Football season

“ Heretofore it has generally happened that one or two teams have developed good football early in the season, and the others, contented with winning one or two games, have allowed the championship to go, almost by default, to one of the better teams.
But this year a different feeling crept into the League. Every team played every game to win. The consequence was that the usual one-sided games, with scores of thirty or forty to nothing, have been missing. Instead, every game has been hard played and interesting, and the attendance at two of the games, at least, has reached up into the thousands. ”

“ It’s a game of young men with big shoulders and hard muscles. It’s also a game of old pros, such as, 38-year-old Charlie Conerly quarterbacking the New York Giants to a football championship.
Football is popcorn, cokes, banners and cigaret smoke. It’s people standing for the kick-off, lap blankets, pacing coaches, penalties and melodious alma maters.
Football is a game of surprises. The big guy everybody picks in pre-season as All-American fizzles out. But a kid nobody ever heard of scores the winning touchdown and a star is born. ”

“ Many, unable to satisfactorily express their enthusiasm vocally, [2] kept time with their feet. Across the platform from the musicians sat the Assistant Principal, Mr. Collins, the physical instructor, Mr. Bendix, the head coach, Mr. Payson, the president of the First Class, Lawrence Goodyear, and the football captain, Dan Vinton. The mass meeting had been called to formally open the football season at Yardley Hall School. The song ended in a final triumphant burst of sound and Goodyear arose. ”

“ The championship season in football is now fairly under way in almost every section of the country, and the reports that come in from all sides are of a most promising nature for the welfare of the sport. More players in a greater number of schools spread over a broader area of the country are at work on the gridiron this year than ever before, and the colleges may feel confident of receiving a higher grade of raw material in the future than has ever come in with any previous Freshman class. ”

“ Present-Day Football.
There are not wanting signs that football has not yet finished expanding. Every season sees more clubs in villages as well as in towns, and the County Associations also report a numerical increase. But whether or not there will be a sharper dividing line between amateur and professional is difficult to say. ”

“ The past season, therefore, so far as I am able to find out, the Madison High-School team has been made up strictly of students of the school, and the players have taken up football for the sport of the game, rather than for the sake of the empty honor of a championship. This "championship" business is getting to be very much overestimated and exaggerated, and may eventually do much harm to sport ”

“ But with the conditions at Lawrenceville I am familiar.
Several years of experience there have shown the authorities that the sports of the students can be kept in better condition if expert players are detailed to manage the coaching and the games, but yet they do not believe in hiring a man for the football season regardless of his character and career in college. ”

“ The first requisite to the development of a football team is a study of the entire season's campaign. The successful working plan of former elevens is not a safe rule in the preparation of a new team. Although the games may be played against the same old opponents, an entirely new set of problems will be presented for the coach to solve. These problems may spring up in the gradation of games on the schedule or in changes in the class or coaches of the rival elevens, but the main problem is one of men. ”

“ A few more remarks in conclusion of what was said in the Department last week concerning preliminary football work: Remember that by practice alone can a team perfect itself; and consequently every manager should try to arrange as many practice games as possible for the eleven under his care. After the school season has fairly begun, and the neighboring schools have their elevens somewhat organized, it is always possible to arrange games with outsiders. Thus when the championship contests come along the players will be accustomed to games with strangers. ”

“ Too much practice with a scrub team breeds slack play and indifference. If it is possible to schedule practice games with other schools for Wednesdays and Saturdays—playing some teams two or three times, perhaps, in one season—the manager should make such arrangements. In or near large cities this is almost always possible, and perhaps that is why the football elevens of New York and Boston are usually so well trained and developed. ”

“ You like to win ’em all, but the real thrill is the story behind this particular game.
It actually started in the spring of 1954 when I first went to Texas A & M. The Aggies had not won the Southwest Conference Championship in 15 years. We hoped to remedy this situation in time, so we commenced our building program that spring.
In the fall we took our players to Junction, a small place in South Texas, for pre-season training. The work was hard and the weather was hot, and many boys dropped by the wayside. Many did not want to pay the price to be a winner. ”

“ If an old football man should watch some of your plays he'd swear you were anything but novices, and vow you'd done plenty of footwork last season. Don't stop, boys! Keep up the good work, and my word for it, your reward is sure to come, for you'll take Marshall into camp on Saturday, barring accidents."
They would have two more afternoons for practice, and then Saturday would dawn with its uncertainties that might not be relieved until the referee had blown his whistle to signify that the time for the game had expired. ”

“ When two teams were playing, the players of the other teams were always furnished tickets to the game free of charge.
All the teams have been managed in a very business-like manner. The schedule was made out carefully, and was very just. The arrangements about securing grounds, providing police, advertising, and the other details necessary to a successful game were promptly and well attended [Pg 199] to. Altogether, the season must please the Harvard football management and the Boston Athletic Association, under whose joint patronage the League is conducted. ”

“ Consequently in the early games Trinity's opponents made most of their advances through the centre; but this weakness was finally remedied, and the eleven developed a strong defence. With the experience acquired this season next year's eleven should prove particularly strong.
With the great development of football among all the schools, it has now come to be an important matter with the colleges to keep track of the scholastic players, and to depend upon them for material for the university elevens. ”

“ If the big teams of the country played throughout the season in seclusion, the final games would be a hodge-podge of varying systems which would curtail the interest of the spectator and all but block the development of the game. ”

