Book: Football Days

W >> William H. Edwards >> Football Days




Competition 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 snatch 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
passed 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.

Prominent among those who have worked hard for Harvard and whose work
has been more than welcome, are Arthur Cumnock, that brilliant end rush,
George Stewart, Doctor William A. Brooks, a former Harvard captain,
Lewis, Upton, John Cranston, Deland, Hallowell, Thatcher, Forbes,
Waters, Newell, Dibblee, Bill Reid, Mike Farley, Josh Crane, Charlie
Daly, Pot Graves, Leo Leary, and others well versed in the game of
football.

Haughton had had some experience not only in coaching at Cambridge but
coaching at Cornell, and the Harvard football authorities realized that
of all the Harvard graduates Haughton would probably be the best man to
turn the tide in Harvard football.

Percy, who played tackle on a winning Crimson eleven, and Sam Felton
will be well remembered as the fastest punters of their day.

The first Harvard team coached by Haughton defeated Yale. It was in 1908
when Haughton used a spectacular method, when he rushed Vic Kennard into
the Crimson backfield after Ver Wiebe had brought the ball up the field
where Haughton's craft sent Vic Kennard in to make the winning three
points and Kennard himself will tell the story of that game. The next
year Percy Haughton's team could not defeat the great Ted Coy, who
kicked two goals from the field.

The performance of the Harvard 1908 team was the more remarkable because
Burr, who was the captain and the great punter at that time, had been
injured and the team was without his services. How well I remember him
on the side lines keenly following the play, but brilliant in his
self-denial.

There have been times when victories did not come to Harvard with the
regularity that they have under the Haughton regime, but the scales go
up and down year by year, game by game, and from defeats we learn much.

Let us read what this premier coach says upon reflection:

"Surely the game of football brings out the best there is in one. Aside
from the mental and physical exercise, the game develops that
inestimable quality of doing one's best under pressure. What better
training for the game of life than the acid test of a championship game.
Such a test comes not alone to the player but to the coach as well.

"What truer and finer friends can one have than those whom we have met
through the medium of football! And finally as the years tend to narrow
this precious list, through death, what greater privilege than to
associate with the fellow whose muscles are lithe and whose mind is
clean. Such a man was Francis H. Burr, captain of the Harvard team in
1908. Words fail me to express my sincere regard for that gallant
leader. His spirit still lives at Cambridge; his type we miss.

"I am proud of the men who worked shoulder to shoulder in bringing about
Harvard victories. The list is a long one. I shall always cherish the
hearty co-operation of these men who gave their best for Harvard."

It was Al Sharpe, that great Cornell coach, who, in the fall of 1915
found it possible to break through the Harvard line of victories, and
hanging on the walls in the trophy room at Cornell University is a much
prized souvenir of Cornell's visit to Cambridge. That was the only
defeat on the Harvard schedule. But sometimes defeats have to come to
insure victory, and perhaps in that defeat by Cornell lay the reason for
the overwhelming score against Yale.

[Illustration:

Whitney Dadmun Harte L. Curtis Dougherty Harris
Haughton Taylor McKintock Weatherhead R. Curtis Cowen Blanchard
King Parson Gilman Mahan Watson Wallace Soucy
Boles Robinson Coolidge Horneen Rollins

HARVARD, 1915]

Slowly, but surely, Al Sharpe has won his way into the front ranks of
football coaches. Working steadfastly year after year he has built up
and established a system that has set Cornell's football machinery upon
a firm foundation.


Glenn Warner

Glenn Warner has contributed a great deal to football, both as a player
and coach.

Warner was one of the greatest linemen that ever played on the Cornell
team. After leaving college he began his coaching career in 1895 at the
University of Georgia. His success there was remarkable. It attracted so
much attention that he was called back to Cornell in 1897 and 1898. In
1899 Warner moved again and began his historic work at the Carlisle
Indian School, turning out a team year after year that gave the big
colleges a close battle and sometimes beat them.

