Football: Mid-season

(See front cover) Last week's major scores:

Army 46 Harvard 0

Columbia 7 Navy 6

Fordham 14 St. Mary's 0

Pittsburgh 19 Perm 12

Princeton 53 I.ehigh 0

Duke 13 Kentucky 0

Louisiana State 6 South Carolina 0

Tennessee 31 Mississippi State 0

Tulane 20 Georgia Tech 14

Michigan 7 Indiana 0

Minnesota 26 Mississippi U. 0

Missouri 14 Oklahoma 6

Nebraska 14 Iowa 13

Notre Dame 24 Kansas 6

Wisconsin 20 Illinois 12

Washington 18 Stanford 13

U. S. C. 27 California 7

If you want to compile an All-American football team, a good way is to start with the best quarterback of the year. If anyone had been sufficiently enthusiastic to begin making up an All-American this way last fortnight, the first name might have been Orville Mohler, of Southern California. Quick, wiry and comparatively light (166 lb.), a licensed airplane pilot, president of the U. S. C. student body, Orville Mohler may not be on the All-American teams compiled at the season's close, but only because of an injury to his spine which closed his football career two weeks ago, when U. S. C. was playing Stanford. If Mohler had been on the U. S. C. team that played California at Los Angeles last week, more people might have gone to see the game. As it was, there were 75,000, biggest crowd of the week. Even without Mohler, U. S. C. had a team which contained four Ail-American prospects: Captain and Left Tackle Raymond C. ("Tay") Brown, who makes a specialty of blocking punts; Right Tackle Ernie Smith, who has a bald head, huge paws and a talent for place-kicks; Ray Sparling, left-end, and at the other end of the line Ford Palmer who caught the two passes that enabled U. S. C. to beat Stanford last fortnight.

For the first three periods of last week's game against California, U. S. C. did what everyone had expected. Then, in the last quarter, occurred something that has not happened before this year--Southern California was scored on, with a 35-yd. forward pass from Henry Schaldach to Right End David Meek. But this interruption mattered little. By that time Southern California had four touchdowns by Mohler's understudies, Homer Griffith and Irvine Warburton, and the game was practically over, 27 to 7. Southern California's victory over California was its sixth in a row this year. Last year, Southern California won all its eight games except the first, against St. Mary's. Against 66 points for opponents, Southern California scored 382, one less than Colgate's record for major teams in 1930. Southern California won the Pacific Coast Conference Championship in 1928 and 1931, tied for first in 1927 and 1929. Since 1925, whenever Southern California has failed to win the Coast Championship it has finished second (in 1925 it was third). The fact that before 1925 Southern California was a second-rate power in Coast football makes it apparent that a significant change in Southern California's football methods occurred that year. In 1925, Southern California acquired its present coach, Howard Harding Jones. The Jones record at U. S. C. to date: 70 games won; 2 tied; 10 lost.

Never so famed as the late Knute Rockne, or Stanford's Glenn ("Pop") Warner, whose teams have lost to Southern California since 1927, Southern California's coach had an impressive record before he started to teach football west of the Rockies. Eleven years ago his Iowa team beat Notre Dame when the latter had won 22 games in a row. In 1921, Iowa won the Big Ten championship for the first time since 1900. When he went back to coach at Yale, whence he was graduated in 1908, Coach Howard Jones turned out the 1909 team that won all its ten games without being scored on and contained six Ail-Americans. At Yale, Howard Jones's celebrity was later dimmed by that of his brother "Tad" (Thomas Albert Dwight) Jones, Ail-American quarterback of the Yale team on which Howard played end. Tad coached Yale football teams after Howard went West, from 1920 to 1927. Not until he had built Southern California up to its present status was Coach Howard Harding Jones recognized as a thoroughly high-grade football wizard. Even then his eclat was not heightened by a "Jones System," like the Rockne and Warner systems. An adapter rather than an innovator, he uses both the Rockne shift and the Warner wingback formations for an offense that combines Stanford's deception with Notre Dame's precision and speed. Versatile and open-minded, Jones transforms his methods to suit his purpose, as he did in 1927 when he changed his defense by bringing his ends in close to upset slow-forming plays behind the Stanford line. In a patchwork of other football systems that have proven effective, he uses the huddle to muddle and makes flexibility, the art of the unexpected, his only inflexible rule. U. S. C. is the only major team in the U. S. that has no line coach. This is because Coach Jones makes the line his specialty and usually forms it of men who have previously played in the backfield. Jones's halfbacks rarely carry the ball; they are for interference. His fullback usually lines up just in front of the quarterback, who does most of the ball carrying, must be able to pass. run. kick. Jones's deception is less a matter of complicated ball-handling, in spinners and reverse plays, than in varying formations. The Jones shift is used purely for disguising formations instead of for gaining momentum. The shift most frequently leads into an unbalanced line with both guards playing on the right of the center, the inside one for running. Three favorite Jones formations: ETCGGTE ETCGGTE THCGGTE

H H H H E H

F F F

Q Q Q

Opponents consider U. S. C. plays on the right side of an unbalanced line most dangerous. Plays on the weak side of the line are likely to be spins or reverses, an occasional quick plunge by the fullback.