“ I believe that if we fellows at this school developed the game along the lines that you and I have discussed so frequently, others would follow. There—there’d be a movement, Harmon. If we look to the colleges to make the start we’ll have to wait a long time, I fear. In my opinion colleges are extremely conservative in the matter of football, especially the larger ones, the—ah—the leaders. Of course I realize that the season is so far advanced that any extreme changes now would possibly militate against the team’s success. ”

“ The evening paper, which I was reading when you called me to the telephone, reports among the day’s football news that Harvard has several good men ‘among the cripples’; that ‘Yale’s hospital list is large’; that Jones of Dartmouth will be out of the game for a fortnight at least with his shoulder; while Smith of Princeton is laid off with water on the knee, which will prevent his playing again the present season. These may be ‘insignificant and temporary injuries,’ as your friends maintain, but they seem to be real enough to affect the prospects of the teams concerned. ”

“ The attack will never be alike in any two years, unless the very same men compose the team. The peculiarities of the men will determine how the attack should be arranged. Games cannot be won without a strong, consistent offense, yet the time devoted to its development will be comparatively little in some years, while in others it will remain the all-important problem up to the very end of the season. It is poor policy to interrupt the work of two scrimmaging elevens solely to correct individual faults. Remember these lessons and impress them upon the football candidate at some other time. ”

“ And football only occasionally helps me. There are no championships in rugger. There are no figures, no individual scores, to help one. One game is so like another. Season after season{31} one plays against the same teams, on the same grounds, and with only slightly varying results. It is difficult sometimes even to place offhand any particular game in its right season. And anyhow, football is only a key to week-end associations. It is of small assistance in the dating of a meeting that took place in the middle of the week.
It is different, though, with cricket. ”

“ New York Evening Post
Princeton, N. J., November 6.—With ideal football weather for the annual game between Princeton and Harvard to-day, the thousands of followers of the rival teams who are here from all sections of the East expect to witness one of the most spectacular struggles of the season. The Tiger coaches consider their eleven 20 per cent. stronger than when Dartmouth was defeated two weeks ago, and while not over-confident, are hopeful of victory. ”

“ Incidental reference to Preston North End's double first in 1889 recalls the formation of the Football League, the creation of a life long worker in Association football, Mr. W. McGregor, early that season. What an important part the League system has played in the economy of modern football can hardly be fully discussed in what is primarily a practical treatise on the game. It certainly came originally to supply a general and obvious want in the shape of a competition of continuous interest, and not like the F. A. Cup, with a glorious uncertainty to all the clubs concerned. ”

“ Nevertheless, in this great city of New York there ought to be a sufficient number of graduates of the local schools, likewise graduates of colleges, familiar enough with the game to be efficient, and willing to devote at least one or two afternoons of the season to the good work of advancing the interests of football in the schools.
It is not right to expect the players to do everything. They deserve some encouragement from their elders; and it certainly is discouraging for two teams to appear on the field, and find that there are no officials to conduct the play. ”

“ And that naturally affects their playing. I think the Football Association should buy shoes as well as clothing for the players, and I’m sure you will agree with me. Our schedule this season includes games with several teams that require us to travel away from home, and the item of railroad fares will be considerable. ”

“ Then when the coach (scout) sees his opposition in the fall he will do a better job of scouting them because he is familiar with the offense, defense, and the returning personnel.
IN-SEASON PLANNING
During the season we like to see an opponent play at least three times. We feel we can do a better job of planning after we have a fairly clear understanding of what our opponents are likely to do. We want to have a fairly definite idea of what our opposition will do offensively in the following situations:
1. ”

“ From the opening of college in September, in all sections of the country, to its close in June, football is the most potent factor in the moulding of spirit, in the making of men, and in the bringing them together in the democracy of a common cause in the collegiate life. In the autumn, when the candidates for the team are being tried out and selected according to their worth, thousands of healthy young men take their places on the athletic field every afternoon. ”

“ On the part of the public there is general appreciation of the spirit which these two academies have brought into the great autumn sport, a spirit which combines with football per se the color, the martial pomp, the elan of the military. The merger is a happy one, because football in its essence is a stern, grim game, a game that calls for self-sacrifice, for mental alertness and for endurance ”

“ If by the passing down from father to son and from brother to brother of a spirit of cheerful self-denial throughout the hard fall months—of grim doggedness under imminent defeat and of fair play at all times, whether victor or vanquished—a finer, truer sense of what a man may be and do is forged out of the raw material, then football may feel that it has served a purpose even nobler than that of being simply America's greatest college game. ”

“ There is always a "post mortem" atmosphere about Fall track athletics.
Baseball shows a bit more life, for now the ambitious Freshman receives his "trying out" and struggles valiantly to catch the critical eye of the Captain, in search of new material for the "Nine."
The only "real thing" is football, which reigns supreme until Thanksgiving Day dethrones him. ”

“ It originated in a simple, Anglo-Saxon desire for clean, energetic sport and the participants in the game were the only spectators. It lives now through the same desire, but the interest in the game has so developed that hundreds of thousands throughout the country annually witness its play, not as mere spectators but as ardent votaries. From Maine to California, from Minnesota to Texas, wherever there are schools or colleges, football, during the crisp, autumn days, is the magnet which draws people from every walk of life from offices and shops for a few hours in the open air. ”