Football Days Part 11

When I ran with the ball I had to get around him if I made any advance, and I must say that I found it no easy thing to do, as he was a sure tackler. And when he ran with the ball I had the good pleasure of cutting his runs short.

"Another man whom I consider one of the greatest punters of the past is Bull of Yale. I have stopped a good many punts and drop kicks in my play, but I do not remember stopping a single kick of his, and it was not because I did not try. He kicked with his left foot, and with his back partially towards the line would kick a very high ball, and when you jumped into him--on the principle, that if you cannot get the ball, get the man--you had the sensation of striking something hard."

After Cowan had stopped playing and graduated he acted as an official in a good many of the big games. He states as follows:

"You ask about my own experiences as an official, and for experience with other officials. I always got along pretty well as a referee. There was very little kicking on my decisions. But I was good for nothing as an umpire. I could not keep my eyes off the ball, so did not see the fouls as much as I should. You boys have probably heard how I was ruled off the field in a Harvard-Princeton game in '88. I remember Terry of Yale who refereed that game, above all others. There was a rule at that time that intentional tackling below the knees was a foul and the penalty was disqualification. Our game had just started. We had only two or three plays, Harvard having the ball. I broke through the line and tackled the man as soon as he had the ball. I had him around the legs about the knees, but in his efforts to get away, my hands slipped down.

But at the moment remembering the rule I let him go, and for this I was disqualified. I might say that we lost the game, for we did not have any one to take my place. I had always been in my place and no one ever thought that I would not be there. My being disqualified was probably the reason for the Princeton defeat.

"I do not think that Terry intended to be unfair. The game had just started, and he was trying to be strict, and without stopping to think whether it was intentional or not. He saw the rule being broken and acted on the impulse of the moment. I have since heard that Terry felt very bad about it afterwards. I never felt right towards him until I had a chance to get even with him, and it came in this way. The Crescent Club of Brooklyn played the Cleveland Athletic Club at Cleveland. George and myself were invited to play with the Cleveland club, and on the Crescent team were Alex Moffat and Terry. Terry played left halfback, and right here was where I got in my work. When Terry ran with the ball I generally had a chance to help him meet the earth. I had one chance in particular. Terry got the ball and got around our end, and on a long end run I took after him, caught him from the side, threw him over my head out of bounds. As we were both running at the top of our speed he hit the ground with considerable force. I felt better towards him after this game."

In such vivid phrases as these a great hero of the past tells of things well worth recording.

Football compet.i.tion is very strong. There is the keenest sort of rivalry among college teams. There is very little love on the part of the men who play against each other on the day of the contest, but after the game is all over, and these men meet in after years, very strong friends.h.i.+ps are often formed. Sometimes these opponents never meet again, but down deep in their hearts they have a most wholesome regard for each other, and so in my recollections of the old heroes, it will be most interesting to hear in their own words, something about their own achievements and experiences in the games they played thirty years ago.

Hector Cowan, who captained the '88 team at Princeton, played three years against George Woodruff of Yale. It has been twenty-eight years since that wonderful battle took place between these two men. It is still talked about by people who saw the game, and now let us read what these two contestants say about each other.

"Of the three years that I played guard I met George Woodruff as my opponent," says Cowan, "and I always felt that he was the strongest man I had to meet and one who was always on the square. He played the game for what it was worth, and he showed later that he could teach it to others by the way he taught the Penn' team."

Says George Woodruff, delving into the old days: "Hector Cowan played against me three years at guard, and he fully deserves the reputation he had at that time in every particular of the game, including running with the ball. I doubt whether any other Princeton man was ever more able to make ground whenever he tried, although Cowan was not in any particular a showy player. For some reason or other, Cowan seems to have had a reputation for rough play, which shows how untrue traditions can be handed down. I never played against or with a finer and steadier player, or one more free from the remotest desire to play roughly for the sake of roughness itself."

When Heffelfinger's last game had been played there appeared in a newspaper of November 26th, 1888, a farewell to Heffelfinger.

Good-by Heff! the boys will miss you, And the old men, too, and the girls; You tossed the other side about as if they were ten-pins; You took Little Bliss under your wing and he ran with the ball like a pilot boat by the _Teutonic_.

You used eyes, ears, shoulders, legs, arms and head and took it all in.

You're the best football rusher America, or the world, has shown; And best of all you never slugged, lost your temper or did anything mean; Oh come thou mighty one, go not away, The team thou must not fail: Stay where thou art, please, Heffelfinger, stay, And still be true to Yale-- Linger, yet linger, Heffelfinger, a truly civil engineer.

