Question: What do these guys have in common?

Oxypomona
Fri, 03 Dec 2004 08:55:57 +0000

Answer: Occidental Football

Jack Kemp, Jim Mora (both Class of 1957) and Vance Mueller '86 all played football at Occidental. Our college is a 1600-student liberal arts institution located in northeast Los Angeles.

Kemp as a professional player, Congressman, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and 1996 Vice Presidential Candidate…
Mora as Oxy’s head coach from 1964-66, a college and professional assistant coach, head coach of the USFL-champion Philadelphia and Baltimore Stars, and from 1986 to 1996, head coach of the NFL’s New Orleans Saints, and now the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts…
Mueller as a fourth-round draft choice of the Los Angeles Raiders in 1986 and for six years a solid contributor to his club’s offensive unit and special teams…
Now, for another quick quiz…

Their names may not be household words, but that doesn’t diminish our pride in former Occidental Football players Curt Page, Jon Finstuen and Louis Hook. Like Kemp, Mora and Mueller, these graduates have parlayed Oxy’s special blend of athletics and academics into postgraduate careers as diverse as the Tiger playbook.

Page, a 1989 magna cum laude honor student who is a graduate of Harvard Medical School, says, “For a young person faced with the prospect of attending college, it’s critical to consider life after graduation. If you’re an athlete, it’s especially important to think about the types of attitudes and skills you’ll need to excel in life. Occidental provides an excellent environment for developing creative and insightful academic thinking. On the football field, working hard every day with a group of motivated and intelligent guys makes for an experience you will never, ever forget.”

Finstuen, a 1985 grad, survived two cuts at the 1986 L.A. Rams training camp before earning his M.A. at Stanford in 1987. “Football at Oxy is as intense as the school’s
classroom experience,” he says.

Hook, a 1980 graduate who received his M.B.A. from Harvard in 1984, says that the best aspect of Occidental Football “wasn’t the high glamour you find at big schools, it was interpersonal things like teamwork and friendships.”