Wrong Way Ellen

WELL, THAT EXPLAINS IT....

Fans of college football may remember Cal's Wrong Way Roy Riegels, who back in the 1929 Rose Bowl against Georgia Tech returned a fumble 65 yards in the wrong direction before being tackled at the Cal 3-yard line by teammate Benny Lom.

Georgia Tech ended up scoring a safety a short time later to take a 2-0 lead and later won the game, and a national championship, 8-7.

It's easy to see how a player could get confused and turned around in the mad scramble for a fumble, and it happens much more often than you might think.

Back in the 1903 the Skidmore College Thoroughbreds of Sarasota Springs, NY, were playing the Alvernia College Crusaders in the Ferret Bowl and were tied 6-6 with five minutes left in the fourth quarter when Skidmore alumna "Wrong Way" Ellen Taylor (pictured above), the first woman to play in men's inter-collegiate athletics, got turned around and ran a flubbed kickoff into her own endzone, effectively losing the game for the Thoroughbreds.

The embarrassing play scarred Taylor for life, leaving her a bitter and angry woman, even after she married and settled 3,000 miles away in Claremont, CA. Taylor's miscue also led colleges to segregate women into their own, separate sports teams, a division that has lasted to this day.

Taylor suffered in secret shame until discovering that her poor sense of direction is caused by an extremely rare neurological disorder, Ellen's Syndrome (so far identified in only one case), which is marked by irritability, haughtiness, arrogance, a false sense of superiority, and a general inability to follow rules while at the same time zealously imposing them on others.