Football Days Part 30

"He was to be seen the night before, and the morning of the game. He always had his tickets for the side line and wore the badge as an ex-Yale captain. But the game itself Billy Rhodes never saw.

"If at Springfield, he was to be found in the Ma.s.sasoit House, walking the floor until the result of the game was known. If at New Haven, he was not at the Yale Field. He walked around the field and out into the woods. If the game was at Cambridge, he was not at Holmes Field, or later, at Soldiers' Field.

"When the game was over he would join in the celebration of victory, or sink into the misery of defeat, as the case might be. But he never could witness a game. The sting of defeat had left its permanent wound."

A YALE NIGHTMARE

Those who saw the Army defeat Yale at West Point in 1904 must realize what a blow it was to the Blue. The first score came as a result of a blocked kick by West Point, which was recovered by Erwin, who picked up the ball and dashed across the line for a touchdown. The Army scored the second time when Torney cut loose and ran 105 yards for a touchdown.

Sam Morse, captain of the Yale 1906 team, who played right halfback in this game, tells how the nightmare of defeat may come upon us at any time, even in the early season, and incidentally how it may have its compensations.

"An instance of the psychology of football is to be found in the fall of 1904, when Jim Hogan was captain of the Yale team," says Morse. "I had the pleasure of playing back of him on the defensive in almost every game of that year, and I got to depend so much on those bull-like charges of his that I fear that if I had been obliged to play back of some one else my playing would have been of inferior quality.

"Yale had a fine team that year, defeating both Harvard and Princeton with something to spare. The only eleven that scored on us was West Point, and they beat us. 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.

We were all in the West Point dressing-room when Jim Hogan arose. He felt what we all took to be a disgrace more keenly than any of us. There was no shake in his voice, however, or any tears in his eyes when he bellowed at us to stop blubbering.

"'Don't feel sorry for yourselves. I hope this thing will hurt us all enough so that we will profit by it. It isn't a matter to cry over--it's a matter to a.n.a.lyze closely and to take into yourself and to digest, and finally to prevent its happening again.'

"He drove it home as only Jim Hogan could. At the close Ralph Bloomer jumped to his feet and cried:

"'Jim, old man, we are with you, and you are right about it, and we will wipe this thing out in a way which will satisfy you and all the rest of the college.'

"The whole team followed him. Right then and there that aggregation became a Yale football team in the proper sense, and one of the greatest Yale football teams that ever played. It was the game followed by Jim's speech that made the eleven men a unit for victory.

"If Jim had been allowed to live a few more years the quality of leaders.h.i.+p that he possessed would have made of him a very prominent and powerful man. His memory is one of the dearest things to all of us who were team mates or friends of his, but I hardly ever think of him without picturing him that particular day in the dressing-room at West Point, when in five minutes he made of eleven men a really great football team."

Even Eddie Mahan is not immune to the haunting memory of defeat, and perhaps because of the very fact that disaster came into his brilliant gridiron career only once, and then in his senior year, it hit him hard. The manner of its telling by this great player is sufficient proof of that. Here is Eddie's story:

[Ill.u.s.tration:

Hunkin Tilley Bailey Snyder Jewett Gillies Miller Lalley s.h.i.+verick Anderson Menler Barrett Cool Shelton Collins Eckley Schock Schlicter Zander

CORNELL'S GREAT TEAM--1915]

"I enjoyed my football days at Harvard so well that I would like to go back each fall and play football for the rest of my life. I wish to goodness I could go back and play just one game over--that is the Cornell game of 1915. My freshman team won all its games, and during the three years that I played for the Harvard Varsity I never figured in a losing game except that one. Cornell beat Harvard 10 to 0. The score of that game will haunt me all my life long. This game has been a nightmare to me ever since. Every time I think of football that game is one of the first things that comes to mind. I fumbled a lot. I don't know why, but I couldn't seem to hold onto the ball.

"We blocked four kicks, but Cornell recovered every one. We sort of felt that there was more than the Cornell team playing against us--a goal from the field and a touchdown. s.h.i.+verick, of Cornell, stands out in my recollection of that game. He was a good kicker. Once he had to kick out from behind the goal post down in his own territory. Watson and I were both laying for a line buck; playing up close. s.h.i.+verick kicked one over my head, out of bounds at his own 45-yard line.

"I felt like a burglar after this game, because I felt that I had lost it. I was feeling pretty blue until the Monday after the game, when the coaches picked eleven men as the Varsity team, and just as soon as they sent these eleven men to a section of the field to get acquainted with each other--that was the beginning of team work. From the way those fellows went at it that day, and from the spirit they showed, we felt that no team could ever lick us again, neither Princeton nor Yale. The Cornell game acted like a tonic on the whole crowd. Instead of disheartening the team it instilled in us determination. We said:

"'We know what it is to be licked, and we'll be d.a.m.ned if we'll be licked again.'"

Jack de Saulles' football ambitions were realized when he made the Yale team at quarterback, the position which his brother Charlie, before him, had occupied. His spectacular runs, his able generals.h.i.+p, his ability to handle punts, coupled with that characteristic de Saulles' grit, made him a famous player.

