Love's Lone Ranger

At age eleven, Rudy Tripp is thrilled by movie newsreel football coverage and decides to become the greatest football coach ever.  As a small college senior, Rudy is a small halfback on a team that loses its first four games.  He repeatedly bugs his head coach to revolutionize his offense.  His aging coach likes his ideas, but doesn't think he could remember a collection of new plays.  Tired of football, his coach resigns in mid-season and convinces his administrators to appoint Rudy as player-coach to finish out the season.  Rudy makes dramatic changes to face the powerhouse Splitcrag College team.  Experts predict humiliation for Rudy, but the final score is Westlake 87, Splitcrag 0.  His team also wins all of its remaining games.


The losing Splitcrag coach wants to learn how Rudy did it.  He contacts the Athletic Director at Umptiscratch University (UU) in Flagship, Michigan who offers Rudy a full scholarship at UU to earn a master's degree in athletic directorship providing he submits to a battery of physical and psychological tests.


Rudy drives to Flagship in early summer to find housing before the crush of fall enrollment students.  He finds a room reserved for one male student in a house near the campus.  His landlady is gloriously beautiful Clara, a six foot two inch recent graduate of UU.  She dates shorter men wild about her at first, but eventually lose interest.  She lives with her equally beautiful five foot six inch widowed mother Claudia, a wealthy former circus acrobat, UU cheerleader and reason behind reserving a room for one male student only.


Early in his stay, Rudy is asleep in his second floor room when creaking stairs jolt him awake.   He is petrified but realizes it is Claudia bearing a tray of cookies.  He suddenly realizes why the room is for one male student only.  When he shows no interest in her advances, she attacks him, pins him to his bed and inflicts pain in his most vulnerable area.  Desperate to escape, Rudy offers to find male spouses for both Claudia and Clara.  This leads on an adventurous path along which a UU librarian calls him "Love's Lone Ranger."


About the author: Ben Korgen has had a highly varied career. He served in the US Navy, earned a bachelor's degree at the University of Minnesota Duluth, earned a master's degree at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, then coached high school football, earned a PhD in Oceanography at Oregon State University and had a long and rewarding career in Oceanography at the US Naval Oceanographic Office, the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and Tulane University in New Orleans.


Keywords: Athletics, Football, Love, Matchmaker, Big Girls, Idea Person, Movie Star