Football Days Part 14

"Tom Shevlin usually stood near the goal line when Yale received the kick-off. As a matter of fact he caught the ball most of the time. The night before the Yale game in 1905, Bill Carr and myself were discussing what might come up the following day. Inasmuch as we always lined up side by side on the kick off, we made a wager that if Harvard kicked off we would each be the first to tackle Shevlin.

"The next day Harvard won the toss and chose to kick off, and as we had hoped, Shevlin caught the ball. Carr and I raced down the field, each intent on being the first to tackle him. I crashed into Shevlin and spilled him, upsetting myself at the same time. When I picked myself up and looked around, Carr had Shevlin pinned securely to the ground. After the game we told Shevlin of our wager and he said that under the circ.u.mstances all bets were off as both had won."

Former U. S. Attorney-General William H. Lewis, who is one of the leading representatives of the colored race, needs no introduction to the football world, says Kersburg. 'Bill,' or 'Lew,' as he is familiarly known to all Harvard men, laid the foundation for the present system of line play at Cambridge. He was actively engaged in coaching until 1907 when he was obliged to give it up due to pressure of business.

"In 1905 'Hooks' Burr and I played the guard positions. 'Lew' seemed to center his attention on us as we always received more 'calls' after each game than the other linemen for doing this, that, or the other thing wrong. In the Brown game of this year Hooks played against a colored man who was exceptionally good and who, Hooks admitted afterward, 'put it all over' him. The Monday following this game we received our usual 'call.' After telling me what a rotten game I had played he turned on Burr and remarked. 'What the devil was the matter with you on Sat.u.r.day, Hooks? That guard on the Brown team "smeared" you.' Burr replied, 'I don't know what was the matter with me. I used my hands on that n.i.g.g.e.r's head and body all through the game but it didn't seem to do any good.'

Several of us who were listening felt a bit embarra.s.sed that Hooks had unwittingly made this remark. The tension was relieved, however, when Lew drawled out, 'Why the devil didn't you kick him in the s.h.i.+ns?' A burst of laughter greeted this sally."

Donald Grant Herring, better known to football men in and out of Princeton as Heff, is one of the few American players of international experience. After a period of splendid play for the Tigers he went to England with a Rhodes Scholars.h.i.+p. At Merton College he continued his athletic career, and it was not long before he became a member of one of the most famous Rugby fifteens ever turned out by Oxford.

Heff has always said that he enjoyed the English game, but whether the brand he played was American or English, his opponent usually got little enjoyment out of a hard afternoon with this fine Princeton athlete.

"In the late summer of 1903, I was on a train coming east from Montana,"

Heff tells me, "after a summer spent in the Rockies. A companion recognized among the pa.s.sengers Doc Hillebrand, who was coming East from his ranch to coach the Princeton team. This companion who was still a Lawrenceville schoolboy, had the nerve to brace Hillebrand and tell him in my presence that I was going to enter Princeton that fall and that I was a star football player. You can imagine what Doc thought, and how I felt. However, Doc was kind enough to tell me to report for practice and to recognize me when I appeared on the field several weeks later. I soon drifted over to the freshman field and I want to admit here what caused me to do so. It was nothing more nor less than the size of Jim c.o.o.ney's legs. Jim was a cla.s.smate of mine whom I first saw on the football field when he and another tackle candidate were engaged in that delicate pastime known to linemen as breaking through. I realized at once that, if Jim and I were ever put up against one another, I would stand about as much chance of shoving him back as I would if I tried to push a steam roller. So I went over to the freshman field, where Howard Henry was coaching at the time. He was sending ends down the field and I remember being thrilled, after beating a certain bunch of them, at hearing him say: 'You in the brown jersey, come over here in the first squad.'

"DeWitt's team beat Cornell 44-0. For years there hung on the walls of the Osborn Club at Princeton a splendid action picture of Dana Kafer making one of the touchdowns in that game. It was a ma.s.s on tackle play, and Jim c.o.o.ney was getting his Cornell opponent out of the way for Kafer to go over the line. The picture gave Jim dead away. He had a firm grip of the Cornell man's jersey and arm. Ten years or more afterward, a group, including c.o.o.ney, was sitting in the Osborn Club. In a spirit of fun one man said, 'Jim, we know now how you got your reputation as a tackle. We can see it right up there on the wall.' The next day the picture was gone.

"After I was graduated from Princeton in 1907 I went to Merton College, Oxford. There are twenty-two different colleges in Oxford and eighteen in Cambridge. Each one has its own teams and crews and plays a regular schedule. From the best of these college teams the university teams are drawn. Each college team has a captain and a secretary, who acts as manager. At the beginning of the college year (early October) the captain and secretary of each team go around among the freshmen of the college and try to get as many of them as possible to play their particular sport; mine Rugby football. After a few days the captain posts on the college bulletin board, which is always placed at the Porter's Lodge, a notice that a squash will be held on the college field. A squash is what we would call practice.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE NEXT DAY THE PICTURE WAS GONE"

Jim c.o.o.ney Making a Hole for Dana Kafer.]

