls for 29 cents an hour."

The games were tougher back then, as well. In a game against Connecticut, MacDonald took one on the schnoz courtesy of a menacing behemoth named Walt Dropo. "I took the ball and ran toward the line. He didn't even try to tackle me," recalls MacDonald. "He just slugged me." The 6-foot, 5-inch Dropo, by the way, went on to become a slugger of a different stripe with the Boston Red Sox. And MacDonald? He graduated with degrees in sociology and psychology and went on to succeed as an estate and trust lawyer with the prestigious Boston firm of Sherburne, Powers, and Needham.

If sports offer metaphors for life, they also offer lessons for life, and no one understood the value of hard work better than Clarence "Chief" Boston, who coached from 1949 to 1964*. Nearly 60 years after playing on Boston's 1950 UNH football team, which went untied and undefeated, Dick Dewing '53, still rugged and fit after a life in the military, recalls Boston's practice regimen as though it happened yesterday.

"Some of us had a nickname for the patch of grass out behind Cowell Stadium. We called it 'Pig Alley' on account of how muddy it got," says Dewing with a laugh. "'Death Valley' was another nickname." One year Boston bought some inexpensive lights so the team could practice at night. When the lights came on, it seemed the practices would never end. "Chief would always think that one more drill would spell the margin of victory," says Dewing. Boston may have had a point: that year, the team was undefeated. (There have been four undefeated football teams: 1942, 6-0; 1947, 8-0, and a trip to the Glass Bowl; 1950, 8-0; and 1962, 7-0-1.)

When a former Army private named Ed Fish '58 showed up on campus in 1953, the Harvard-educated Boston made him take an aptitude test. To his own surprise, Fish, who claims to have been a lifelong "D" student, did quite well. He went on to study business and become a two-sport athlete. As soon as football ended in the fall, he laced up his skates to play hockey. In between practices and games, he applied himself well enough in the classroom to graduate magna cum laude in 1958. "Chief taught me that sports and academics are the same," says Fish. "The key to success in both is motivation." The former football player went on to a highly successful career in real estate construction, development and management, and today he is also a philanthropist, most recently having given UNH an artificial playing turf for the stadium.

Many athletes aspire to a career in the pros, and a few UNH grads have been able to parlay their hard work in the Pig Alley of their own era—be it a patch of grass or a room full of sophisticated equipment—into a career in professional football. Bill Bowes—who came to UNH in 1966 as an offensive line coach, became the youngest head football coach in UNH history in 1972 and led the team until 1999—produced more professional players than any other UNH coach. Gifted athletes such as Bruce Huther '76, Dave Rozmek '76, Ilia Jarostchuk '87 and Jerry Azuma '99 all went to the big show after playing for Bowes. Part of the credit for their success goes to good scouting. Just like more recent stars such as Santos and Toman, David Ball '06 and Corey Graham '07, these players were under-recruited as high school players, only to achieve stardom in Durham.

Mark Etro '81 played with current coach Sean McDonnell on the great Bowes teams of the mid-'70s. They were conference champs in 1975 and 1976, and in 1977 were ranked tops in the country for a period of time. Today, Etro owns a construction company in Eliot, Maine, and coaches his son's youth football team. But he and teammates Bill Wharff '80, Bill Burnham '78 and Dave Kahn '76 are among the recent teams' greatest fans. And recent teams have been giving him plenty of the "unexpected joy" he craves. "I made the trip with the team to Georgia Southern four years ago, when nobody gave us a chance against them," says Etro. "By halftime, we were losing and their fans were brutal. Then our kids came back. I was in tears."

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