Yale Bulldogs football

“ Princeton was outdistanced in these kicking duels, Le Gore gaining steadily on each exchange of punts with Driggs. When these gains had driven the Tigers well into their own territory Yale struck viciously and, with a bewildering attack, quickly carried the ball over for a score. From a defensive standpoint the Yale first-string team was never in danger from Princeton’s attack, and it was not until the second and third-string substitutes went in that the orange and black football machine could make consistent progress.
The statistics of play bear out the superiority of the Yale team. ”

“ Its tail as yet untwisted, presents its best eleven for several seasons, a
great favorite in the odds, and yet the final score is Yale, 14; Princeton,
7! A strange fear of the Bulldog, bred of many bitter defeats, of similar
occasions when a feeble Yale team aroused itself and trampled an invincible
Orange and Black eleven, when the Blue fought old Nassau with a team that
"wouldn't" be beat, gave victory to the poorer aggregation. So many things
unforeseen often enter into a football contest, shifting the balance of
power from the stronger to the weaker team. ”

“ The general public cannot understand the seriousness with which college athletes take the loss of an important game. There is a Princeton football Captain who was so broken up over a defeat by Yale that, months after on the cattle range of New Mexico, as he lay out at night on his cow-boy bed and thought himself unobserved, he fell to sobbing as if his heart would break.
A football victory to many men is as dearly longed for as any goal of ambition in life. ”

“ They may not go so far as [248] to admit, with The Troubled Spirits, that football at Yale has become not the most manly but the most sentimental of sports, yet they do attach great weight to the matter. The Troubled Spirits, I understand, go much further, and assert that year after year the University is expected to have confidence, trust, or perhaps blind faith in the team. They would have us believe that Yale has been taught to accept defeat with a pious resignation that savors of slave morality. ”

“ It isn't often that we have an opportunity to beat Yale, and I propose to make the best of this one. So kindly disabuse your mind of the idea that we are merely going out to play a nice, exhilarating game of football. We are going to simply wipe up the earth with Yale!"
"Indeed?" murmured Bi politely.
"Quite so," answered the coach dryly, "I suppose you know that your presence on the team is a sheer accident? If you don't, allow me to tell you candidly that if there had been anyone else in the college to put in Corson's place, we would never have called on you, Mr. Briggs." ”

“ It was not a question now of who would win, but could Yale go over the goal line in the time that was left? Harvard had put up a surprising battle against an eleven which had been favored to defeat her by at least twenty points. And Yale was a bit miffed at this, sternly desirous of adding to the score by hammering through for a touch down. A victory won solely through the talented toe of the great Nixon was hardly sufficient tribute to the supposed offensive power of the team itself.
There were two minutes left to play when Yale brought up on Harvard's three-yard line for a first down. ”

“ And somehow the Yale machine of muscle, brains, and power began to find itself when the afternoon shadows were slanting athwart the arena. With the ball on Princeton's forty-yard line the chosen sons of Eli began a heroic advance down the field. It was as if some missing cog had been supplied. "Straight old-fashioned football" it was, eleven minds and bodies working as one and animated by a desperate resolve, which carried the Yale team along for down after down into the heart of Princeton's ground. ”

“ It is a strange thing that the Cadets always seem to give Yale a close game, as in that year even though beaten by both Harvard and Princeton by safe scores, and even though Yale beat Harvard and Princeton handily, the Army played us to a standstill.
"After the game, as is so often the case when men have played themselves out, there was a good deal of sobbing and a good many real tears were shed. Every man who has played football will appreciate that there are times when it is a very common matter for even a big husky man to weep. ”

“ Falling on the ball, sprinting and limbering up, [Pg 58] and running through a few signals, we spent the few minutes before the Yale team came through the corner of the field. The scenes of enthusiasm that had marked our arrival were repeated, the Yale stand being the center this time of the maelstrom of cheers. I shall not attempt to describe our own feelings as we got the first glimpse of our opponents in the coming fray. Who can describe the sensations of the contestants in the first moment of a championship game? ”

“ The latter went into the fine points of the game, emphasizing the needs of the individual players, laying stress on what the backs, tackles, ends and guards should do, and urging on the lads the necessity for fast, snappy playing.
"Demoralize your opponents by the quickness with which you jump into formations," said the Yale man. "As soon as one play is finished be ready for the next. In defense, never give up, no matter how the game seems to be going against you. Hold hard, tire out the other side, and then you may have a chance to get the ball and—win!" ”

“ At an exciting moment in the game, Bucknell players made it possible for me to be in a position to kick the goal from the field from a difficult angle. After the score had been made the West Point team stood there stupefied, and when the crowd got the idea that a goal had been kicked from a peculiar angle, they gave us a rousing cheer. Such is the proper spirit of American football; to see some sunshine in your opponent's play.
"Cheering helps so much to build up one's enthusiasm."
Al Sharpe was one of the greatest all-around athletes that ever wore the blue of Yale. ”

“ Harvard would need a dry field this year to stand an even chance at winning. Her back field was light, fast, and shifty. It depended on a quick get-away and a sure under-footing. Yale's eleven was solid, heavy from end to end, with a stubborn defense that had allowed but two touchdowns so far that season, and a pile-driving back field that moved slowly but surely behind a battering forward wall. If it rained, Davies reflected, Harvard's last vestige of hope was due to be trampled in the mud. ”

