Drake Conti, graduated in '77, played football, also sewed. Okay, well Linfield, what brought me to Linfield was football. Ok, I knew I wanted to go to college and I wanted to play football.

My Volkswagen broke down on the way up. So I had to put all my stuff on, get on the greyhound bus and came up, I was late for the, for the opening of the football practice and when I walked on, on the, I walked from downtown McMinnville to the field, walked out on the field and coach Rutschman was the coach. Ok, and I think it was a shock to him to, if you see how big my afro was.

At the time, here at the school there was a policy if you played any sport, you either had a bowl haircut, cut all your hair off, and no facial hair. Ok, so I walk out, I walk out onto the field, and I was still in my street clothes, and coach Rutschman comes over and says he just says comes over and he was snorting like Tasmanian Devil [snorting noises] gruntin' and says, he didn't even introduce himself to me, he just goes, "get a haircut," and walked away! I was going like, ok, comin' from Southern California, San Fernando valley, I'm a, I'm a little rough around the edges, I was like "hey wait, wait, wait, wait", I was getting ready to give him some lip, and then coach knight came over, who was the track coach at the time, and he was defensive coach. He said, "that's okay, that's okay, you know, he doesn't now how to handle brothas" ha ha so, after that I got all settled in, coach Knight got me settled in and got, but ah the next day when I came out, ah we started practicing.
I never cut my hair, what I did was, I braided it. AHHHHHHHHHH, I threw a curve ball at 'em. To this day, Coach Rutschman he's like, "Ah, you got me," I know he says like, "you got me!"