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"Huggins of Brown"

I know of no college trainer who seems to get more pleasure out of his
work than Huggins of Brown. There are numerous incidents that are
recorded in this book that have been the experiences of this
good-natured trainer.

A trainer's life is not always a merry one. Many things occur that tend
to worry him, but he gets a lot of fun out of it just the same. Huggins
says:

"Some few years ago Brown had a big lineman on its team who had never
been to New York, where we went that year to meet Carlisle. The players
put in quite a bit of time jollying him and having all sorts of fun at
his expense. We stopped at one of the big hotels, and the rooms were on
the seventh and eighth floors. In the rooms were the rope fire escapes,
common in those days, knotted every foot or so. The big lineman asked
what it was for, and the other fellows told him, but added that this
room was the only one so equipped and that he must look sharp that none
of the others helped themselves to it for their protection against fire.

"That night, as usual, I was making my rounds after the fellows had gone
to bed. Coming into this player's room I saw that he was asleep, but
that there appeared to be some strange, unusual lump in the bed. I
immediately woke him to find out what it was. Much to my amusement, I
discovered that he had wound about fifteen feet of the rope around his
body and I had an awful job trying to assure him that the boys had been
fooling him. Nothing that I could say, however, would convince him, and
I left him to resume his slumbers with the rope still wrapped tightly
about his body."

Huggins not only believes that Brown University is a good place to
train, but he thinks it is a good place to send his boy. He has a son
who is a freshman at Brown as I write. Huggins went to Brown in the fall
of 1896, as trainer. Here is another good Huggins story:

"Sprackling, our All-American quarterback of a few years ago, always had
his nerve with him and, however tight the place, generally managed to
get out with a whole skin. But I recall one occasion when the wind was
taken out of his sails; he was at a loss what to say or how to act. We
were talking over prospects on the steps in front of the Brown Union one
morning just before college opened, the fall that he was captain, when a
young chap came up and said:

"'Are you Sprackling, Captain of the Team?'

"'That's me,' replied Sprack.

"'Well, I'm coming out for quarterback,' the young man declared, 'and I
expect to make it. I can run the 100 in ten-one and the 220 in evens and
I'm a good quarterback. I'm going to beat you out of your job.'

"Sprack, for once in his life, was flustered to death. When several of
the boys who were nearby and had heard the conversation, began to laugh,
he grew red in the face and quickly got up and walked away without a
word. But before I could recover myself, the promising candidate had
disappeared."

Harry Tuthill, specialist in knees and ankles, was the first trainer
West Point ever had. When he turned up at the Academy he was none too
sure that a football was made of leather and blown up.

He got his job at the Point through the bandaging of Ty Cobb's ankle. An
Army coach saw him do it and said:

"Harry, if you can do that, the way you do it, come to West Point and do
it for us."

Tuthill was none too welcome to the authorities other than the football
men. In the eyes of the superintendent every cadet was fit to do
anything that might be required of him.

"You've got to make good with the Supe," said the coaches.

So Harry went out and watched the dress parade and the ensuing double
time review. After the battalion was dismissed, Tuthill was introduced
to the Superintendent.

"Well, Mr. Tuthill," said the Superintendent, "I'm glad to meet you, but
I really do not see what we need of a trainer."

Harry shifted his feet and gathering courage blurted out:

"Run those boys around again and then ask them to whistle."

* * * * *

There are many other trainers who deserve mention in this chapter, men
who are earnestly and loyally giving up their lives to the training of
the young men in our different colleges, but space will not permit to
take up any more of these interesting characters. Their tribute must be
a silent one, not only from myself but from the undergraduates and
graduates of the colleges to which they belong and upon whose shoulders
are heaped year after year honors which are due them.


FIRST DOCTOR IN CHARGE OF ANY TEAM

Doctor W. M. Conant, Harvard '79, says:

"I believe I was the first doctor associated with the Harvard team, and
so far as I know, the first doctor who was in charge of any team at any
college. At Harvard this custom has been kept up. I was requested by
Arthur Cumnock, who had been beaten the previous year by Yale, to come
out and help him win a game. This I consented to do provided I had
absolute control of the medical end of the team, which consisted not
only of taking care of the men who were injured, but also of their diet.
This has since been taken up by the trainer.

"The late George Stewart and the late George Adams were the coaches in
charge that year, and my recollections of some of the difficulties that
arose because of new methods are very enjoyable--even at this late day.
So far as I know this was the first season men were played in the same
position opposite one another. In other words, there was an attempt to
form a second eleven--which is now a well recognized condition.

"I had a house built under the grandstand where every man from our team
was stripped, rubbed dry and put into a new suit of clothes, also given
a certain amount of hot drink as seemed necessary. This was a thing
which had never been done before, and in my opinion had a large
influence in deciding the game in Harvard's favor; as the men went out
upon the field in the second half almost as fresh as when they started
the first half.

"I remember that I had not seen a victory over Yale since I was
graduated from college in 1879. Some of the suggestions that I made
about the time men should be played were laughed at. The standpoint I
took was that a man should not be allowed by the coach to play until he
was deemed fit. The physician in charge was also a matter of serious
discussion. Many of these points are now so well established that to the
present generation it is hardly possible to make them realize that from
1890 to 1895 it was necessary to make a fight to establish certain
well-known methods.

"What would the present football man think of being played for one and
one-half hours whether he was in shape or not? The present football man
does not appreciate what some of the older college graduates went
through in order to bring about the present reasonable methods adopted
in handling the game."