“ The last half of this game is everlastingly impressed upon my memory. Every man that played for Princeton, although eight of them were substitutes, played like a veteran. I shall ever treasure the memory of the loyal support that those men gave me as captain, and their response to my appeal to stand together and play not only for Princeton but for the injured men on the side-lines whose places they had taken.
The Yale team had also heard some words of football wisdom in their dressing room. Previous encounters with Princeton had taught them that the Tiger could also rally. ”

“ The partisanship of the big football games has always been to me one of the most mystifying features in American life. It is all the more mystifying from the fact that it grips me acutely twice a year when Harvard plays Princeton, and again when we play Yale. I find no difficulty in being neutral about Bates of Middlebury. It did not even worry me much when Georgia scored a touchdown. The encounters with Yale and Princeton are not games but ordeals. Of course, there is no sense to it. A victory for Harvard or a defeat makes no striking difference in the course of my life. ”

“ Once he was forced by a Princeton fumble, and a march of thirty yards by Yale, to kick from behind his own goal line. He did exert himself then, and he outguessed the two men lying back. As a result Yale put the ball in play on her own thirty-yard line, while the stands marvelled, the Princeton side demonstratively, yet George, long before the half was over, became conscious of something not quite right. Since beyond question he was the star of his team he received a painstaking attention from the Yale men. There is plenty of legitimate roughness in football, and it can be concentrated. ”

“ Only a month or so ago we were talking in New Haven before an organization of Yale graduates upon a subject so unpartisan as the American drama—though to be sure Harvard has turned out ten playwrights of note to every one from Yale—and somehow or other the talk drifted around to football. In pleading for less intensity of football feeling we mentioned the man who dropped the punt and his brother and told how Yale had recovered the fatal fumble on Harvard's nineteen-yard line. ”

“ I can see the game now; there was no scoring [Pg 252] in the first half. To the outsider the teams seemed evenly matched, but we, who knew our men, thought we saw that the power was there; and if they could but realize their strength and that they had it in them to lay low at last that armor-plated old rhinoceros, the terror of the college jungle—Yale,—with an even break of luck, the game must be ours. ”

“ We feel that a word about football is necessary, not only because it is one of the most popular American sports, but because men and women alike enjoy watching the game. At the Yale Bowl, where some of the most spectacular football games are played—and won—thousands of men and women from all over the United States gather every year. ”

“ A Columbia man who is always on hand for the big games of the year is Charles Halstead Mapes, the ever reliable, loyal rooter for the game. He has told the tale of this victory so wonderfully well that football enthusiasts cannot but enjoy this enthusiastic Columbia version.
"Fifteen years ago Yale was supreme in football," runs Mapes' story. "Occasionally, but only very occasionally, one of their great rivals, Princeton or Harvard, would win a game from them, but for any outsider, anybody except one of the 'Eternal Triangle,' to beat Yale was out of the question—an utter impossibility. ”

“ It was my pleasure to have played against him in two Yale-Princeton games, '98 and '99. I have never known a finer sportsman than he. He played the game hard, and he played it fair. He had nothing to say to his opponents in the game. He was there for business. Always urging his fellow players on to better work. Every one who knew this gallant leader had absolute confidence in him. All admired and loved him. There was no one at Yale who was more universally liked and acknowledged as a leader in all the relations of the University than was Gordon Brown. ”

“ I remember that I had not seen a victory over Yale since I was graduated from college in 1879. Some of the suggestions that I made about the time men should be played were laughed at. The standpoint I took was that a man should not be allowed by the coach to play until he was deemed fit. ”

“ Many of us are under the impression that the only real football fan is molded from the male sex and that the female of the species attends the game for decorative purposes only. I protest. Listen. In 1908 I had the good fortune to be selected to enter the Harvard-Yale Game at New Haven, for the purpose of scoring on Yale in a most undignified way, through the medium of a drop-kick, Haughton realizing that while a touchdown was distinctly preferable, he was not afraid to fight it out in the next best way. ”

“ The great Yale-Princeton football game, which took place during the Thanksgiving holidays in New York, was now a matter of history—and of rejoicing, to one side. But as all those interested in football know which side won the championship that year, it is not necessary to recount the game and rub it into the losers.
Everyone, almost, had gone to see the great contest and to cheer for the team, and Princeton seemed as deserted as in mid-summer. The Invincibles secured a huge four-in-hand coach and were half frozen driving up Fifth Avenue to the game ”

“ Since the very earliest days of the game the contests between Yale and Princeton have roused the interest, not only of the students and alumni, but of a constantly increasing proportion of the sports-loving public. Yale and Harvard have maintained their annual competition almost every year. Pennsylvania has long been one of the best known homes of the game. West Point and Annapolis, the national schools for army and navy offlcers, have always been supporters of rival football teams. ”

“ The blue team was within striking distance of the Harvard goal. The signal came for a kick in an attempt to send the ball over the crossbar.
How it happened no one could say. It was one of the fumbles that so often occur in a football game—fumbles that spell victory for one team and defeat for another. The Yale full-back reached out his hands for the pigskin, caught it and—dropped it. There was a rush of men toward him, and some one’s foot kicked the ball. It rolled toward Andy. In a flash he had it tucked under his arm, and started in a wild dash for the Harvard goal line. ”

“ Jimmy told the doctor, "honest I am—can I go—I gotta take Champ out to the game—he's the mascot and they can't win without him—please, Mister, let me go—I guess they need us bad out there."
Apparently the crying need of Yale football is not so much a coaching system as a good leash to keep the mascots from getting run over. Champ and Jimmy rushed into the locker room just as the big Blue team was about to trot out for the second half. After that there was nothing to it. Yale won by a score of 12 to 10. ”