Cutting football down to size

ANNAPOLIS — The first thing one notices is the size of the players. Or, rather, the lack thereof.

This looks like any other practice session for any other college football team — except that everyone appears to be so, well, normal in size.

There are no offensive linemen with bellies the size of three pumpkins drooping over their uniform pants. There are no sculpted, 250-pound linebackers, no 225-pound fullbacks with the physique of a 6-foot fireplug.

The reason for the fat-free football isn’t lousy recruiting.

It’s all by design in the Collegiate Sprint Football League, a league meant to give guys the size of, say, a Donald Rumsfeld — in his physical prime, of course — a place to play.

In this league for lightweights, players still don pads and uniforms, Army still plays Navy and — to some, at least — the games still matter. The difference is that the players can weigh a maximum of 165 pounds.

“It’s like college football, but it’s not,” said K.C. Dalton, a 5-foot 10-inch, 165-pound offensive tackle at Navy. “It’s its own entity. It’s not as big as Florida and Florida State. But to us, it’s as big as you can get.”

This alternate universe of college football was founded in 1934 as the Eastern 150-pound Football League by University of Pennsylvania President Thomas Sovereign Gates, who wanted to assure smaller students a chance to compete. The weight limit has risen gradually — the latest jump was from 159 pounds to 165 in 1996 — but the spirit remains the same.

The lightweight league has produced some heavyweight alums, including Jimmy Carter (Navy, 1946), Mr. Rumsfeld (Princeton, 1954) and George Allen, who began his coaching career in 1947 as an assistant on the now-disbanded Michigan 150-pound team and later became coach of the Washington Redskins.

“They come here for academics,” said Bill Wagner, in his 34th season of coaching the Penn Quakers. “The icing on the cake is if you are 165 pounds two days before a game, you can play a varsity sport that has been around since before World War II.”

The original Eastern 150-pound Football League had seven members but now is down to five: founding members Penn, Princeton and Cornell, plus Army and Navy. The league changed its name in 1996, including the word “sprint” to emphasize speed over size. It has run continuously, though mostly in obscurity, for 70 years except for three seasons during World War II.

“I didn’t even know it existed,” said Midshipmen coach Jerome Rizzo, a Marine Corps major who thought he was being kidded when he was asked to coach Navy before last season. “Now that I have seen it, I think it’s great. Kids are getting the chance to play football that don’t have the size to play anywhere else.”

The Mids are the fat cats of the weight-watchers division. The two-time defending CSFL champions posted a 7-0 record last season and outscored their opponents 297-41. Navy opened this season with a 48-13 rout of Johns Hopkins’ junior varsity, a traditional team that includes linemen who weigh more than 275 pounds.

The crowd at intimate Rip Miller Field for the Hopkins game Sunday was typical for the CSFL — about 400 people, mostly family and friends with a few infants in strollers. Uniformed Midshipmen sat in one section, and about a dozen would run out and do push-ups beyond an end zone each time the academy scored.

“We don’t play in front of 35,000 each week,” said quarterback Chris Ashinhurst, a senior who attended North Stafford (Va.) High School. “Our away games, we are lucky if 20 people show up on our side. We really appreciate when we do get crowds. But we don’t play any different if we have 2,000 people here or 10 people here.”

Ashinhurst is a typical player. Generously listed at 5-foot 10-inches, he was overlooked by recruiters for major programs. He came to Navy to play baseball and starts at second base. Ashinhurst decided to play Sprint football only after hearing that the team was looking for a quarterback.

“After high school, I figured I would never play another snap of football in my life,” said Ashinhurst, who dropped 30 pounds to become eligible. “I thought Sprint was just like intramural. After the first practice, I was like, ’This is pretty intense stuff.’ We have to cut weight, run like a track team and hit like a football team.”

Ashinhurst is the CSFL version of Brett Favre. The two-time league MVP is a threat running the option and has a deft midrange passing touch. He threw for 13 touchdowns with five interceptions last season and posted a whopping 137.0 passing efficiency rating.

“He could play in Division I-AA or maybe Division I,” said Rizzo, who was an assistant to Detroit Lions coach Steve Mariucci at University of California in 1990.

John Collins, on the other hand, is thrilled simply to be playing. Collins is a 5-foot 7-inch middle linebacker who on Sunday was the Mids’ most dominant defender.

“Honestly, I think I probably would have left the academy after my sophomore year if it wasn’t for this team,” said Collins, a senior from Toledo, Ohio. “It’s the reason I get up in the morning. These are my brothers. It’s the hardest and most fulfilling thing I have ever been a part of. You do it for the love of each other and the love of the game.”

For many, the toughest part of the game is making weight.

Players must weigh no more than 165 pounds two days before a game. Some go on strict diets and wear heavy clothing to shed pounds. Collins, who weighs about 180 in the off-season, eats several small “meals” — a health bar and juice, for example — to make weight. Others exist on celery and carrots.

Players can bulk up after making weight, and they often play games at about 170 pounds.

While the players worry about getting too big, the league worries about getting too small.

Rutgers disbanded its program in 1989, 13 years after Columbia cut the sport for financial reasons. The five-team league has been hurt by Title IX, which mandates equity between the sexes. Many schools have cut men’s sports to comply. That is a concern for schools that might consider adding Sprint.

The CSFL is hoping to attract new programs, and it launched its Web site, sprintfootball.com, this week in an effort to raise its profile.

“This sport has survived a lot,” said commissioner Michael Cross, who hopes to add another male-heavy institution like the Coast Guard Academy or the Merchant Marine Academy to avoid Title IX difficulties. “We are survivors.”

The 70th year of the sport is evidence of that.

The big boys at the Alabamas and Michigans of college football hog all the glory on fall Saturdays across the country. But the lightweight guys don’t mind.

“It’s a fantastic way to keep playing when you are not a huge guy,” said Penn fullback Adam Schlosser, a junior from Walter Johnson High in Bethesda. “You play because you love playing football. I feel very lucky to still be playing.”

In this small world that exists in the enormous shadow of big-time college football, just maybe the little guys are getting the better part of the coin toss.