Book: Football Days

W >> William H. Edwards >> Football Days




Daly was modesty itself in those days as he has been ever since, even
when equipped with the yellow jacket and peacock feather of the head
coach. As player and as coach and often as the two combined, Daly's
connection with West Point football covered eight years, in the course
of which he never played on or coached a losing team. His record against
the Navy alone is seven victories and one tie, 146 points to 33. His
final year's coaching was done in 1915. From West Point he was sent to
Hawaii, whence he writes me, as follows:

"There are certain episodes in the game that have always been of
particular interest to me, such as Ely's game playing with broken ribs
in the Harvard-Yale game of 1898; Charlie de Saulles' great playing with
a sprained ankle in the Yale-Princeton game of the same year; the
tackling of Bunker by Long of the Navy in the Army-Navy game of
1902--the hardest tackle I have ever seen; and the daring quarterback
work of Johnny Cutler in the Harvard-Dartmouth 1908 game, when he
snatched victory from defeat in the last few minutes of play."

Undoubtedly Daly's deep study of strategy and tactics as used in warfare
had a great deal to do with his continued ascendency as a coach.
Writing to Herbert Reed, one of the pencil and paper football men, with
whom he had had many a long argument over the generalship of the game,
he said in part:

"Football within the limitations of the rules and sportsmanship is a war
game. Either by force or by deception it advances through the opposition
to the goal line, which might be considered the capital of the enemy."

It was in Daly's first year that a huge Southerner, with a pleasant
drawl, turned up in the plebe class. It was a foregone conclusion almost
on sight that Ernest, better known to football men throughout the
country as Pot Graves, would make the Eleven. He not only played the
game almost flawlessly from the start, but he made so thorough a study
of line play in general that his system, even down to the most intimate
details of face to face coaching filed away for all time in that secret
library of football methods at West Point, has come to be known as
Graves' Bible.

Daly, still with that ineradicable love for his own Alma Mater, lent a
page or two from this tome to Harvard, and even the author appeared in
person on Soldiers' Field. The manner in which Graves made personal
demonstration of his teachings will not soon be forgotten by the Harvard
men who had to face Pot Graves.

Graves has always believed in the force mentioned in Daly's few lines
quoted above on the subject of military methods as applied to football.
While always declaring that the gridiron was no place for a fist fight,
he always maintained that stalwarts should be allowed to fight it out
with as little interference by rule as possible. As a matter of fact,
Graves was badly injured in a game with Yale, and for a long time
afterwards hobbled around with a troublesome knee. He knew the man who
did it, but would never tell his name, and he contents himself with
saying "I have no ill will--he got me first. If he hadn't I would have
got him."

A story is told of Graves' impatience with the members of a little
luncheon party, who in the course of an argument on the new football,
were getting away from the fundamentals. Rising and stepping over to the
window of the Officers' Club, he said, with a sleepy smile: "Come here a
minute, you fellows," and, pointing down to the roadway, added, "there's
_my_ team." Looking out of the window the other members of the party saw
a huge steam roller snorting and puffing up the hill.

Among the men who played football with Graves and were indeed of his
type, were Doe and Bunker. Like Graves, Bunker in spite of his great
weight, was fast enough to play in the backfield in those years when
Army elevens were relying so much upon terrific power. Those were the
days when substitutes had very little opportunity. In the final Navy
game of 1902 the same eleven men played for the Army from start to
finish.

In this period of Army football other first-class men were developed,
notably Torney, a remarkable back, Thompson, a guard, and Tom Hammond,
who was later to make a reputation as an end coach. Bunker was still
with this aggregation, an eleven that marched fifty yards for a
touchdown in fifteen plays against the midshipmen. The Army was among
the early Eastern teams to test Eastern football methods against those
of the West, the Cadets defeating a team from the University of Chicago
on the plains.

The West Pointers had only one criticism to make of their visitors, and
it was laconically put by one of the backs, who said:

"They're all-fired fast, but it's funny how they stop when you tackle
them."

