The day classes began for the fall quarter at UCLA, Rosco Zamano and his UCLA teammates hopped on a plane to travel to Ann Arbor for a football game.
Having played two previous games, Zamano, a freshman, had already spent more time on the football field than in the classroom.
It would be another week until Zamano made it back to Los Angeles.
In the second quarter against the Wolverines, Zamano was injured on punt coverage. He completely dislocated his knee and ruptured an artery.
The injury required immediate surgery, and Zamano was required to stay in Ann Arbor, while his teammates returned to class.
"For me, it was another example of how out of whack things are," Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr says.
The "things" Carr talks about are the present day priorities of college football. The kind that, in his opinion, value money over student-athletes, national championship games over classes.
If Carr, and many others, had their way, Zamano never would have been in that football game. He never would have been in Ann Arbor.
When Bo Schembechler took over as coach at Michigan in 1969, he had 120 scholarships to work with, though he never used more than 105.
He also didn't have any freshman competing on the field. They were all ineligible, and Schembechler liked it that way.
"It was the best system there was for those kids," Schembechler says.
Today, Carr has only 85 scholarships to work with, and, unlike Schembechler, Carr has to use them all.
Every college football coach has to use them all. And they take every opportunity possible to say they don't think they have enough.
It's hard not to walk into a press conference these days and not hear, at some point, "With scholarships where they are today..."
It's as much of an issue as agents or playoffs, and it has more of a direct impact on the game than both.
"The real tough things, blocking and tackling, they don't do as well," Schembechler says. "I'm not saying our guys don't do it as well, but some teams don't."
The reason? Practice, or lack there of.
Schembechler says he used to run two plays a minute at the end of practice on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The coaches would coach on the run, and players would substitute in.
Today? No way.
"If we practiced like we used to," Carr says, "we'd be wiped out by mid-season."
With fewer scholarship players, there is no time for an injury during practice. One wrong twist or turn, and the team's championship chances could be lost.
And coaches aren't the only ones seeing the effects. Carr says NFL people have told him today's players aren't as ready for professional football as they used to be.
It is another side effect of the reduction is the use of freshmen, something almost everyone would like to get away from, but nobody can.
"Philosophically, I would be in a system where freshmen aren't able to play," Michigan State coach Nick Saban says. "I think it would be a better adjustment socially and academically if they didn't have to play."
This season, due to injuries and academic ineligibilities, the Spartans have been forced to use half of their 22 true freshmen.
Due to lop-sided victories, Ohio State has been able to use 13 of its 25 freshmen. Two, however, may be applying for medical redshirts because of injuries.
"If we don't play freshmen, we only have 50 or so scholarship players," Saban says.
Carr would be in favor of once again eliminating freshmen, even if it were to cost him the services of a talent like Charles Woodson, who, last year, was a first team All-Big Ten player as a freshman.
"That's not the point," Carr says about the fact that he wouldn't have had Woodson. "It's not whether they're physically ready, but mentally ready for academics.
"That's the reason they're here."
So, how did it get to this point?
By the mid-1970s, scholarships had dropped to 95, the number they stayed at until 1992, when they were reduced by three. In 1993, the number fell to 88, and finally to 85 in 1994.
Well, like nearly everything else in this world, it comes down to money.
University presidents mandated a 10 percent, across the board, cut in athletic departments. The goal was to try to help the large number of athletic departments losing money, to make intercollegiate athletics cheaper.
It also doesn't hurt to take a chunk out of your largest male sport when you're trying to attain gender-equity.
"To blame it all on gender-equity, however, would be a bad mistake," Michigan Athletic Director Joe Roberson says.
Still, by cutting across the board, the presidents also bit into the hand that feeds most of their athletic departments - football.
Last season, the Michigan football program generated more than $20 million in total revenue. Broken down, football brought in $243,894.12 per scholarship player. And of that $20 million, $1.875 million was spent on grant-in-aid.
After expenses, Michigan football donated nearly $9.735 million to the Athletic Department. That number was good for more than 76 percent of the total athletic budget last year.
It would also pay for all of the women's sports programs more than 1 1/2 times.
"Everyone wants to kick college football because it's big," Schembechler says. "It's big, because it's been successful. The administrators don't understand that, they look at economics.
"They want to cut practice time. They want more time for school, more time for studying, but they'll play them as freshmen to save money."
And therein, according to many, lies the hypocrisy of the situation.
Carr was the only Big Ten coach opposed to the conference's agreement, along with the Pac-10 and the Rose Bowl, to join the Bowl Alliance in 1998. He took some heat for his stance, but he had his reasons.
Carr believes that it is impossible under the Bowl Alliance to guarantee a concrete national champion every year. As he sees it, the system is just another step on the inevitable road to an NFL-style playoff system - a system that would mean more games, more practice time, but with fewer players than 20 years ago.
It also means more money, however.
For the right to broadcast 21 Bowl Alliance games over seven years, beginning in 1998, ABC television paid close to $400 million. Add to that the Rose Bowl, which will remain a separate deal, and you've got enough money floating around to tempt the most devout priest, much less NCAA and university administrators.
Also in 1998, the payout for Alliance games is expected to rise to $12 million per team.
"We've created a monster," Carr says, "and we're headed in the wrong direction."
If the priorities are as out of whack as many believe, what can be done to stop the monster?
"If the schools want to continue playing major-college football," Schembechler says, "they're going to have to do something either inside or outside the NCAA."
Changes from within the NCAA were made last year. The NCAA's member schools voted to change the structure of the organization from an association to a federation.
As an association, schools in all divisions voted as one group for rule changes. Now, as a federation, Division I schools vote separate from Division II and III institutions.
Thus, the smaller schools can't influence the rules that govern the larger, Division I programs.
Change outside the NCAA would be an entirely different process, however. Schembechler doesn't think it would be a bad idea if the major football schools left the NCAA, possibly even taking their basketball programs with them.
"It's come to the point where the NCAA can't do what major colleges need them to do," Schembechler says.
It may be a realistic option.
According to Roberson, everyone will be watching to see if the restructured NCAA does what Division I schools need it to do. If it doesn't, what Schembechler suggested could just happen.
But will it bring back the scholarships the coaches are consistently lobbying for?
"If you would have asked me that question a couple of years ago, I would have said yes," Roberson says. "But talking to people lately, I don't think so."
Carr says he and the other Big Ten coaches have voted to bump the scholarship number back to 95, the amount Carr feels he needs. But the votes haven't led to any kind of success.
Roberson would like to see a system where a team had 85 eligible scholarship players, plus the ineligible freshmen. That system would also mean the need for more scholarships.
Aside from academics, Roberson has another reason he would like to see freshmen in the classroom before they hit the football field.
He says it would keep out of the university those who are not here for an education.
"I sometimes feel like I'm running a minor league for the NBA, NFL, NHL and, to some extent, Major League Baseball," Roberson says.
Regardless of what happens, everyone concerned feels college football needs more scholarships than it has.
It needs them for the game, and it needs them for the student-athletes, because they don't feel the system now is fair.
"No, I don't think it's in the best interest of the student-athletes at all," Roberson says.
Rosco Zamano would probably agree.