There never was a team that attracted so much attention as the Carlisle
Indians. They were popular everywhere and drew large crowds, not only on
account of their being Redmen, but on account of their adaptability to
the game. Warner, as their coach, wrought wonders with them, and really
all the colleges at one time or another had their scalps taken by the
Indians. They were the champion travelers of the game. Their games were
generally all away from home, and yet the long trips did not seem to
hamper them in their play. They got enjoyment out of traveling.

Going from Princeton to New York one Friday night some years ago, I was
told by the conductor that the Carlisle football team was in the last
car. I went back and talked with Warner. The Indian team were amusing
themselves in one end of the car, and thus passing the time away by
entering into a game they were accustomed to play on trips. One of the
Carlisle players would stand in the center of the aisle and some fifteen
or so men would group about him, in and about and on top of the seats.
This central figure would bend over and close his eyes. Then some one
from the crowd would reach over and spank the crouching Indian a
terrific blow, hastily drawing back his hand. Then the Indian who had
received the blow would straighten up and try, by the expression of
guilt on the face of the one who had delivered the blow, to find his
man. Their faces were a study, yet nearly every time the right man was
detected.

Who is there in football who will ever forget the Indian team, their red
blankets and all that was typical of them; the yells that the crowds
gave as the Indians appeared. They seemed always to be fit. They were
full of spirit and anxious to clash with their opponents.

[Illustration: THE GREATEST INDIAN OF THEM ALL]

I recall an incident in a Princeton-Carlisle game, when the game was
being fiercely waged. Miller, the great Indian halfback, had scored a
touchdown, after a long run. It was not long after this that a Princeton
player was injured. Maybe the play was being slowed up a little. Anyway,
time was taken out. One of the Indians seemed to sense the situation.
The Princeton players were lying on the ground while the Carlisle men
were prancing about eager to resume the fray, when one of the Indians
remarked:

"White man play for wind. Indian play football."

In 1915 Warner went to the University of Pittsburgh. Here he has already
begun to duplicate former successes. Cruikshank, Peck, and Wagner are
three of Pittsburgh's many stars. Probably the greatest football player
that Warner ever developed at the Carlisle Indian School was Jim Thorpe,
whose picture appears on the opposite page. Unhappy the end, and not
infrequently the back, who had to face this versatile player. Thorpe was
a raider.


Billy Bull

Billy Bull of Yale is one of the old heroes who has kept in very close
touch with the game. He has been a valuable coach at Yale and the Elis'
kicking game is left entirely in his hands. He is an enthusiastic
believer in the game. Immediately after leaving New Haven in 1889 he
started to coach and since that time he has not missed a year. Years ago
he inaugurated a routine system of coaching for the various styles of
kicks. "My object," he said recently, "has been to turn out consistent
rather than wonderful kickers. As a player I was early impressed with
the value of kicking, not only in a general way but also in a particular
way, such as the punt in an offensive way. For more than twenty-five
years I have talked it up. For a long time I talked it to deaf ears,
especially at Yale. I talked it when I coached at West Point for ten
years and was generally set down as a harmless crank on the subject, but
I have lived to see the time when every one agrees on the great value of
this offensive kick.

"When I entered Yale I was an absolute greenhorn, but the greenhorn had
a chance then, for he was able to play in actual scrimmage every day;
now the squads are so big that opportunities for playing the game for
long daily periods are entirely wanting.

"To-day it is a case of a heap big talk, a coach for every position,
more talk, lots of system, blackboard exercises and mighty little actual
play.

"I have often wondered if things were not being overdone as far as
coaching goes in the preparatory schools at the present time. The
superabundance of coaches and the demand for victory combine to force
the boy.

"If there is any forcing to do, the college is the place for it, when
the boy is older and better able to stand the strain. In recent years I
have seen not a few brokendown boys enter college. Boys are coming to
college now who needs must be told everything, and if there is not a
large body of coaches about to tell them, they mutiny. They seem to
forget, or not to know, that most is up to the man himself.

"When a boy comes to college with the idea that all that is necessary is
for him to be told, constantly told how to do this and that, and he will
deliver in the last ditch, I cannot help thinking that something is
wrong.

