Football Days Part 7

In every college and university there is a hall of fame, where the heroes of the past are idolized by the younger generations. Trophies, portraits, old flags and banners hang there. Threadbare though they may be, they are rich in memories. These are, however, only the material things--"the trappings and the suits" of fame--but in the hearts of university men the memory of the heroes of the past is firmly and reverently enshrined. Their achievements are a distinguished part of the university's history--a part of our lives as university men--and we are ever ready now to burn incense in their honor, as we were in the old days to burn bonfires, in celebration of their deeds.

It is well now that we recall some of the men who have stood in the front line of football; in the making and preservation of the great game. Many of them have not lived to see the results of their service to the sport which they deemed to be manly and worth while. It is, however, because they stood there during days, often full of stress and severe criticism of the game, staunch and resistless, that football occupies its present high plane in the athletic world.

It may be that some of their names are not now a.s.sociated with football.

Some of them are captains of industry. They are in the forefront of public affairs. Some of them are engaged in the world's work in far-away lands. But the spirit that these men apply to their life work is the same spirit that stirred them on the gridiron. Their football training has made them better able to fight the battle of life.

Men who gave signals, are now directing large industries. Players who carried the ball, are now carrying trade to the ends of the world. Men who bucked the line, are forging their way st.u.r.dily to the front. Men who were tackles, are still meeting their opponents with the same intrepid zeal. The men who played at end in those days, are to-day seeing that nothing gets around them in the business world. The public is the referee and umpire. It knows their achievements in the greater game of life.

It is not my purpose to select an all-star football team from the long list of heroes past and present. It is not possible to select any one man whom we can all crown as king. We all have our football idols, our own heroes, men after whom we have patterned, who were our inspiration.

We can never line up in actual scrimmage the heroes of the past with those of more recent years. What a treat if this could be arranged!

There are many men I have idolized in football, not only for their record as players, but for the loyalty and spirit for the game which they have inspired.

Walter Camp

When I asked Walter Camp to write the introduction to this book, I told him that as he had written about football players for twenty years it was up to some one to relate some of _his_ achievements as a football player. We all know Walter Camp as a successful business man and as a football genius whose strategy has meant much to Yale. His untiring efforts, his contributions to the promotion of the best interests of the game, stand as a brilliant record in the history of football. To give him his just due would require a special volume. The football world knows Walter Camp as a thoroughbred, a man who has played the game fairly, and sees to it that the game is being played fairly to-day.

We have read his books, enjoyed his football stories, and kept in touch with the game through his newspaper articles. He is the loyal, ever-present critic on the side lines and the helpful adviser in every emergency. He has helped to safeguard the good name of football and kept pace with the game until to-day he is known as the "Father of football."

Let us go back into football history where, in the recollections of others, we shall see Freshman Camp make the team, score touchdowns, kick goals and captain Yale teams to victory.

F. R. Vernon, who was a freshman at Yale when Camp was a soph.o.m.ore, draws a vivid word picture of Camp in his active football days. Vernon played on the Yale team with Camp.

"Walter Camp in his football playing days," says Vernon, "was built physically on field running lines; quick on his legs and with his arms.

His action was easy all over and seemed to be in thorough control from a well-balanced head, from which looked a pair of exceptionally keen, piercing, expressive brown eyes.

"Camp was always alert, and seemed to sense developments before they occurred. One of my chief recollections of Camp's play was his great confidence with the ball. In his room, on the campus, in the gym', wherever he was, if possible, he would have a football with him. He seemed to know every inch of its surface, and it seemed almost as if the ball knew him. It would stick to his palm, like iron to a magnet.

"In one of his plays, Camp would run down the side of the field, the ball held far out with one arm, while the other arm was performing yeoman service in warding off the oncoming tacklers. Frequently he would pa.s.s the ball from one hand to the other, while still running, depending upon which arm he saw he would need for defense. Smilingly and confidently, Camp would run the gauntlet of opposing players for many consecutive gains. I do not recall one instance in which he lost the ball through these tactics.

"It was a pretty game to play and a pretty game to look at. Would that the rules could be so worded as to make the football of Camp's time the football of to-day!

"Walter Camp's natural ability as a football player was recognized as soon as he entered Yale in 1876. He made the 'varsity at once and played halfback. It was in the first Harvard football game at Hamilton Park that the Harvard captain, who was a huge man with a full, bushy beard, saw Walter Camp, then a stripling freshman in uniform, and remarked to the Yale Captain:

"'You don't mean to let that child play; he is too light; he will get hurt.'

"Walter made a mental note of that remark, and during the game the Harvard captain had occasion to remember it also, when in one of the plays Camp tackled him, and the two went to the ground with a heavy thud. As the Harvard captain gradually came to, he remarked to one of his team mates:

"'Well, that little fellow nearly put me out!'

