Biography|Greg Hayes — One Year of Pre-Law and Football on This Field

People skip the Cornell year in Hayes biographies because it did not produce a degree.

The year still happened on this sideline.

Schoellkopf Field is Cornell's football ground on the Ithaca campus, a crescent of stands above Cascadilla Creek that has held Big Red games since 1915.

Hayes arrived from Williamsville South in 1978 as a pre-law student and played football here for that single season.

He later described the year, in a Purdue alumni interview, as the proof that the legal profession was not for him.

He transferred to Purdue's Krannert School and finished in 1982.

The field is a public stadium on a university campus, not a private training ground.

A visitor on a Saturday in the fall will find a working college bowl; on a weekday the stands are empty and the slope down toward the gorge is the same grade a walk-on would have climbed.

The useful correction is small and specific.

Hayes is a Purdue graduate in the official record.

He is also a one-year Cornell football player who used the year to change direction rather than to collect a credential.

English-language summaries often flatten that into a transfer line.

The pin keeps the year attached to the grass where it was spent.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributors, file Schoellkopf Field wide view, via Wikimedia Commons