On the Pacific Coast, where non-scouting agreements are not fashionable, Jones has an elaborate technique of espionage. Aubrey Devine, onetime Iowa All-American, has been scouting Notre Dame all this year. Stanford's Pop Warner said that U. S. C.'s Stanford spy, Cliff Herd, knew more about Stanford's plays than the team. Gordon Campbell scouted California this year. Scouting is part of the duty of U. S. C. assistant coaches who get about $2,500 a season.

Howard Jones gets $12,000. He earns one-third as much again from such activities as newspaper writing, which he does himself, cinema shorts, of which he made a series last spring, and sales of his two books: How to Coach and Play Football, Football for the Fan. In the football season he goes to the U. S. C. campus at noon, in an automobile presented to him after the Tulane game last year. He lunches with his assistant coaches at the students' union, considers the reports of their scoutings on Mondays and Tuesdays. After lunch, he goes to his office and attends to his mail. He gets about 40 letters when U. S. C. wins a game, 80 when U. S. C. loses. He reads them all carefully, dictates answers.

At 3 p. m. he goes to training quarters, chats with reporters while he dresses for practice. Practice starts officially at about 4, lasts till 5:45. Unlike many Eastern colleges, U. S. C. has no floodlights. Coach Jones never holds "skull practice" at night. Sometimes he takes his quarterback home to dinner. After dinner, a pile of poker chips appears on the table. Amazingly dextrous from long practice, Jones moves them to diagram plays, red chips for the line, blue for the backfield, white for opponents.

In his coaching, Howard Jones has certain peculiarities. He never curses and will not permit his players to do so. Instead of a trainer, he has a physician, Dr. Walter R. Fieseler, to take care of the players, blow the whistle at practice scrimmage, decide on treatment for injured players and when they are fit to play again. Before important games he makes no emotional orations. In a soothing voice he reviews what he wants the team to remember, reminds them what their opponents are likely to do and how to retaliate. He insists, to an almost eccentric degree, upon "clean" football, even in a game like the one against Washington last year. He dislikes football players who dramatize injuries on the field. When a man is hurt Jones seldom expresses sympathy till after the game.

When the football season is over, Howard Jones leads an easy life. He is a partner and stockholder in his father's paper firm of Harding, Jones & Co., but he takes no active part in its affairs. He goes fishing in the Sierras, gives talks at business men's meetings, plays golf and bridge. Dressed in golf trousers, an old sweater and a grey hat pulled far down on his grooved and sunburned face, he potters about the North Hollywood bungalow where he lives with his wife, son, and four-year-old daughter Carolyn, who sprawls about in a specially monstrous sandbox. The role of football wizard is, on the whole, superior to any other in professional sport. Coaches get higher salaries than any other professionals except a few baseball players. Their earning capacity is not determined by their age. They work only in the autumn and mostly in the afternoon. If they are successful, they are rewarded by fame, authority and opportunities to act in cinema. When Howard Jones began his career, such was not the case. Coaches were likely to be underpaid alumni. Their duties were menial. They had few assistants. None of them received adulation for possessing masterminds. First and greatest mastermind of football was, of course, the late Knute Rockne. Any player on a Rockne team was considered a miniature master mind; to have played on a Notre Dame team was qualification to be either a professional player or a $3,000-a-year coach.

With football's post-War inflation, foothall coaches reached their present pinnacle of importance. There are now some 3,000 well-paid, highly respected football coaches in the U. S. The principal disadvantage in the profession of football wizard is its uncertainty. If a team stops winning its games consistently, its coach stops receiving a wizard's salary. There are a few football coaches in the U. S. who have overcome this handicap sufficiently to make their reputations for wizardry, like Howard Jones's, secure.

Amos Alonzo Stagg, 70, of Chicago is the oldest football wizard in the U. S. He has coached 41 Chicago teams. He invented the shift, which Knute Rockne later improved and popularized. When he went to Yale he planned to enter the ministry. His interest in football defeated his interest in theology in 1889, when Yale made 698 points to 0 for its opponents. Amos Alonzo Stagg played end, made Walter Camp's first All-American. He went to Chicago to be Director of Athletics at $2,500 a year in 1892. Last month Chicago's trustees voted to have Coach Stagg obey a University regulation and retire at 70, at the end of this year. He demurred. Coach Stagg's 40-year record: won 253; lost 104; tied 28.