"Camp's brilliant playing earned him the captaincy of the team in 1878 and 1879. He had full command of his men and was extremely popular with them, but this did not prevent his being a stickler for discipline.

"In my day on the Yale team with Camp," Vernon states, "Princeton was our dire opponent. For a week or so before a Princeton game, we all agreed to stay on the campus and to be in bed every night by eleven o'clock. Johnny Moorhead, who was one of our best runners, decided one night to go to the theatre, however, and was caught by Captain Camp, whereupon we were all summoned out of bed to Camp's room, shortly before midnight. After the roundup we learned the reason for our unexpected meeting. There was some discussion in which Camp took very little part.

No one expected that Johnny would receive more than a severe reprimand and this feeling was due largely to the fact that we needed him in the game. Imagine our surprise, therefore, when Camp, who had left us for a moment, returned to the room and handed in his resignation as captain of the team. We revolted at this. Johnny, who sized up the situation, rather than have the team lose Camp, decided to quit the team himself.

What occurred the next day between Camp and Johnny Moorhead we never knew, but Johnny played in the game and squared himself."

Walter Camp's name is coupled with that of Chummy Eaton in football history. "Eaton was on the left end rush line," says Vernon, "and played a great game with Camp down the side line. When one was nearly caught for a down, the other would receive the ball from him on an over-head throw and proceed with the run. Camp and Eaton would repeat this play, sending the ball back and forth down the side of the field for great gains.

"In one of the big games in the fall of 1879, Eaton had a large muscle in one of his legs torn and had to quit playing for that season." Vernon was put in Chummy's place. "But I couldn't fill Chummy's shoes," Vernon acknowledges, "for he and Camp had practiced their beautiful side line play all the fall.

"The next year Chummy's parents wouldn't let him play, but Chummy was game--he simply couldn't resist--it was a case of Love Before Duty with him. He played on the Yale team the next fall, however, but not as Eaton, and every one who followed football was wondering who that star player 'Adams' was and where he came from. But those on the inside knew it was Chummy.

"Frederic Remington," says Vernon, "was a member of our team. We were close friends and spent many Sunday afternoons on long walks. I can see him now with his India ink pencil sketching as we went along, and I must laugh now at the nerve I had to joke him about his efforts.

"Remy was a good football player and one of the best boxers in college.

Dear Old Remy is gone, but he left his mark."

Other men, equally prominent old Yale men tell me, who were on the team that year were Hull, Jack Harding, Ben Lamb, Bob Watson, Pete Peters and many others.

Walter Camp, as Yale gridiron stories go, was not only captain of his team, but in reality also its coach. Perhaps he can be called the pioneer coach of Yale football. It is most interesting to listen to old time Yale players relate incidents of the days when they played under Walter Camp as their captain: how they came to his room by invitation at night, sat on the floor with their backs to the wall, with nothing in the center of the room but a regulation football. There they got together, talked things over, made suggestions and comparisons. And it is said of Camp that he would do more listening by far than talking.

This was characteristic, for although he knew so much of the game he was willing to get every point of view and profit by every suggestion.

In 1880 Camp relinquished the captaincy to R. W. Watson. Yale again defeated Harvard, Camp kicking a goal from placement. Following this R. W. Watson ran through the entire Harvard team for a touchdown.

Harvard men were greatly pained when Walter Camp played again in 1881.

He should have graduated in 1880. This game was also won by Yale, thus making the fourth victorious Yale team that Camp played on. This record has never been equalled. Camp played six years at Yale.

John Harding was another of the famous old Yale stars who played on Walter Camp's team.

"It is now more than thirty-five years since my days on the football gridiron," writes Harding. "What little elementary training I got in football, I attribute to the old game of 'theory,' which for two years on spring and summer evenings, after supper, we used to play at St.

Paul's School in Concord, N. H., on the athletic grounds near the Middle School. One fellow would be 'it' as we dashed from one side of the grounds to the other and when one was trapped he joined the 'its,' until everybody was caught. I learned there how to dodge, as well as the rudiments of the necessary football accomplishment of how to fall down without getting hurt. As a result of this experience, with my chum, W. A. Peters, when we got down to Yale in the fall of '76, we offered ourselves as willing victims for the University football team, and with the result that we both 'made' the freshman team, and had our first experience in a match game of football against the Harvard freshman at Boston. I don't remember who won that contest, but I do remember the University eleven, under Eugene Baker's careful training, beating Harvard that fall at New Haven and my football enthusiasm being fired up to a desire to make the team, if it were possible.

"Of course, Walter Camp has for many years, and deservedly so, been regarded as the father of football at Yale, but in my day, and at least until Baker left college, he was only an ordinary mortal and a good halfback. Baker was the unquestioned star and I cannot disabuse my mind that he was the original football man of Yale, and at least ent.i.tled to the t.i.tle of 'grandfather' of the game there and it was from him that my tuition mainly came.