In this lineup was A. C. Tipton, at center, to whom belongs the honor of
forcing the Rules Committee to change the code in one particular in
order to stop a maneuver which he invented while in midcareer in a big
game. No one will ever forget how, when chasing a loose ball and
realizing that he had no chance to pick it up, he kicked it again and
again until it crossed the final chalk mark where he fell on it for a
touchdown. Tipton was something of a wrestler too, as a certain
Japanese expert in the art of Jiu-jitsu can testify and indeed did
testify on the spot after the doctors had brought him too.

There was no lowering of the standards in the succeeding years, which
saw the development of players like Hackett, Prince, Farnsworth and
Davis. Those years too saw the rise of such wonderful forwards as W. W.
(Red) Erwin and that huge man from Alaska, D. D. Pullen.

Coming now to more recent times, the coaching was turned over to H. M.
Nelly, assisted by Joseph W. Beacham, fresh from chasing the little
brown brother in the Philippines. Beacham had made a great reputation at
Cornell, and there was evidence that he had kept up with the game at
least in the matter of strategic possibilities, even while in the
tangled jungle of Luzon. He brought with him even more than that--an
uncanny ability to see through the machinery of the team and pick out
its human qualities, upon which he never neglected to play. There have
been few coaches closer to his men than Joe.

Whenever I talk football with Joe Beacham he never forgets to mention
Vaughn Cooper, to whom he gives a large share of the credit for the good
work of his elevens. Cooper was of the quiet type, whose specialty was
defense. These two made a great team.

It was in this period that West Point saw the development of one of its
greatest field generals. There was nothing impressive in the physical
appearance of little H. L. Hyatt. A reasonably good man, ball in hand,
his greatest value lay in his head work. As the West Point trainer said
one day: "I've got him all bandaged up like a leg in a puttee, but from
the neck up he's a piece of ice." The charts of games in which Hyatt ran
the team are set before the squad each year as examples, not merely of
perfect generalship, but of the proper time to violate that generalship
and make it go, a distinction shared by Prichard, who followed in his
footsteps with added touches of his own.

One cannot mention Prichard's name without thinking at once of Merillat,
who, with Prichard, formed one of the finest forward passing
combinations the game has seen. Both at Franklin Field and at the Polo
Grounds this pair brought woe to the Navy.

These stars had able assistance in the persons of McEwan, one of the
greatest centers the game has seen and who was chosen to lead the team
in 1916, Weyand, Neyland and O'Hare, among the forwards, and the
brilliant and sturdy Oliphant in the backfield, the man whose slashing
play against the Navy in 1915 will never be forgotten. Oliphant was of a
most unusual type. Even when he was doing the heaviest damage to the
Navy Corps the midshipmen could not but admire his wonderful work.

What the Hustlers are to Annapolis the Cullom Hall team is to West
Point. It is made up of the leftovers from the first squad and
substitutes. One would travel far afield in search of a team with more
spirit and greater pep in action, whether playing in outside games, or
as their coach would put it, "showing up" the first Eleven. Not
infrequently a player of the highest caliber is developed in this squad
and taken to the first eleven.

The Cullom Hall squad, whose eleven generally manages to clean up some
of the strongest school teams of the Hudson Valley, draws not a little
of its spirit, I think, from the late Lieutenant E. M. Zell, better
known at the Academy as "Jobey." It was a treat to see the Cullom Hall
team marching down the field against the first Eleven with the roly-poly
figure of Jobey in the thick of every scrimmage, coaching at the top of
his lungs, even when bowled over by the interference of his own pupils.
Since his time the squad has been turned over to Lieutenants Sellack and
Crawford, who have kept alive the traditions and the playing spirit of
this unique organization.

Their reward for the bruising, hard work, with hardly a shadow of the
hope of getting their letter, comes in seeing the great game itself.
Like the college scrub teams the hardest rooters for the Varsity are to
be found in their ranks.

Now for the game itself. Always hard fought, always well fought, there
is perhaps no clash of all the year that so wakes the interest of the
general public, that vast throng which, without college affiliations,
is nevertheless hungry for the right of allegiance somewhere, somehow.

While the Service Elevens are superbly supported by the men who have
been through the exacting mill at West Point and Annapolis--their
sweethearts and wives, not to mention sisters, cousins, uncles and
aunts--they are urged on to battle by that great impartial public which
believes that in a sense these two teams belong to it. It is not
uncommon to find men who have had no connection with either academy in
hot argument as to the relative merits of the teams.