Red-faced, 220-lb. Glenn Scobey ("Pop") Warner of Stanford has a personal rivalry with U. S. C.'s Howard Jones no less bitter than the one between Stanford's track coach Robert Lyman Templeton and U. S. C.'s Dean Cromwell. It started in 1908 when Warner was coaching the Carlisle Indians and Jones was coach at Syracuse, over an argument about the length of the halves. Pop Warner's salary is $500 more than Jones's. He is supposed to receive further backing from Banker Herbert Fleishhacker of San Francisco whose huge son played on the team 1927-29. In 1925, the year that Howard Jones went to U. S. C., the Warner system, based on the idea of placing both halfbacks outside the end, first attracted wide attention. Since 1928 when Stanford beat Army 26 to 0 variations of the Warner system have come to be used by almost every coach. Stanford's Pop Warner has been a coach for 37 years. He is credited with inventing the crouching start for linemen. He walks with a limp. Reporters dislike him because he is closemouthed. At games he concentrates on his "system," lets his assistants make all substitutions. Warner amusements: making golf sticks and protective apparatus for his players, in a workshop behind his house; painting (like Illinois' famed Bob Zuppke). which he learned from a village sign-painter. His record at Stanford since 1924 is won 64, lost 11, tied 7.

Notre Dame this year scored a point a minute until last fortnight when it was beaten by Pitt, 12 to 0. This was an appalling surprise for Notre Dame's Coach Heartly ("Hunk") Anderson, who succeeded the late Knute Rockne last year. Last week, before Notre Dame beat Kansas, 24 to 6, he refused to let his players read newspapers, lest they be made vain. Notre Dame's line coach before Knute Rockne's death, Coach Anderson played guard on Notre Dame teams from 1919 to 1922. He uses the Rockne System without variations, has 140 plays in his repertoire this year. Notre Dame's Athletic Director Jesse Harper last week denied reports that there would be a new head coach at Notre Dame next year. Columbia's Coach Lou Little, acquired from Georgetown in 1930, has a nose as large and hooked as that of the bronze Columbia Lion which overlooks his practice field. He was an All-American tackle for Penn in 1916, again in 1919 when he returned from the War. His record since 1925, at Georgetown and Columbia: won 49, lost 13, tied 4. Columbia has lost no games this year. Coach Little's salary--estimated $17,500--is the highest for a football coach in the U. S.

When Coach Edward P. ("Slip") Madigan went to St. Mary's in 1921, there were 60 students in an old brick plant in Oakland, Calif. Now St. Mary's has 750 students, a $2,000,000 campus in Moraga Valley. Coach Madigan is largely responsible for the change. In 1921, St. Mary's played Stanford with 16 men on the squad, made 10 points to Stanford's 14. In 1926 and 1929 St. Mary's had undefeated teams. Coach Madigan was a Notre Dame guard under Knute Rockne and Rockne's predecessor, George Harper. He curses, roars at jokes with his players in a booming voice. Before games he delivers lavish orations. Coach Madigan's quotations from Robert Louis Stevenson's Leaves of Gold (gold is St. Mary's color) so inspired his players against Fordham in 1930 that the team, 12 points behind, made three touchdowns in the second half, won 20-12. Last week, Coach Madigan failed to repeat his Leaves of Gold speech. St. Mary's got no touchdowns. During games he walks rapidly up & down the sidelines, pulls his hat over his ears, spits on his hands. St. Mary's record since 1925: won 52, lost 11. tied 3.

Herbert Orrin Crisler, first non-graduate coach in Princeton history, was hired this year from Minnesota for $8,000 a year. So far he has earned it by building up, from the remnants of a team that won only one game last season, to one that last fortnight held Michigan 14-to-7 and last week smothered Lehigh, 53 to 0. Affable and optimistic. Coach Crisler does not object to his nickname "Fritz." He learned his football at Chicago where he was a crack end in 1920 and 1921. Pleased by the success of Coach Crisler, Princetonians were recently grieved to learn that grizzled little Keene Fitzpatrick, head track coach since 1910, football kicking coach and chief Princeton trainer for all sports, plans to retire at the end of this season.

At Minnesota, Coach Crisler was replaced this year by Bernard William ("Bernie") Bierman, who started coaching at Butte, Montana, High School in 1920, and worked up gradually till he turned out two Tulane teams that won Southern Conference Championships in 1930 and 1931. A Bierman legend: he has never shed a tear, shouted, raged or dropped a player from his squad. During the half, he reads to his squad from a small sheet of paper on which he has noted their mistakes. He played at Minnesota in 1916; he uses the Minnesota shift, invented by Dr. Henry Williams, with guards moving in an unbalanced line. His salary is now $7,500. His record, in four years at Tulane: won 35, lost 9. tied 2.

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