Hofstra's Tiny 20: Big Men on Campus

THE NAMES Renzie Lamb, Gootch Provenzano and the inimitable Ciro Buttacavoli wonderfully fit the ``Happy Days'' tenor of the times. But Renzie, Gootch and Ciro did not hang out at the malt shop listening to Elvis on the jukebox. They played for the 1956 Hofstra football team known as the Tiny 20, a moniker that described 20 athletes who managed to win seven of 10 games that year against opponents bigger, stronger and certainly larger in numbers.

The Tiny 20 is easily the most revered team in the university's history. Its achievement seems to grow over the years. ``Yeah,'' offensive and defensive lineman Reid Wamser said, ``now there's about 65 people who claim they played on the Tiny 20.''

Actually 21 players had survived coach Howdy Myers' camp that fall, but it became boot camp for the 21st when Myers removed him for smoking a cigarette, an untoward indiscretion in that place and time. ``We did what Howdy told us to do,'' Lamb said. Lou Di Blasi, a two-way back, recalled only about 30 players tried out and many of them tired out under Myers, who employed the running game via wind sprints and laps around the field. ``The defining moment for me was in camp even before the season started,'' Buttacavoli said. ``People were bailing out in the middle of the night, disappearing and, when we finally broke camp, we looked around and there weren't that many people.'' At the end of the practice day players were exhausted and grimy. Grease was the word.

The survivors were the fittest athletes in the school. ``We had 20 guys who wanted to do one thing -- 'play football,''' Di Blasi said. ``The Tiny 20 struck together.'' They had to, the only bench they had was wood. ``You would play every down of every series,'' Di Blasi recalled. ``Every guy knew three or four positions; you knew two offensive, two defensive. We'd switch around if someone got really tired.''

They weren't so much a football team as they were a platoon, trying to survive intact from one game to the next against opponents with 50, 60 even 70 players. ``Somebody said we should have been Johnson&Johnson representatives for all the tape and bandages we used,'' Buttacavoli, an offensive and defensive lineman, said. Back then a concussion was merely a nagging injury. Offensive and defensive lineman Pat Killikelly had two that season. ``I was Killer's roommate,'' offensive and defensive back Frank Moretti said, ``and later at night after a game he'd say to me, `How'd we do today?' He'd have no memory of what happened that day.''

Killikelly was the oft-injured offensive and defensive lineman who could not be kept out of the lineup. ``I got a concussion in training camp,'' he said. ``Then I got a separated shoulder, then I got kicked in the back of the head.''

``Killer was in the whirlpool so much that we put a sailor's hat on him,'' Lamb said.

Today, the 62-year-old Killikelly, a retired probation officer, is a marathon runner. ``Every time I opened my mouth Howdy said `Run,' and I never stopped,'' Killikelly said.

The 1956 season started with consecutive victories against Wilkes and St. Lawrence. The Wilkes score was 40-0. ``Al Paul, a line coach, was out scouting and he called Howdy for the score,'' Lamb said. ``Howdy said the score was 40 to nothing and Al said, `How are the guys taking it?' He assumed we had the nothing.''

With a 2-0 record, the Tiny 20 felt like the Roaring 20 but injuries soon reduced the roster to 13 players, two over the absolute minimum, heading into the Maryland State game. ``Howdy scheduled them because nobody would play them, they were that good,'' Lamb said. The Flying Dutchmen quickly found out how good. ``It's the first quarter and I'm on offense,'' Lamb said. ``I look up and Sherman Plunkett is there and he is so big.''

Maryland State also had Johnny Sample, who later would join Plunkett on the Jets. Hofstra lost, 28-0, but the defeat did not short-circuit the season. The Dutchmen came back the following week to beat Bridgeport, 44-7, and later Cortland, 13-7, on a thrilling play in the final two minutes as George Wiemer caught a pass from Larry Magilligan. ``George did not run down the sideline so much as he was weaving back and fourth,'' Magilligan said. ``The play seemed to last forever.''

Throughout the season, Myers remained stoic, never alluding to the team's obvious disadvantage in numbers. ``Most of us loved him,'' Di Blasi said.

After the season, Myers presented each player with jackets inscribed Tiny 20. The team views the gesture as an unprecedented display of emotion from its coach. ``We all wore them every day on campus and that singled us out from everybody else. I still have that jacket. I'll never part with it,'' Moretti said.

Interestingly, the Tiny 20 did not become heralded until years later, after college football rosters expanded to nearly 100 players and others pointed out just how amazing it was to prevail with only 20. It was then that a collective light went on. ``You shouldn't be playing with that many people on a team, or that few,'' Wiemer said. Soon, they all realized how special their season, and each other, had become.

Time has reduced the roster to 16 survivors. James Condon, the beloved captain, passed away in 1997. Di Blasi traveled from his home in Coram to a hospital in Annapolis to visit Condon. ``I went in his room and he was breathing very heavily, very heavily,'' Di Blasi said. ``He took my hand and said `Louie, you're the captain now.' And then he went into a coma.''

Di Blasi has become the historian of the team, staying in contact with his teammates as he would family. He is trying to locate three players with unknown addresses - Richard Euler, Charles Pease and Fred Wine -- so he can bring all the survivors together for a 50th reunion in 2006.

What was the ingredient that made the Tiny 20 successful? Determination. ``We didn't want to let each other down,'' Lamb said. ``That was the essence of the Tiny 20.''

Added Di Blasi, ``Nothing just happens. We made it happen. We wouldn't let ourselves fail, we made ourselves win.''

And for that reason the Tiny 20 remains Hofstra's football giants.