"Sometimes for a few days before the game an Old Blue may come down to Oxford and give a little coaching to the team. Here often the captain does all the coaching. The Cambridge match is for blood, and, while friendly enough, is likely to be much more savage than any other. In the match I played in, which Oxford won 35-3, the record score in the whole series, which started in 1872, we had three men severely injured. In the first three minutes of the game one of our star backs was carried off the field with a broken shoulder, while our captain was kicked in the head and did not come out of his daze until about seven o'clock that evening. He played throughout the game, however. Our secretary was off the field with a knee cap out of place for more than half the game. A game of Rugby, by the way, consists of two 45-minute halves, with a three minute intermission. There are no subst.i.tutes, and if a man is injured, his team plays one man short. We beat Cambridge that year with thirteen men the greater part of the game, twelve for some time against their full team of fifteen. Their only try (touchdown in plain American) was scored when we had twelve men on the field. We were champions of England that year, and did not lose a match through the fall season, though we tied one game with the great Harlequins Club of London, whom we afterward beat in the return game. Of the fine fellows who made up that great Oxford team, six are dead, five of them 'somewhere in France.'"

Carl Flanders was a big factor in the Yale rush line. Foster Sanford considers him one of the greatest offensive centers that ever played. He was six feet three and one-fourth inches tall and weighed 202 pounds.

In 1906 Flanders coached the Indian team at Carlisle. Let us see some of the interesting things that characterize the Indian players, through Flanders' experience.

The nicknames with which the Indians labelled each other were mostly those of animals or a weapon of defense. Mount Pleasant and Libby always called each other Knife. Bill Gardner was crowned Chicken Legs, Charles, one of the halfbacks, and a regular little tiger, was called Bird Legs.

Other names fastened to the different players were Whale Bone, Shoe String, Tommyhawk and Wolf.

The Indians always played cleanly as long as their opponents played that way. Dillon, an old Sioux Indian, and one of the fastest guards I ever saw, was a good example of this. If anybody started rough play, Dillon would say:

"Stop that, boys!" and the chap who was guilty always stopped. But if an opponent continually played dirty football, Dillon would say grimly: "I'll get you!" On the next play or two, you'd never know how, the rough player would be taken out. Dillon had "got" his man.

"Wallace Denny and Bemus Pierce got up a code of signals, using an Indian word which designated a single play. Among the Indian words which designated these signals were Water-bucket, Watehnee, Coocoohee. I never could find out what it all meant, and following the Indian team by this code of signals was a task which was too much for me."

Bill Horr, renowned in Colgate and Syracuse, writes: "Colgate University and Colgate Academy are under the same administration, and the football teams were practicing when I entered school. I went out for the team and after the second practice I was put into the scrimmage. I was greatly impressed with the game and continued for the afternoon practice, and played at tackle in the first game of the season. In four years of winning football I became acquainted with such wonderful athletes as Riley Castleman and Walter Runge of the Colgate Varsity team.

"In the fall of 1905 I entered Syracuse University and played right tackle on the varsity team for four years and was captain of the victorious 1908 team. In the four years I never missed a scrimmage or a game.

"I think that one of the hardest games I ever played in was the game against Princeton in 1908, when they had such stars as Siegling, MacFadyen, Eddie Dillon and Tibbott. The game ended in a scoreless tie with the ball see-sawing back and forth on the 40-yard line. I had been accustomed to carry the ball, and had been successful in executing a forward pa.s.s of fifty-five yards in the Yale game the week before, placing the ball on the 1-yard line, only to lose it on a fumble.

"I had the reputation of being a good-natured player, and indirectly heard it rumored many times by coaches and football players that they would like to see me fighting mad on the football field. The few Syracuse rooters who journeyed to Easton the day we played Lafayette had that opportunity. Dowd was the captain of the Lafayette team. Next to me was Barry, a first-cla.s.s football player, who stripped in the neighborhood of 200 pounds. Just before the beginning of the second half I was in a crouching position ready to start, when some one dealt me a stinging blow on the ear. I was dazed for the time being. I turned to Barry and asked him who did it. He pointed to Dowd. From that instant I was determined to seek revenge. I was ignorant of the true culprit until about a year afterward, when Anderson, who played center, and was a good friend of mine, told me about it. It seemed that just before we went on the field for the second half Buck O'Neil, who was coaching the Syracuse team, told Barry to hit me and make me mad."

CHAPTER X

COLLEGE TRADITIONS AND SPIRIT

College life in America is rich in traditions. Customs are handed down cla.s.s by cla.s.s and year by year until finally they acquire the force of law. Each college and university has a community life and a character of its own.

The spirit of each inst.i.tution abides within its walls. It cannot be invaded by an outsider, or ever completely understood by one who has not grown up in it. The atmosphere of a college community is conservative.

It is the outcome of generations of student custom and thought, which have resolved themselves into distinct grooves.

It requires a thorough understanding of the customs of college men, their antics and pranks, to appreciate the fact that the performers are simply boys, carrying on the traditions of those gone before.