His trust would ne'er surrender; unstrap thy trunks, Excuse this scalding tear.

Still be Yale's best defender! Linger, oh, linger, Heffelfinger.

Princeton and Harvard, there is cause to fear Will dance joy's double shuffle when of thy Western flight they come to hear. Stay and their tempers ruffle. Linger, oh, linger, Heffelfinger.

John Cranston

"My inspiration for the game came when my country cousin returned from Exeter and told me he believed I had the making of a football player,"

says John Cranston, who was Harvard's famous old center and former coach. "At once I pestered him with all kinds of questions about the requirements, and believed that some day I would do something. I shall always remember my first day on the field at Exeter. Lacking the wherewithal to buy the regulation suit, I appeared in the none too strong blue s.h.i.+rt and overalls used on the farm. I remember too that it was not long before Harding said: 'Take that young countryman to the gymnasium before he is injured for life; he doesn't know which way to run when he gets the ball; he doesn't know the game; and he looks too thick headed to play the game anyway.'

"As boys on neighboring farms of Western New York, three of us, who were later to play on different college teams, hunted skunks and rabbits together. Had we been on the same team we would have been side by side.

Cook was a great tackle at Princeton; Reed one of the best guards Cornell ever had; and I, owing to some good team mates, played as center on the first Harvard eleven to defeat Yale. It is said that Cook in his first game at Exeter grabbed the ball and started for his own goal for a touchdown, and that Reed after playing the long afternoon in the game which Cornell won, asked the Referee which side was victorious.

"I well remember that at Exeter we were planning how to celebrate our victory over Andover, even to the most minute detail. We knew who was to ring the academy and church bells of the town, and where we were to have the bonfire at night. We were deprived of that pleasure on account of the great playing and better spirit of the Andover team. A few of our Exeter men then and there made a silent compact that Exeter would feel a little better after another contest with Andover. The following three years we defeated Andover by large scores.

"Any one who has played the game can recall some amusing situations. I recall the first year at Harvard when we were playing against the Andover team that suddenly the whole Andover School gave the Yale cheer.

Dud Dean, who was behind me, fired up and said it was the freshest thing he had ever heard. At Springfield I remember one Yale-Harvard game started with ten men of my own school, Exeter, in the game. In another Yale game we were told to look ugly and defiant as we lined up to face Yale, but I was forced to laugh long and hard when I found myself facing Frankie Barbour, the little Yale quarter, who lived with me in the same dormitory at Exeter for three years."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BREAKERS AHEAD

Phil King in the Old Days.]

CHAPTER IX

THE NINETIES AND AFTER

Men of to-day who never had an opportunity of seeing Foster Sanford play will be interested in some anecdotes of his playing days and to read in another chapter of this book some of his coaching experiences.

"As a boy," said Sandy, "I lived in New Haven. I chalked the lines on the football field for the game in which Tilly Lamar made his famous run for Princeton. I played on the college team two years before I entered Yale. I learned a lot of football playing against Billy Rhodes, that great Yale tackle.

"I'll tell you about the day I made the Yale team in my freshman year.

Pa Corbin took me in hand. I think he wanted to see if I had lots of nerve. He told me to report at nine o'clock for practice. He put me through a hard, grueling work-out, showing me how to snap the ball; how to charge and body check. All this took place in a driving rain, and he kept me out until one o'clock, when he said:

"'You can change your jersey now; that is, put on a dry one.'

"I went over to the training table then to see if I couldn't get some dinner. Believe me, I was hungry. But every one had finished his meal and all I could pick up was the things that were left. Here I ran into a fellow named Brennen, who said:

"'They're trying to do you up. This is the day they are deciding whether you will be center rush or not.'

"I then went out to Yale Field and joined the rest of the players, and the stunts they put me through that afternoon I will never forget. But I remembered what Brennen had told me, and it made me play all the harder.

To tell the truth, after practice, I realized that I was so sore I could hardly put one foot ahead of the other. To make matters worse, the coaches told me to run in to town, a distance of two miles, while _they_ drove off in a bus. I didn't catch the bus until they were on Park Street, but I pegged along just the same and beat them in to the gate.

Billy Rhodes and Pa Corbin took care of me and rubbed me down. It seems as though they rubbed every bit of skin off of me. I was like fire.

"That's the day I made the Yale team.

"I was twenty years old, six feet tall, and weighed about 200 pounds."

When I asked Sandy who gave him the hardest game of his life, he replied promptly:

"Wharton, of Pennsylvania. He got through me."

