Evening Star Newspaper, October 26, 1930, Page 85

THE SUNDAY STAR,.. WASH!N_GTON, D..C., OCIOBER, 26, 1930. 3 Foot Ball Plays and Players of ‘YESZK?‘d—d} Walter Camp, captain of the 1880 Yale team, superimposed on a photo of an éarly Harvard-Pennsylvania game at Franklir Field, Philadelphia, showing the use of the “revolving wedge.” Sixty Years of Gridiron Play Show Steady Growth of a Collegiate - Game W hich Has Numbered Among Its Devotees Many Who Later Attained National F. ame, as Told by an “Old-Timer” Who Helped Shape the Sport’s Destiny. on a crifp October Saturday after- noon to witness a spectacular game on the gridiron between the team of your alma mater and her “deadly” rival, it may seem a far cry to the days when & few young “bloods” drove their coaches-and- ~four to a bare field where a handful of spec- tators saw the first collegiate game of foot ball in America. Yet it is well within the memory of the older generations when Princeton and Rutgers staged the first American intercollegiate grid battle at New Brunswick, N. J., November 6, 1869. Since that time foot ball has enjoyed a com- paratively steady growth, taking root in every State in the Union, developing in virtually all the men's institutions of learning, until today there is hardly a backwoods high school that does not boast an eleven. Glancing back over the vista of the years, it fs interesting to note some of the early foot ball teams, rules and personalities, many of whom have since become nationally or world famous, that were responsible for the game becoming a aational institution. - In the early Fall of '69 Willilam S. Gummere ot Princeton—now Chief Justice of New Jersey —organized a team and challenged Rutgers. He conferred with Willlam J. Leggett, the Rut- " gers leader, and tcgether they drafted a code of rules and agreed In the dates for two games ‘to0 be played in November of that year. The first was won by Rutgers, 6 to 4, and the second by Princeton, 8 to 0. Columbia joined the foot ball ranks the fol- f S you motor to one of the great stadia .Harvard and Yale, there was not sufficient interest to organize teams in those two insti- tutions. Yale became an intercollegiate com- Petitor in 1872 and Harvard entered the arena two years lgter. Tnl next several years saw many new gridiron % contenders, and by the Fall of '80 Amherst. Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, Mich- igan, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Rutgers, Stevens, Wesleyan, Williams and Yale all supported teams. It was during the following decade that the English rugby of the seventies was trans- formed into the distinctive American game of oot ball. Intercollegiate conferences were held %o improve the game. Walter Camp, later a Wworld-famous physical culturist, who was then attending Yale, was making a stiff fight at these assembloges to have the number of play- ers reduced from 15, th> Rugby quota, to 11, the Eton number. Woodrow Wilson, the same man who later became President of the United States, while & member of Princeton’s board of coaches, ad- vocated as early as 1878 a change in the Eng- lish method of putting the ball in play, so that one side or the other might gain possession of the ball. When the future President was Braduated in 1878 Bland Ballard, an under- graduate player and later a Princeton captain, took up this proposition. In the following year Ballard joined with Walter Camp and fought through at the intercollegiate foot ball con- ference the passage of the following American principle of the game: “A scrimmage takes place when the holder of the ball, being in the field of play, puts it down on the ground in front of him and puts thllyvhfleondde,flntbyhcfln‘me Ball, second by snapping it back with his foot. The man who first receives the ball shall be called the quarterback and shall not then rush’ forward under penalty of foul.” Thus, when you see the familiar scrimmage this Fall, you are beholding one of the many memorials to Woodrow Wilson, its sponsor. Numerical scoring was unknown in 1880, the count being kept by the number of touchdowns and goals after touchdowns. In a game between Princeton and Yale, played in a blinding snowstorm at the Polo Grounds in New York City, Princeton uncovered a new system of play by which its team con- tinually held the ball unfess fumbled, neither kicking nor passing, a system which®came to be known as the “block game” and which two years later brought on the ruling requiring a gain of 5 yards in every four downs. Until this ruling was made there was no limit to the number of downs. In the game with Yale at the Polo Grounds Princeton held the ball throughout the entire second half and did not score, the game terminating in a draw, 