Fight Song

Collin Klein may play quarterback for Kansas State, but on Friday he attended Johnny U. In town to receive the 2012 Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award, Klein spent part of the day viewing Unitas' memorabilia at the Sports Legends Museum, kibitzing with John Unitas Jr. and several old Colts, and visiting the scupture of the late Hall of Fame quarterback outside M&T Bank Stadium, where he reverently touched the toe of the 13-foot statue. "This is amazing. He [Unitas] was so special," said Klein, the 26 t h recipient of the award and a rare unanimous choice of the six-member selection committee.

HOW MANY generations of college football fans in this state got cheated out of the possibility of a game like this? For that matter, how much bigger could college football be in this state had they not been cheated out of the possibility of a game like this? And last but not least - can anybody justify cheating future fans out of the possibility of a game like this? The quick answers for these questions, in the aftermath of a contest at M&T Bank Stadium that won't be forgotten anytime soon, are as follows: four decades' worth; way bigger than it is now; and nobody.

It's hard to imagine a 6-foot-8, 255-pound athlete disappearing. But for almost three long years, that's what happened to Wayne Dorsey, a former Southwestern football and basketball star. While former Amateur Athletic Union basketball teammates Malcolm Delaney (Virginia Tech) and Sean Mosley (Maryland) found stardom in college, Dorsey's journey from West Baltimore took him to New York for a season of prep school football and to Mississippi for two years of junior college. "The road that he took was just so long and so frustrating for him," said Vernon Joines, Dorsey's football coach at Southwestern.

Seattle -- Seasonal sounds -- brittle leaves crackling underfoot, migrating birds calling overhead -- will soon surround us. None is more stirring than the strange music that issues from American campuses as football crowds serenade themselves with songs expressing eternal devotion to alma mater and a desire to eviscerate this Saturday's opponent.However, here at the University of Washington, the music of autumnal mayhem is peculiar in one particular. Its song should be sung at the other edge of the continent, as the anthem of the federal bureaucracy.

Baltimore Ravens, let's go And put that ball across the line So fly with talons spread wide Go in and strike with Ravens pride Fight! Fight! Fight! Ravens dark wings take to flight Dive in and show them your might For Baltimore and Maryland You will fly on to victory

John Miliauskas had watched so much change at Towson University that he finally came to a conclusion about the university band's most-played piece. "It was OK," the band director said of Towson's fight song, played at football games and student rallies. "But we wanted to make it something extra special." With that in mind, Towson is holding a contest for new fight song lyrics. The competition - open to students, alumni, faculty and donors - will run through July 17. The winner will receive $500.

Throughout her life, Lucy Haw loved the Colts. And tomorrow, when she's laid to rest, the Colts Marching Band fight song will be playing."I think she'd really like that," said her son John Haw, of Cary, N.C. The family hopes to have the song, the rallying cry for Colts fans for decades, played at the graveside service by members of the Baltimore Ravens Marching Band.Mrs. Haw, whose prized possession was a signed copy of Johnny Unitas' autobiography "Pro Quarterback," died of a brain tumor Friday at Ridgeway Manor Nursing Home in Catonsville.

When the high school varsity football season opens Sept. 9, you can bet the marching bands, color guard units and cheerleaders will be ready. That's because, like the players, they've been practicing. At Atholton, where Lee Stevens begins his 20th year as director of bands, the marching band and 17-member color guard unit have been rehearsing together since Aug. 15. Last week they were practicing seven hours (9 a.m. to 4 p.m.) a day on the school parking lot. "We're practicing six hours a day this week," Stevens said Wednesday.

Gerrie Highto ends the evening by unintentionally moving the world."In honor of our boys coming home from the Persian Gulf," she says simply, "we want to sing 'God Bless America.' "She is standing in this big room on Belvedere Avenue in Northwest Baltimore, at the Concord House residential center for the elderly, looking out at maybe 200 people who have come to hear her Covenant Guild choral group perform.The audience is beautiful. They're sitting there, many of them, in wheelchairs. Lots more have walkers and canes, and they're bundled in sweaters and housedresses.

When Dr. Charles Brown first looked into taking the athletic director job at UMBC in 1989, the Brooklyn, N.Y., native wasn't real savvy about the school. "I thought it was a military base when I showed up," he said with a chuckle. "It said UMBC. I didn't know what it was. I lived near USMA, the U.S. Military Academy [at West Point] when I lived in New York. " Now, after 24 years at the school, he's retiring as the longest-tenured Division I athletic director in Maryland history and the driving force behind UMBC's greatly enhanced profile in both intercollegiate and club sports.