Gray-haired graduates who know by experience what is embodied in college spirit, join feelingly in the old customs of their college days, and in observing the new customs which have grown out of the old.

These traditional customs, some of them humorous, and others deeply moving in their sentiment, are among the first things that impress the freshman. He does not comprehend the meaning of them at once, nor does he realize that they are the product of generations of students, but he soon learns that there is something more powerful in college life than the brick and mortar of beautiful buildings, or high pa.s.sing marks in the cla.s.sroom. When he comes to know the value and the underlying spirit of the traditions of his college, he treasures them among the enduring memories of his life.

The business man who never enjoyed the advantage of going to college, is puzzled as he witnesses the demonstration of undergraduate life, and he fails to catch the meaning; he does not understand; it has played no part in his own experience; college customs seem absurd to him, and he fails to appreciate that in these traditions our American college spirit finds expression.

As an outsider views the result of a football victory, he sees perhaps only the bitter look of defeat on the losers' faces, and is at a loss to understand the loyal spirit of thousands of graduates and undergraduates who stand and cheer their team after defeat. Such a sight, undoubtedly, impresses him; but he turns his attention to the triumphant march of the victorious sympathizers around the field and watches the winners being borne aloft by hero wors.h.i.+pers; while hats by the thousands are being tossed over the cross bar of the goal post that carried the winning play.

The snake dance of thousands of exulting students enlivens the scene--the spirit of glorious victory breaks loose.

After the Harvard victory in 1908, in the midst of the excitement, a Harvard graduate got up from his seat, climbed over the fence, put his derby hat and bull-dog pipe on the gra.s.s, walked solemnly out a few paces, turned two complete handsprings, walked back, put on his hat, picked up his pipe, climbed solemnly over the fence again and took his place in the crowd. He was very businesslike about it and didn't say a word. He had to get it out of his system--that was all. n.o.body laughed at him.

One sees gray-haired men stand and cheer, sing and enthuse over their Alma Mater's team. For the moment the rest of the world is forgotten.

Tears come with defeat to those on the grandstand, as well as to the players, and likewise happy smiles and joyous greetings come when victory crowns the day.

In the midst of a crisis in the game, men and women, old and young, break over the bounds of conventionality, get acquainted with their seat mates and share the general excitement. The thrill of victory possesses them and the old grads embrace each other after a winning touchdown.

There may be certain streets in a college town upon which a freshman is never seen. It may be that a freshman has to wear a certain kind of cap; his trousers must not be rolled up at the bottom. And if you should see a freshman standing on a balcony at night, singing some foolish song, with a crowd of soph.o.m.ores standing below, you smile as you realize that you are witnessing the performance of some college custom.

And if you see a young man dressed in an absurd fantastic costume, going about the streets of a city, or a quiet college town, it may mean an initiation into a certain society or club, and you will note that he does his part with a quiet, earnest look upon his face, realizing that he is carrying on a tradition which has endured for years.

You hear the seniors singing on the campus, while the whole college listens. It is their hour. At games you see the cheer leaders take their places in front of the grandstand, and as they bend and double themselves into all sorts of shapes, they bring out the cheers which go to make college spirit strong.

If you were at Yale, on what is known as "Tap Day," you would view in wonderment the solemnity and seriousness of the occasion. An election to a senior society is Yale's highest honor. As you sit on the old Yale fence you realize what it means to Yale men. In the secret life of the campus men yearn most for this honor and the traditional gathering of seniors under the oak tree for receiving elections is a college custom that has all the binding force of a most rigid law.

ALUMNI PARADES

Then come the alumni parades at Commencement. The old timers head the procession; those who came first, are first in line, and so on down to the youngest and most recent graduate.

There are many interesting things in the parade, which bring out specific cla.s.s peculiarities. In one college you may see gray-haired men walking behind an immense Sacred Bird, as it is called. This Bird--the creation of an ingenious mind--is the size of an ostrich and has all the semblance of life, with many lifelike tricks and habits.

Men dress in all sorts of costumes. This is a day in which each cla.s.s has some peculiar part, and all are united in the one big thought that it is a cherished college custom.

You may see some man with the letter of his college on his sweater, another may have his cla.s.s numerals, another may wear a gold football.

These are not ordinary things to be purchased at sporting goods stores; they are a reward of merit. The college custom has made it so, and if in some college town the traditions of the university are such that a man, as he pa.s.ses the Ma Newell gateway at Cambridge raises his hat in honor of this great Harvard hero, it is a tradition backed up by a wonderful spirit of love towards one who has gone. And then on Commencement Day when the seniors plant their cla.s.s ivy--that is a token to remain behind them and flourish long after they are out in the wide, wide world.

College tradition makes it possible for a poor boy to get an education.

The poor fellow may wait on the table, where sit many rich men's sons, but they may be all chums with him; they are on the same footing; the campus of one is the campus of the other, and all you can say is "It is just the way of things--just the way it must be." More power to the man who works his way through college.