"I have in mind right now a player in the line, who came to college
after four years of school football. Ever since his entry he has
complained that no one has told him anything. Now this particular player
spends ten months of each year loafing, and expects in his two months of
football to do a man's job in a big game.

"No amount of blackboard and other talk is going to make a player do a
man's job and whip his opponent. No man can play a tackle job properly
if he does not realize the kind of a proposition he is up against twelve
months in the year and act accordingly. He has got to do his own
thinking, and see to it himself that he has the necessary strength and
toughness, to play the game, as one must to win."


Sanford the Unique

George Foster Sanford is unique in football. He made splendid teams when
he coached at Columbia, while his subsequent record with the Rutgers
Eleven attracted wide attention.

In the _Columbia Alumni News_ of October, 1915, Albert W. Putnam, a
former player, reviews seven years of Morningside football, and pays the
following tribute to Foster Sanford:

"Sanford coached the teams of 1899, 1900 and 1901. He coached them ably,
conscientiously and thoroughly, and in my opinion was the best football
coach in the country."

"During my three years' experience as coach at Columbia," says Sanford,
"we beat all the big teams except Harvard. I was fortunate enough to
develop such men as Weekes, Morley, Wright, and Berrien, players whose
records will always stand high in the Hall of Football Fame at Columbia.
I was particularly well satisfied with the work I got out of Slocovitch,
a former Yale player, whom the Yale coaches had never seemed to handle
properly. I did not allow him to play over one day a week. This was
because I had discovered that he was very heavily muscled; that if he
played continuously he would become muscle bound. My treatment proved to
fit the case exactly and Slocovitch became a star end for Columbia. We
defeated Yale the first year; the next year at New Haven the contest was
a strenuous one, and the game attracted unusual attention. It was in my
own home town, and I had to stand for a lot of good natured kidding, but
those who were there will remember how scared the Yale coaches got
during the last part of the game, when Columbia made terrific advances.
How Columbia's team fought Gordon Brown's Eleven almost to a standstill
that day is something that the Yale coaches of that time will long
remember."

An old Yale player, Bob Loree, whose father is a Trustee of Rutgers,
induced Sanford to lend the college his assistance. Apparently this
connection was an unmixed blessing. "Mr. L. F. Loree, Bob's father,"
says Sandy, "has frankly admitted that in his opinion Sanford's gift to
the college (for he works without remuneration) has brought a spirit and
a betterment of conditions which is worth fully as much as donations of
thousands of dollars.

"From the first day I went there," continues Sandy, "I started to build
up football for Rutgers and to rely on Rutgers men for my assistants. It
was there that I met the best football man I ever coached, John T.
Toohey. This remarkable tackle weighed 220 pounds. The life he led and
the example he set will always have a lasting influence upon Rutgers
men. For sad to relate, Toohey was killed in the railroad yards at
Oneonta, where he was yard master. Toohey was a great leader, possessing
a wonderful personality, and winning the immediate respect of every one
who knew him."

Twenty-five years have passed since I saw Sanford that morning in the
Fifth Avenue Hotel. Since then I have followed his football career with
enthusiasm. Boyhood heroes live long in mind. He is what might be called
a major surgeon in football, for it is a matter of record that he has
been called back to Yale, not when the patient was merely sick, but in a
serious condition. Usually the operation has been performed with such
skill that the patient has rallied with disconcerting suddenness.

Talking to the Yale teams between the halves, giving instructions, which
have turned dubious prospects into flaming victories, is a service which
Sanford has rendered Yale more than once. Victory, as it happens, is the
principal characteristic of Sanford's work. Long is the list of players
whom Sanford has developed.

"In my coaching experience," Sandy tells us, "I doubt if I ever coached
a man where my hard work counted for more at Yale than the case of
Charlie Chadwick in 1897. For many years there has been a saying that a
one man defense is as good as an eleven men defense, providing you can
get one man who can do it.