Parke Davis' enthusiasm for football is known the country over. From his experience as a player, as a coach and writer, he has become an authority. Let us read some of his recollections.

"Years ago there was a high spirited young player at Princeton serving his novitiate upon the scrub. One day an emergency transferred him for the first time in his career to the Varsity. The game was against a small college. This sudden promotion was possible through his fortunate knowledge of the varsity signals. Upon the first play a fumble occurred.

Our hero seized the ball. A long service upon the scrub had ingrained him to regard the Princeton Varsity men always as opponents. In the excitement of the play he became confused, when lo! he leaped into flight toward the wrong goal. Das.h.i.+ng around Princeton's left end he reversed his field and crossed over to the right. Phil King, Princeton's quarterback, was so amazed at the performance that he was too spellbound to tackle his comrade. Down the backfield the player sped towards his own goal. Shep Homans, his fullback, took in the impending catastrophe at a glance and dashed forward, laid the halfback low with a sharp tackle, thereby preventing a safety. The game was unimportant, the Princeton's score was large, so the unfortunate player, although the b.u.t.t of many a jest, soon survived all jokes and jibes and became in time a famous player."

"The first Princeton-Yale game in 1873 being played under the old a.s.sociation rules was waged with a round ball. In the first scrimmage a terrific report sounded across the field. When the contending players had been separated the poor football was found upon the field a flattened sheet of rubber. Two toes had struck it simultaneously or some one's huge chest had crushed it and the ball had exploded.

"Whenever men are discussing the frantic enthusiasm of some fellows of the game I always recall the following episode as a standard of measurement. The Rules Committee met one night at the Martinique in New York for their annual winter session. Just as the members were going upstairs to convene, I had the pleasure of introducing George Foster Sanford to Fielding H. Yost. The introduction was made in the middle of the lobby directly in the way of the traffic pa.s.sing in and out of the main door. The Rules Committee had gone into its regular session; the hour was eight o'clock in the evening. When they came down at midnight these two great football heroes were standing in the very spot where they were introduced four hours before and they were talking as they had been every minute throughout the four hours about football. Members of the Committee joked with the two enthusiasts and then retired. When they came down stairs the next morning at eight o'clock they found the two fanatics seated upon a bench nearby still talking football, and that afternoon when the Committee had finished its labors and had adjourned _sine die_ they left Sanford and Yost still in the lobby, still on the bench, hungry and sleepy and still talking football."

This anecdote will be a good one for Parke Davis' friends to read, for how he ever stayed out of that talk-fest is a mystery--maybe he did.

Now that Yost and Sanford have retired we will let Parke continue.

"A few years ago everybody except Dartmouth men laughed at the football which, bounding along the ground at Princeton suddenly jumped over the cross bar and gave to Princeton a goal from the field which carried with it the victory. But did you ever hear that in the preceding season, in a game between two Southern Pennsylvania colleges, a ball went awry from a drop kick, striking in the chest a policeman who had strayed upon the field? The ball rebounded and cleanly caromed between the goal post for a goal from the field. Years ago Lafayette and Pennsylvania State College were waging a close game at Easton. Suddenly, and without being noticed, Morton F. Jones, Lafayette's famous center-rush in those days, left the field of play to change his head gear. The ball was snapped in play and a fleet Penn State halfback broke through Lafayette's line, and, armed with the ball, dodged the second barriers and threatened by a das.h.i.+ng sprint to score in the extreme corner of the field. As he reached the 10-yard line, to the amazement of all, Jones dashed out of the side line crowd upon the field between the 10-yard line and his goal, thereby intercepting the State halfback, tackling him so sharply that the latter dropped the ball. Jones picked it up and ran it back 40 yards. There was no rule at that time which prevented the play, and so Penn-State ultimately was defeated. Jones not only was a hero, but his exploit long remained a mystery to many who endeavored to figure out how he could have been 25 yards ahead of the ball and between the runner and his own goal line."

A story is told of the wonderful dodging ability of Phil King, Princeton '93. He was known throughout the football world as one of the s.h.i.+ftiest runners of his day. Through his efficient work, King had fairly won the game against Yale in '93. The next year the Yale men made up their minds that the only way to defeat Princeton was to take care of King, and they were ever on the alert to watch him whenever he got the ball. The whole Yale team was looking for King throughout this game.

On the kick-off Phil got the ball, and all the Yale forwards began to shout, "Here he comes, here he comes," and then as he was cleverly dodging and evading the Yale players, one of the backs, who was waiting to tackle him low, was heard to say, "There he goes."