First Kicks

As the days and nights grow cooler in September, the gridiron absorbs the warmth of the waning sun. Rumors begin to sizzle, fat to drip off portly full-backs capering with pigskins.

The last teams to begin practice are those representing Yale, Harvard and Princeton. Even these had begun to grunt and exercise last week. While speculation as to which would be most imposing later in the season is properly confined to barrooms in college clubs and the writings of Grantland Rice, alert prognosticators fixed their attention upon the coaches. Of these, the most interesting is Marvin Allen ("Mai") Stevens who has replaced famed "Tad" Jones of Yale. Brown, lithe and shy. "Mai" Stevens played for Yale in 1923 on famed "Memphis Bill" Mallory's undefeated team; before that he had played for Washburn college, in Kansas. In his senior year at Yale he was ineligible ; later, he was wont to divide his time between medical school and backfield coaching. Last year he was Jones's assistant; this year he is the youngest of the important coaches and, since in football the cart goes before the horse, not the least likely to draw his team to November triumphs.

As usual, there is a pother about the new-rules and an argument as to how they shall be interpreted.

These are, in the last analysis, of small consequences and too intricate to explain without generally unintelligible technicalities. A far more important consideration is the continued and preposterous refusal of Athletic Associations at Yale, Harvard, Princeton and certain other colleges to provide proper facilities for unfortunate newspaper reporters who are compelled to sit on top of the windy stadiums, fumbling telegraph instruments with frozen thumbs.