Once in the stands some apparently trifling thing begets a partisanship
that this class of spectator is wont to wonder at after it is all over.

Whether in Philadelphia in the earlier history of these contests on
neutral ground, or in New York, Army and Navy Day has become by tacit
consent the nearest thing to a real gridiron holiday. For the civilian
who has been starved for thrilling action and the chance to cheer
through the autumn days, the jam at the hotels used as headquarters by
the followers of the two elevens satisfies a yearning that he has
hitherto been unable to define. There too, is found a host of old-time
college football men and coaches who hold reunion and sometimes even
bury hatchets. Making his way through the crowds and jogging elbows with
the heroes of a sport that he understands only as organized combat he
becomes obsessed with the spirit of the two fighting institutions.

Once in possession of the coveted ticket he hies himself to the field as
early as possible, if he is wise, in order to enjoy the preliminaries
which are unlike those at any other game. Soon his heart beats faster,
attuned to the sound of tramping feet without the gates. The measured
cadence swells, draws nearer, and the thousands rise as one, when first
the long gray column and then the solid ranks of blue swing out upon the
field. The precision of the thing, the realization that order and system
can go so far as to hold in check to the last moment the enthusiasms of
these youngsters thrills him to the core. Then suddenly gray ranks and
blue alike break for the stands, there to cut loose such a volume of now
orderly, now merely frenzied noise as never before smote his ears.

It is inspiration and it is novelty. The time, the place and the men
that wake the loyalty dormant in every man which, sad to say, so seldom
has a chance of expression.

Around the field are ranged diplomat, dignitary of whatsoever rank, both
native and foreign. In common with those who came to see, as well as to
be seen--and who does not boast of having been to the Army-Navy
game--they rise uncovered as the only official non-partisan of football
history enters the gates--the President of the United States. Throughout
one half of the game he lends his support to one Academy and in the
intermission makes triumphal progress across the field, welcomed on his
arrival by a din of shouting surpassing all previous effort, there to
support their side.

[Illustration: CADETS AND MIDDIES ENTERING THE FIELD]

It is perhaps one of those blessed hours in the life of a man upon whom
the white light so pitilessly beats, when he can indulge in the popular
sport, to him so long denied, of being merely human.

Men, methods, moods pass on. The years roll by, taking toll of every one
of us from highest to lowest. Yet, whether we are absorbed in the game
of games, or whether we look upon it as so many needs must merely as a
spectacle, the Army-Navy game will remain a milestone never to be
uprooted. I have spoken elsewhere and at length of football traditions.
The Army-Navy game is not merely a football tradition but an American
institution. It is for all the people every time.

May this great game go on forever, serene in its power to bring out the
best that is in us, and when the Great Bugler sounds the silver-sweet
call of taps for all too many, there will still be those who in their
turn will answer the call of reveille to carry on the traditions of the
great day that was ours.




CHAPTER XIII

HARD LUCK IN THE GAME


It is as true in football, as it is in life, that we have no use for a
quitter. The man who shirks in time of need--indeed there is no part in
this chapter or in this book for such a man. Football was never made for
him. He is soon discovered and relegated to the side line. He is hounded
throughout his college career, and afterwards he is known as a man who
was yellow. As Garry Cochran used to say:

"If I find any man on my football squad showing a white feather, I'll
have him hounded out of college."

Football is a game for the man who has nerve, and when put to the test,
under severe handicap, proves his sterling worth.

A man has to be game in spirit. A man has to give every inch there is in
him. Optimism should surround him. There is much to be gained by hearty
co-operation of spirit. There is much in the thought that you believe
your team is going to win; that the opposing team cannot beat you; that
if your opponent wins, it is going to be over your dead body. This sort
of spirit is contagious, and generally passes from one to the other,
until you have a wonderful team spirit, and eleven men are found
fighting like demons for victory. Such a spirit generally means a
victory, and so gets its reward. There must be no dissenting spirit. If
there is such a spirit discernible, it should be weeded out immediately.