"My impression is that Baker was always for the open running and pa.s.sing game and that ma.s.s playing and flying wedges and the various refinements of the game that depended largely on 'beef' were of a later day.

"For four years I played in the rush line with Walter Camp as a halfback, and for two years, at least, with Hull and Ben Lamb on either side of me, all of us somehow understanding each other's game and all being ready and willing to help each other out. Whatever ability and dexterity I may have developed seemed to show itself at its best when playing with them and to prove that good team work and 'knowing your man' wins.

"I got to know Walter Camp's methods and ways of playing, so that, somehow or other, I could judge pretty well where the ball was going to drop when he kicked and could navigate myself about so that I was, more often than any one else on our side, near the ball when it dropped to the ground, and, if perchance, it happened to be m.u.f.fed by an opposing player, which put me 'on side,' the chances of a touchdown, if I got the ball, were excellent, and Hull and Lamb were somehow on hand to back me up and were ready to follow me in any direction.

"During my last two years of football the 'rushers' were unanimously of the opinion that the kicking, dodging and pa.s.sing open game was the game we should strive for and that it was the duty of the halfback and backs to end their runs with a good long punt, wherever possible, and give us a chance to get under the ball when it came down, while the rest of the team behind the line were in favor of a running ma.s.s play game, particularly in wet and slippery weather.

"I remember once in my senior year our divergence of views on this question, about three weeks before the final game, nearly split our team, and that as a result I nearly received the doubtful honor of becoming the captain of a defeated Yale team. Camp, fearful of wet weather and possible snow at the Thanksgiving game, and with Channing, Eaton and Fred Remington as the heavy Yale ends and everybody 'big' in the rush line excepting myself, was trying to develop us with as little kicking as possible, and was sensitive because of the protests from the rush line that there was no kicking. We were all summoned one evening to his room in Durfee; the situation explained, together with his unwillingness to a.s.sume the responsibility of captain unless his ideas were followed; his fear of defeat, if they were not followed, his willingness to continue on the team as a halfback and to do his best and his resignation as captain with the suggestion of my taking the responsibility of the position. Things looked blue for Yale when Walter walked out of the door, but after some ten minutes' discussion we decided that the open game was the better, despite Camp's opinion to the contrary, but that we could not play the open game without Camp as captain. Some one was sent out to bring Walter back; matters were smoothed out; we played the open game and never lost a touchdown during the season. But during the four years I was on the Yale varsity we never lost but one touchdown, from which a goal was kicked and there were no goals kicked from the field. This goal was lost to Princeton, and I think was in the fall of '78, the year that Princeton won the champions.h.i.+p. The two men that were more than anybody else responsible for the record were Eugene Baker and Walter Camp, but behind it all was the old Yale spirit, which seems to show itself better on the football field than in any other branch of athletics."

Theodore M. McNair

On December 19th, 1915, there appeared in the newspapers a notice of the death of an old Princeton athlete, in j.a.pan--Theodore M. McNair--who, while unknown to the younger football enthusiasts, was considered a famous player in his day. To those who saw him play the news brought back many thrills of his adventures upon the football field. The following is what an old fellow player has to say about his team mate:

"Princeton has lost one of her most remarkable old time athletes in the death of Theodore M. McNair of the cla.s.s of 1879.

"McNair was a cla.s.smate of Woodrow Wilson. After his graduation he became a Presbyterian missionary, a professor in a Tokio college and the head of the Committee that introduced the Christian hymnal into j.a.pan.

"To old Princeton graduates, however, McNair is known best as a great football player who was halfback on the varsity three years and was regarded as a phenomenal dodger, runner and kicker. In the three years of his varsity experience McNair went down to defeat only once, the first game in which he appeared as a regular player. The contest was with Harvard and was played between seasons--April 28th, 1877--at Cambridge. Harvard won the game by 2 touchdowns to 1 for the Tigers.

McNair made the touchdown for his team. This match is interesting in that it marked the first appearance of the canvas jacket on the football field. Smock, one of the Princeton halfbacks, designed such a jacket for himself and thereafter for many seasons football players of the leading Eastern colleges adopted the garment because it made tackling more difficult under the conditions of those days. McNair was of large frame and fleet of foot. He was especially clever in handling and pa.s.sing the ball, which in those days was more of an art than at present. It was not unusual for the ball to be pa.s.sed from player to player after a scrimmage until a touchdown or a field goal was made.

"Walter Camp was one of McNair's Yale adversaries. They had many punting duels in the big games at St. George's Cricket Grounds, Hoboken, but Camp never had the satisfaction of sending McNair off the field with a beaten team."