"Of course this never worked out literally, but the case of Charlie
Chadwick is probably the best explanation of its value. Besides being
overdeveloped, he was temperamental. At times he would show great form
and at other times his playing was hopeless. This year I was asked to
come to New Haven and began coaching the linemen. Chadwick looked good
to me, in spite of much criticism that was made by the coaches. In their
opinion they thought he was not to be relied upon, so I decided to stake
my reputation, and began in my own way, feeling sure that I could get
results, in preparing him for the Harvard and Princeton games.

[Illustration: LEARNING THE CHARGE]

"I started out purposely annoying Chadwick in every possible way, going
with him wherever he went. I went with him to his room evenings and did
not leave until he had become so bored that he fell asleep, or that he
got mad and told me to get out. I planned it that Chadwick approach the
coaches whenever he saw them together and say: 'I wish you would let me
play on this team. If you will I will play the game of my life. I will
play like hell.' After he had made this speech two or three times, they
were very positive that he was more than temperamental. I kept steadily
at my plan, however, and felt sure it would work out.

"The line was finally turned over to me and I had opportunity to slip
Chadwick in for two or three plays at left guard. He played like a
demon; he was literally a one man defense, but he received no credit. I
immediately removed him from the game and criticised him severely and
told him to follow up the play and in case I needed him he would be
handy. I realized what a great player he was proving to be, and my great
problem then was how I was to convince the coaches that Chadwick should
start the game. I tried it out a few times, but saw it was useless
trying to convince them, so I decided to concentrate on Jim Rodgers, the
Captain. Jim consented. My plan was to tell no one except Marshall, the
man whose place Chadwick was to take. The lineup was called out in the
dressing room before the game. Chadwick's name was not included. I had
arranged with Julian Curtis, who was in close touch with the cheer
leaders, that when I gave the signal, the Yale crowd would be instructed
to stand and yell nothing but 'Chadwick, Chadwick, Chadwick.' The Yale
team ran out upon the field. I stayed behind with Chadwick and came in
through the gate holding him by the arm. Before going on the side lines
I stopped him and said: 'Look here, Chadwick. It doesn't look as though
you're going to play, but if I put you in that lineup how will you
play?' Like a shot from a cannon he roared: 'I'll play like hell.'

"You could have heard him a mile. 'Well then, give me your sweater and
warm up,' I said, and as I gave the signal to Julian Curtis, he passed
the word on to the cheer leaders and the sight of Chadwick running up
and down those side lines will never be forgotten. It is estimated that
he leaped five yards at a stride, and with the students cheering,
'Chadwick, Chadwick, Chadwick,' he was sent out into the lineup--and the
rest, well, you'd better ask the men who played on the Harvard team that
day. It was a stream of men going on and off the field and they were
headed for right guard position on the Harvard side. Harvard could not
beat Chadwick, so the game ended in a tie."

Jim Rodgers, captain of that team, also has something to say of
Chadwick.

"In the Harvard-Yale game," Rodgers writes, "Charlie Chadwick played the
game of his life. He used up about six men who played against him that
day, but he never could put out Bill Edwards the day we played
Princeton. I played against Chadwick on the Scrub, and the first charge
he made against me I went clean back to fullback. It was just as though
an automobile had hit me. I played against Heffelfinger and a lot of
them. I could hold those fellows. Gee! but I was sore. I said to myself,
you won't do that again, and the next time I was set back just as far.

"One feature of this Yale-Princeton game impressed me tremendously, that
of Bill Edwards' stand, against what I considered a superman, Charles
Chadwick. Before the game I had confidently expected Big Bill to resign
after about five minutes' play, knowing, as I did, how Chadwick was
going. In this, however, Edwards was a great disappointment, as he stuck
the game out and was stronger at the end, than at the start or half way
through. Had he weakened at all, Ad Kelly's great offensive work would
have been doomed to failure. Edwards finished up the game against
Chadwick with a face that resembled a raw beefsteak. To my mind he was
the worst punished man I have ever seen. He stood by his guns to the
finish, and ever since then my hat has been off to him."