Let this game little quarterback tell his own story:

"Billy Bull and I have often discussed the fact that when an attempt for a goal from the field failed, one of the players of the opposing side always touched the ball back of the goal line (thereby making it dead), and brought it out to the 25-yard line to kick. Of course, the ball is never dead until it is touched down. It was in the fall of 1902 when we were playing West Point. In the latter part of the second half of that game, with the score 6 to 6, Charlie Daly attempted a field goal, which was unsuccessful. What Billy Bull and I had discussed many times came into my mind like a flash. I picked the ball up and walked out with it as if it had been touched back of the goal. When I pa.s.sed the 25-yard line, walking along casually, Bucky Vail, who was the referee, yelled to me to stop. I walked over to him unconcerned and said: 'Bucky, old boy!

this ball is not dead, because I did not touch it down. And I am going down the field with it.' By that time the West Point men had taken their positions in order to receive the kick from the 25-yard line. While I was still walking down the field, in order to pa.s.s all the West Point men, before making my dash for a certain touchdown, it struck Bucky Vail that I was right, and he yelled out at the top of his voice. 'The ball is not dead. It is free.' Whereupon the West Point men started after me.

An Army man tackled me on their 25-yard line, after I had taken the ball down the field for nearly a touchdown. I have often turned over in my bed at night since that time, cursing the action of Referee Vail. If he had not interfered with my play I would have walked down the field for a touchdown and victory for Yale. The final score remained 6 to 6.

"I have often thought of the painful hours I would have suffered had I missed the two open field chances in the disastrous game at Cambridge in the fall of 1902, when Yale was beaten 23 to 0. On two different occasions in that game a Harvard runner with interference had pa.s.sed the whole Yale team. I was the only Yale man between the Harvard man and a touchdown. The supreme satisfaction I had in nailing both of those runners is one of the most pleasant recollections of my football career.

"When I was a little shaver, back in 1889, I lived at South Bethlehem, Pa. Paul Das.h.i.+ell and Mathew McClung, who were then playing football at Lehigh University, took an interest in me. Paul Das.h.i.+ell took me to the first football game I ever saw. Dibby McClung gave me one of the old practice b.a.l.l.s of the Lehigh team. This was the first football I ever had in my hands. For weeks afterwards that football was my nightly companion in bed. These two Lehigh stars have always been my football heroes, and it was a happy day for me when I played quarterback on the Yale team and these two men acted as officials that day."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ONE SCENE NEVER PHOTOGRAPHED IN FOOTBALL]

CHAPTER XIX

MEN WHO COACHED

The picture on the opposite page will recall to mind many a serious moment in the career of men who coached; when something had gone wrong; when some player had not come up to expectation; when a combination of poor judgment and ill luck was threatening to throw away the results of a season's work. Such scenes are never photographed, but they are preserved no less indelibly in the minds of all who have played this role.

Where is the old football player, who, gazing at this picture, will not be carried back to those days that will never come again; hours when you listened perhaps guiltily to the stinging words of the coach; moments when spurred on by the thunder and lightning of his wrath you could hardly wait to get out upon the field to grapple with your opponents. At such times, all that was worth while seemed to surge up within you, fiercely demanding a chance, while if you were a coach you yearned to get into the game, only to realize as the team trotted out on the field that yours was no longer a playing part. All you could expect henceforth would be to walk nervously up and down the side line with chills and thrills alternating along your spine.

There were no coaches in the old days. Football history relates that in the beginning fellows who wanted fun and exercise would chip in and buy a leather cover for a beef bladder. It was necessary to have a supply of these bladders on hand, for stout kicks frequently burst them.

In those days the ball was tossed up in the air and all hands rushed for it. There was no organization then, very few rules, and the football players developed themselves.

To-day the old-time player stands on the side lines and hears the coach yelling:

"Play hard! Fall on the ball! Tackle low! Start quick! Charge hard and fast!"

As far as the fundamentals go, the game seems to him much the same, but when he begins to recollect he sees how far it has really progressed. He recalls how the football coach became a reality and how a teacher of football appeared upon the gridiron.

Better coaching systems were installed as football progressed. Rules were expanded, trainers crept in, intercollegiate games were scheduled and compet.i.tion and keen rivalry developed everywhere. In fact, the desire to win has become so firmly established in the minds of college men that we now have a finished product in our great American game of football--wonderfully attractive, but very expensive.

Compet.i.tion has grown to such an extent that our coaching systems of to-day resemble, in a way, the plans for national preparedness--costly, but apparently necessary. All this means that the American football man, like the American captain of industry, or the American pioneer in any field of activity, is never content to stand still. His motto is, "Ever Onward."

It is not always the star player that makes the greatest coach. The mediocre man is quite likely to have absorbed as much football teaching ability as the star; and when his opportunity comes to coach, he sometimes gets more out of the men than the man with the big reputation.

Personality counts in coaching. In addition to a coach's keen sense of football, there must be a strong personality around which the players may rally. All this inspires confidence.

It is a joy for a coach to work with good material--the real foundation of success. The rules of to-day, however, give what, under old standards, was the weaker team a much broader opportunity for victory over physically larger and stronger opponents.

But there are days nevertheless when every coach gets discouraged; times when there is no response from the men he is coaching--when their slowness of mind and body seem to justify the despair of Charlie Daly who said to his team:

"You fellows are made of crockery from the neck down and ivory from the neck up."

Football is fickle. To-day you may be a hero. After the last game you may be carried off on the shoulders of enthusiastic admirers and dined and wined by hosts of friends; but across the field there is a grim faced coach who may already be scheming out a play for next year which will s.n.a.t.c.h you back from the "Hall of Fame" and make your friends describe you sadly as a "back-number."

Haughton arrived at Harvard at the psychological moment. Harvard had pa.s.sed through many distressing years playing for the football supremacy. He found something to build upon, because, although the game at Cambridge was in the doldrums, there had been keen and capable coaching in the past.