0-0. Among the famous players of that decade were Francis Loney, Ned Pearce, James Flint and James Harlan of Princeton; C. S. Beck, B. B. Lamb, Charles Storrs, Robert Watson and Walter Camp of Yale, and H. M. Atkinson, William Manning, T. C. Thacher, C. H. Foster and George Keith of Harvard. At the beginning of the “gay nineties” foot ball was well established in the North Atlantic section of the United States. Butler, Michigan, Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois, Towa, Grinnell and Wisconsin were pioneering in the Middle West but with the exception of the Iowa colleges the game had not taken root beyond the Mis- sissippi. In the Fall of that year the public was rather startled to behold many college players re- turning to their alma maters wearing their hair 6 inches long. This custom may be traced to Radclyffe Furness of Princeton, who played & spectacular game against Harvard the previ- ous year and was so accoutered, thus uncon- sciously setting a national fashion. Mr. Pur- ness, known affectionately to generations of college men as “Mike,” is one of the heads of the Midvale Steel Works of Philadelphia. Arthur Cumnock was leading Harvard, de- termined to break Yale’s long string of victories. At Yale the militant William C. Rhodes was in command, and the Princeton eleven was led by Edgar Allan Poe, with Woodrow « Wilson coaching. At the Harvard-Princeton game in '89 Presi- dent Eliot of Harvard was struck by the simi- larity of the name of Poe to that of the poet who died in 1849 and asked one of the.coaches: “Is this Poe of Princeton any relation to the great Poe who wrote ‘The Raven’?” “Why, President Eliot,” the coach replied, “this is the great Poe himself.” At this time numerical signals were univer- sally adopted. Previously all commands had been given by sentences, words and initials. In this year, also, Yale produced the first great interference system. For the five pre- ceding years interference had been very crude and had not been developed into a team affair. The originator of this new system was a cele- brated guard, Walter Heffelfinger, who, leaping from his position in the line, was so swift that h:‘eould head the interference around either end. IN 1890 Pennsylvania arrived as a great foot ball power, under the guidance of Otto Wagenhurst, the original itinerant foot ball coach. Foot ball reporting was not very vivid nor exact in those days. One sports writer on & metropolitan daily described a play thus: “Homans of Princeton snatched the ball going south bound.” Spectators were allowed the freedom of the Coach-and-fours leaving Madison Square; New York Cisy, for the 1890 Princeton-Yale game. sidelines and followed the ball up and down the field, shouting encouragement to their favore ites. The “bloods”—today they call them “highi hats”—drove to the games in their four-horse coaches and the distant sound of their coach horns seemed far more musical than the blast of the motor car of today. . The opening play in all games, at the begine ning of each half and following scores after touchdowns, was the old “V trick” or “Princeton wedge,” the most ponderous mechanism the game has ever known. Among the gridiron heroes of that period were such favorites as Arthur Cumnock, “Josh” Upton, John Cranston, Perry Trafford, Mara shall Newell, P, W. Hallowell, Dudley Dean, John Corbett, Everett Lake, James Lee and “Bernie” Trafford, all of Harvard. At Yale, “Josh” Hariwell, “Hammie” Wallis, Walter Heffelfinger, “Wallie” Winter, Stanley Morie son, “Billy” Rhodes, Lee McClung, “Laurie” Bliss, Harry Willlams and “Ben” ' Morrison were the shining lights. Although it was rather a lean year for Princeton, she possessed a few great stars: Ralph Warren, Robert Speer, Jesse Riggs, Radclyffe Purness, Edgar Allan Poe, “Phil” King, “Shep” Homans and “Billy” Spicer. Pennsylvania's great leader was Edgar Church, surrounded by such talent as A. J. Bowser, Louis Vail, Charles Schoff, H. O, Thayer and Henry Thornton. Among these stars of early foot ball therd were many who became nationally prominent in the years which followed. Poe became Attorney General of Maryland. Lee McClung was made treasurer of Yale and later Treasurer of the United States. Everett J. Lake became Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut, and Thornton, of the Pennsylvania eleven, is today Sir Henry Thornton, head of the Canadian fought for supremacy, with Yale ha little the best of it, a fact largely due to its m“hckle back” formation, invented by Walter Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa were the leading teams in the Middle West and about evenly matched. This was the day many Eastern coaches were being the West. “Lonnie” Stagg of Yale Chicago, Hollister of Pennsylvania