Some years ago the Princeton players were going to the field house to
dress for the Harvard game. The captain and two of the players were
walking ahead of the rest of the members of the team. The game was under
discussion, when the captain overheard one of the players behind him
remark:

"I believe Harvard will win to-day."

Shocked by this remark, the captain, who was one of those thoroughbreds
who never saw anything but victory ahead, full of hope and confidence in
his team, turned and discovered that the remark came from one of his
regular players. Addressing him, he said:

"Well! If you feel that way about it, you need not even put on your
suit. I have a substitute, who is game to the core. He will take your
place."

It is true that teams have been ruined where the men lack the great
quality of optimism in football. When a man gets in a tight place, when
the odds are all against him, there comes to him an amazing superhuman
strength, which enables him to work out wonders. At such a time men have
been known to do what seemed almost impossible.

I recall being out in the country in my younger days and seeing a man,
who had become irrational, near the roadside, where some heavy logs were
piled. This man, who ordinarily was only a man of medium strength, was
picking up one end of a log and tossing it around--a log, which,
ordinarily, would have taken three men to lift. In the bewildering and
exciting problems of football, there are instances similar to this,
where a small man on one team, lined up against a giant in the opposing
rush line, and game though handicapped in weight there comes to him at
such a time a certain added strength, by which he was able to handle
successfully the duty which presented itself to him.

I have found it to be the rule rather than the exception, that the big
man in football did not give me the most trouble; it was the man much
smaller than myself. Other big linemen have found it to be true. Many a
small man has made a big man look ridiculous.

Bill Caldwell, who used to weigh over 200 pounds when he played guard on
the Cornell team some years ago, has this to say:

"I want to pay a tribute to a young man who gave me my worst seventy
minutes on the football field. His name was Payne. He played left guard
for Lehigh. He weighed about 145 pounds; was of slight build and seemed
to have a sort of sickly pallor. I have never seen him since, but I take
this occasion to say this was the greatest little guard I ever met. At
least he was great that day. Payne had been playing back of the line
during part of the season, but was put in at guard against me. I had a
hunch that he was going to bite me in the ankle, when he lined up the
first time, for he bristled up and tore into me like a wild cat. I have
met a goodish few guards in my day, and was accustomed to almost any
form of warfare, but this Payne went around me, like a cooper around a
barrel, and broke through the line and downed the runners in their
tracks. On plunges straight at him, he went to the mat and grabbed every
leg in sight and hung on for dear life. He darted through between my
legs; would vault over me; what he did to me was a shame. He was not
rough, but was just the opposite. I never laid a hand on him all the
afternoon. He would make a world beater in the game as it is played
to-day."

Whenever Brown University men get together and speak of their wonderful
quarterbacks, the names of Sprackling and Crowther are always mentioned.
Both of these men were All-American quarterbacks. Crowther filled the
position after Sprackling graduated. He weighed only 134 pounds, but he
gave everything he had in him--game, though handicapped in weight. In
the Harvard game of that year, about the middle of the second half,
Haughton sent word over to Robinson, the Brown coach, that he ought to
take the little fellow out; that he was too small to play football, and
was in danger of being seriously injured. Crowther, however, was like an
India-rubber ball and not once during the season had he received any
sort of injury. Robby told Crowther what Haughton had suggested, and
smiling, the latter said:

"Tell him not to worry about me; better look out for himself."

On the next play Crowther took the ball and went around Harvard's end
for forty yards, scoring a touchdown. After he had kicked the goal, the
little fellow came over to the side line, and said to Robby:

"Send word over to Haughton and ask him how he likes that. Ask him if he
thinks I'm all in? Perhaps he would like to have me quit now."

In the Yale game that year Crowther was tackled by Pendleton, one of the
big Yale guards. It so happened that Pendleton was injured several times
when he tackled Crowther and time had to be taken out. Finally the big
fellow was obliged to quit, and as he was led off the field, Crowther
hurried over to him, reaching up, placed his hands on his shoulder and
said:

"Sorry, old man! I didn't mean to hurt you." Pendleton, who weighed well
over 200 pounds, looked down upon the little fellow, but said never a
word.

It is most unpleasant to play in a game where a man is injured. Yet
still more distressing when you realize that you yourself injured
another player, especially one of your own team mates.