One of the most interesting characters in Southern football is W. R.
Tichenor, a thorough enthusiast in the game and known wherever there is
a football in the South. His father was president of the Alabama
Polytechnic. He was a fine player and weighed about 120 pounds. He is
the emergency football man of the South. Whenever there is a football
dispute Tichenor settles it. Whenever a coach is taken sick, Tichenor is
called upon to take his place. Whenever an emergency official is needed,
Tich comes to the rescue. He tells the following story:

"Every boy who has been to Auburn in the last twenty years knows Bob
Frazier. Many of them, however, may not recognize that name, as he has
been called Bob 'Sponsor' for so long that few of them know his real
name. Bob is as black as the inside of a coal mine and has rubbed and
worked for the various teams at Auburn 'since the memory of man
runneth not to the contrary.'

[Illustration: BILLY BULL ADVISING WITH CAPTAIN TALBOT]

"Just after the Christmas holidays one year in the middle nineties, Bob,
with the view of making a touch, called at Bill Williams' room one
night.

"After asking Bill if he had had a good Christmas, 'Sponsor' remarked:
'You know, Mr. Williams, us Auburn niggers went down and played dem
Tuskegee niggers a game of football during Christmas.'

"'Who did you have on the team, Bob?' inquired Bill.

"'Oh--we had a lot of dese niggers roun' town yere. They was me, an'
Crooksie, an' Homer, an' Bear, an' Cockeye, an' a lot of dese yer town
niggers.'

"'How did you come out?' asked Bill.

"'Oh, dem Tuskegee niggers give us a good lickin'.'

"'What position did you play?'

"'Me?' said Bob, 'I was de cap'en. I played all roun'. I played center.
Den I played quarterback. Den I played halfback.'

"'What system of signals did you use and who called them?' was Bill's
next inquiry.

"'Ain't I tole you, Mr. Williams, I was de cap'en. I called the signals.
Dem niggers of mine couldn't learn no signals, so we jus' played lack we
had some. I'd give some numbers to fool the Tuskegee niggers. But dem
numbers didn't mean nothin'. I'd say, "two, four, six, eight, ten--tek
dat ball, Homer, an' go roun' the end." Dat's de only sort of signals
dem niggers could learn and sometimes dey missed dem. Dat's de reason we
got beat and dem Tuskegee niggers got all my money. Mr. Williams, I'm
jus' as nickless as a ha'nt. Can't you lem' me two bits til' Sadday
night, please suh? Honest to God, I'll pay you back den, shore.'"


Listening to Yost

"Hurry Up" Yost is one of the most interesting and enthusiastic football
coaches in the country. The title of "Hurry Up" has been given him on
account of the "pep" he puts into his men and the speed at which they
work. Whether in a restaurant or a crowded street, hotel lobby or on a
railroad train, Yost will proceed to demonstrate this or that play and
carefully explain many of the things well worth while in football. He is
always in deadly earnest. Out of the football season, during business
hours, he is ever ready to talk the game. Yost's football experience as
a player began at the University of West Virginia, where he played
tackle. Lafayette beat them that year 6 to 0. Shortly after this Yost
entered Lafayette. His early experience in football there was under the
famous football expert and writer, Parke Davis.

Yost and Rinehart wear a broad smile as they tell of the way Parke
Davis used to entertain teams off the field. He always kept them in the
finest of humor. Parke Davis, they say, is a born entertainer, and many
an evening in the club house did he keep their minds off football by a
wonderful demonstration of sleight-of-hand with the cards.

"If Parke Davis had taken his coat off and stuck to coaching he would
have been one of the greatest leaders in that line in the country
to-day," says Yost. "He was more or a less a bug on football. You know
that to be good in anything one must be crazy about it. Davis was
certainly a bug on football and so am I. Everybody knows that.

"I shall never forget Davis after Lafayette had beaten Cornell 6 to 0,
in 1895, at Ithaca. That night in the course of the celebration Parke
uncovered everything he had in the way of entertainment and gave an
exhibition of his famous dance, so aptly named the 'dance du venture,'
by that enthusiastic Lafayette alumnus, John Clarke.

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