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with my own troubles.
    It was as though a runaway Roto-Rooter had gone berserk in my gut. Bits of chewed salami spurted from my ears. Never before, or since, had I had such a horrendous experience.
    “Ooohh, I’m gonna die …” Goldberg moaned.
    I envied him, since it was obvious that I had already passed into the Great Beyond and was paying for my sins. Was I in hell? Was Satan himself squeezing me dry like a human washrag?
    What seemed hours later I tottered weakly out into the hallway, a wraith of my former self. The crowd had doubled in front of my room. They were still at it!
    I edged through the mob, my body sore and aching. Umbaugh still stood as he had all evening. Big Al was casually leaning against the concrete wall next to the casement. They were eyeball to eyeball. It was the age-old confrontation; mano a mano, High Noon. The Intellectual, the Man of Ideas versus the Beast.
    “Round twelve,” Umbaugh barked. Spectators murmured. There was a scattered burst of applause. Umbaugh, with the maddening air of the intellectual who firmly believes that he is one of the very few who holds the key to the mystery of the Universe, downed his deadly bit of chocolate.
    The greatest defensive tackle the Big Ten had yet produced followed suit, a sneer creasing his naugahyde features.
    “You dumb fuckers never learn,” he muttered.
    A voice in the crowd murmured, “That’s just the way he looked before he nailed Snake Hips Leroy Johnson in the Ohio game. Oh, God, I can’t watch.”
    Umbaugh casually waved a limp-wristed salute to his few supporters, who were mainly from the staff of
The Literary Quarterly
and
The Barbaric Yawp
, the campus poetry rag.
    “Courage, Schuyler,” one of them piped.
    Another, a short wartish person in a Samoan toga, lisped:
    “It’s Ape Man Sweeney versus Daedalus.”
    Umbaugh turned and withered him with a glance. “I presume you mean Icarus, you oaf. However, the thought was well meant.”
    The Wart scrunched deeper into his toga, his acne reddening. Old 76’s face darkened.
    “Who the hell does Ape Man Sweeney play for? Never heard of him.”
    Umbaugh smiled benignly. “I never heard of him either, noble foe. Shall we continue?”
    I had edged my way through the crowd and back into my room and was now busily mopping up the gushing perspiration that ran into my eyes and dripped off my nose. Something told me that I would soon be making another trip down the hall.
    Umbaugh, noticing me at last, acknowledged my presence.
    “You fought gamely and well. Feel no shame.”
    “Thanks.”
    “Round thirteen.”
    In silence, the gladiators put away their deadly potions. Somehow the crowd sensed that we had reached the turning point. Tension was so thick that it hung like a fine blue haze in the room. The rain had finally ceased and the first faint silver fingers of dawn had touched the ancient oaks of the Quad. Saturday was beginning to happen, the biggest Saturday of the season, in fact. We were playing Michigan today for the Big Ten championship, the winner, of course, to go to the Rose Bowl.
    Umbaugh leaned forward, his washed-out gray eyes peering unblinkingly into Big Al’s bbs. He whispered, barely audible to any outside the room, drawing out the syllables of his words to underline their import.
    “Rounnnnd … [long pregnant pause] four … teee …”
    Before he could complete his announcement, Big Al stiffened. An inchoate bellow of animal intensity shook the concrete walls.
    “UUUUUOOOOOONNNNNKKKKKK!”
    He lurched forward and then began to topple slowly, like a great redwood felled in the forest. Umbaugh, moving backward, with snakelike agility, his voice lashing out, warned:
    “Move back. This could be dangerous.”
    With a muffled thud that rocked our immense dormitory building, Big Al hit the floor, his red-and-white jersey darkened with sweat. The “6” of his famous number curled weakly under his bushy armpit.
    Umbaugh casually hoisted up his drooping shorts as