In the Brown game of 1898, at Providence, Bosey Reiter, Princeton's star
halfback, made a flying tackle of a Brown runner. The latter was
struggling hard, trying his best to get away from Reiter. At this moment
I was coming along and threw myself upon the Brown man to prevent his
advancing further. In the mixup my weight struck Bosey and fractured his
collar-bone. It was a severe loss to the team, and only one who has had
a similar experience can appreciate my feelings, as well as the team's,
on the journey back to Princeton.

We were to play Yale the following Saturday at Princeton. I knew
Reiter's injury was so serious that he could not possibly play in that
game.

The following Saturday, as that great football warrior lay in his bed at
the infirmary, the whistle blew for the start of the Yale game. We all
realized Reiter was not there: not even on the side lines, and Arthur
Poe said, at the start of the game:

"Play for Bosey Reiter. He can't play for himself to-day."

This spurred us on to better team work and to victory. The attendants at
the hospital told us later that they never had had such a lively
patient. He kept things stirring from start to finish of the gridiron
battle. As the reports of the game were brought to him, he joined in
the thrill of the play.

"My injury proved a blessing," says Reiter, "as it gave me an extra
year, for in those days a year did not count in football, unless you
played against Yale, and when I made the touchdown against Yale the
following season, it was a happy moment for me."

All is not clear sailing in football. The breaks must come some time.
They may come singly or in a bunch, but whenever they do come, it takes
courage to buck the hard luck in the game. Just when things get nicely
under way one of the star players is injured, which means the systematic
team work is handicapped. It is not the team, as a whole that I am
thinking of, but the pangs of sorrow which go down deep into a fellow's
soul, when he finds that he is injured; that he is in the hands of the
doctor. It is then he realizes that he is only a spoke in the big wheel;
that the spirit of the game puts another man in his place. The game goes
on. Nature is left to do her best for him.

Let us for a while consider the player who does not realize, until after
the game is over, that he is hurt. It is after the contest, when the
excitement has ceased, when reaction sets in, that a doctor and trainer
can take stock of the number and extent of casualties.

When such injured men are discovered, at a time like that, we wonder how
they ever played the game out. In fact the man never knew he was
injured until the game was over. No more loyal supporter of football
follows the big games than Reggi Wentworth, Williams, '91.

He is most loyal to Bill Hotchkiss, Williams '91.

"At Williamstown, one year," Wentworth says, "Hotchkiss, who was a
wonderful all round guard, probably as great a football player as ever
lived (at least I think so) played with the Williams team on a field
covered with mud and snow three inches deep. The game was an unusually
severe one, and Hotchkiss did yeoman's work that day.

"As we ran off the field, after the game, I happened to stop, turned,
and discovered Hotchkiss standing on the side of the field, with his
feet planted well apart, like an old bull at bay. I went back where he
was and said:

"'Come on, Bill, what's the matter?'

"'I don't know,' said he. 'There's something the matter with my ankles.
I don't think I can walk.'

"He took one step and collapsed. I got a boy's sled, which was on the
field, laid Hotchkiss on it and took him to his room, only to find that
both ankles were sprained. He did not leave his room for two weeks and
walked with crutches for two weeks more. It seemed almost unbelievable
that a man handicapped as he was could play the game through. Splints
and ankle braces were unknown in those days. He went on the field with
two perfectly good ankles. How did he do it?"

Charles H. Huggins, of Brown University, better known perhaps, simply as
"Huggins of Brown," recalls a curious case in a game on Andrews Field:

"Stewart Jarvis, one of the Brown ends, made a flying tackle. As he did
so, he felt something snap in one of his legs. We carried him off to the
field house, making a hasty investigation. We found nothing more
apparent than a bruise. I bundled him off to college in a cab; gave him
a pair of crutches; told him not to go out until our doctor could
examine the injury at six o'clock that evening. When the doctor arrived
at his room, Jarvis was not there. He had gone to the training table for
dinner. The doctor hurried to the Union dining-room, only to find that
Jarvis had discarded the crutches and with some of the boys had gone out
to Rhodes, then, as now, a popular resort for the students. Later, we
learned that he danced several times. The next morning an X-ray clearly
showed a complete fracture of the tibia.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.