[Illustration: HOW IT HURTS TO LOSE]




CHAPTER XVIII

NIGHTMARES


There are few players who never experienced defeat in football. At such
a time sadness reigns. Men who are big in mind and body have broken down
and cried bitterly. How often in our experience have we seen men taken
out of the game leaving it as though their hearts would break, only to
go to the side lines, and there through dimmed eyes view the inevitable
defeat, realizing that they were no longer a factor in the struggle.
Such an experience came to Frank Morse in that savage Penn-Princeton
game of years ago at Trenton. He had given of his best; he played a
wonderful game, but through an injury he had to be removed to the side
lines. Let this great hero of the past tell us something about the pangs
of defeat as he summons them to mind in his San Francisco office after
an interval of twenty-two years.

"The average American university football player takes his defeats too
seriously--in the light of my retrospect--much too seriously," writes
Morse. "As my memory harks back to the blubbering bunch of stalwart
young manhood that rent the close air of the dressing-room with its
dismal howls after each of the five defeats in which I participated, I
am convinced that this is not what the world expects of strong men in
the hour of adversity.

"A stiff upper lip is what the world admires, and it will extend the
hand of sympathy and help to the man who can wear it. This should be
taught by football coaches to their men as a part of the lessons of life
that football generally is credited with teaching.

"Alex Moffat, than whom no more loyal and enthusiastic Princetonian ever
lived, to my mind, had the right idea. During one of those periods of
abysmal depths of despondency into which a losing team is plunged, he
rushed into the room, waving his arms over his head in his
characteristic manner, and in his high-pitched voice yelled:

"'Here, boys, get down to work; cut out this crying and get to cussing.'

"Doubtless much of this was due to the strain and the high tension to
which the men were subjected, but much of it was mere lack of effort at
restraint.

"Johnny Poe, as stout-hearted a man as ever has, or ever will stand on a
football field, once said to me:

"'This sob stuff gives me a pain in the neck but, like sea-sickness,
when the rest of the crowd start business, it's hard to keep out of it.
Besides, I don't suppose there's any use getting the reputation of
being exclusive and too stuck up to do what the rest of the gang do.'

"Of the defeats in which I participated, probably none was more
disheartening than the one suffered at the hands of the University of
Pennsylvania in 1892 at the Manheim cricket grounds near Philadelphia. I
shall always believe that the better Princeton team would have won with
comparative ease had it not been for the wind. In no game in which I
ever played was the wind so largely the deciding factor in the result.
The flags on the poles along the stands stood out stiffly as they
snapped in the half gale.

"Pennsylvania won the toss and elected to have the wind at their backs.
For forty-five minutes every effort made against the Red and Blue was
more than nullified by the blustering god AEolus. When Pennsylvania
kicked, it was the rule and not the exception for the ball to go sailing
for from one-half to three quarters the length of the field. On the
other hand, I can see in my mind's eye to-day, as clearly as I did
during the game, a punt by Sheppard Homans, the Princeton fullback,
which started over the battling lines into Pennsylvania territory,
slowed up, hung for an instant in the air and then was swept back to a
point approximating the line from where it started.

"It was the most helpless and exasperating feeling that I ever
experienced. The football player who can conceive of a game in which
under no circumstances was it permissible to kick, but instead provided
a penalty, can perhaps appreciate the circumstances.

"In the second half, when we changed goals, the flags hung limply
against their staffs, but we had spent ourselves in the unequal contest
during the first half."

Nightmares, even those of football, do not always beget sympathy. Upon
occasion a deal of fun is poked at the victim, and this holds true even
in the family circle.

Tom Shevlin was noted as the father of a great many good stories, but it
was proverbial that he refrained from telling one upon himself. However,
in at least one instance he deviated from habit to the extent of
relating an incident concerning his father and the father of Charlie
Rafferty, captain of the Yale 1903 eleven. Tom at the time was a
sophomore, and Shevlin, senior, who idolized his son, made it a practice
of attending all important contests in which he participated, came on
from Minneapolis in his private car to witness the spectacle of Tom's
single-handed defeat of "The Princetons." As it chanced the Shevlin car
was put upon a siding adjoining that on which the car of Gill Rafferty
lay. Rafferty, as a matter of fact, was making his laborious way down
the steps as Mr. Shevlin emerged from his car. Mr. Rafferty looked up,
blinked in the November sunlight and then nodded cheerfully. "Well,
Shevlin," he said, "I suppose by to-night we'll be known simply as the
fathers of two great Yale favorites." Shevlin nodded and said "he
fancied such would be the case." A few hours later, in the gloom of the
twilight, after Yale had been defeated, the elder Shevlin was finding
his somber way to the steps of his car and met Rafferty face to face.
Shevlin nodded and was about to pass on without speaking, when Rafferty
placed his hand upon his shoulder. "Well, Shevlin," he said solemnly, "I
see we are still old man Shevlin and old man Rafferty."


W. C. Rhodes

One has only to hear Jim Rodgers tell the story of Billy Rhodes to
realize how deeply the iron of football disaster sinks into the soul.

"Rhodes was captain of the losing team in the fall of '90, when Yale's
Eleven was beaten by Harvard's," Rodgers tells us. "Arthur Cumnock was
the Harvard captain, and the score was 12 to 6. Two remarkable runs for
touchdowns made by Dudley Dean and Jim Lee decided the contest.

"For twenty years afterwards, back to Springfield, New Haven or
Cambridge, wherever the Yale-Harvard games were played, came with the
regularity of their occurrence, Billy Rhodes.

"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 Massasoit 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 analyze 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
leadership 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:

[Illustration:

Hunkin Tilley Bailey Snyder Jewett Gillies Miller Lalley
Shiverick 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. Shiverick, 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. Shiverick 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 damned 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 generalship, 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 passed 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 pass 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 passed 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 Dashiell and Mathew McClung, who were then playing football at
Lehigh University, took an interest in me. Paul Dashiell took me to the
first football game I ever saw. Dibby McClung gave me one of the old
practice balls 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."

[Illustration: 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 competition 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.

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