Football

Banker Ralph W. Ellis of Springfield, Mass, was graduated from Harvard in 1879. Of the 51 football games that Harvard and Yale have played, he has seen all but one. But even Banker Ellis had never seen a Harvard-Yale game quite like the one last week. A gusty south wind from Long Island Sound lashed rain into the Yale Bowl by the cloudful. The 50,000 people (who contributed only $2,315 to solicitors for an unemployment fund) kept away from the field till the last minute and then piled into the Bowl wearing oilskins, rubber boots, blankets, with newspapers folded around their necks for scarves and wrapped around their hats. The storm made it all the more likely that. like most Harvard-Yale games, this one. between two teams with almost equally erratic records, would be decided by a stroke of fortune.

The first thing that looked like a break came five minutes after the game started when John Dean, Harvard punter, whose kicks averaged more than 47 yd., fumbled on his 45-yd. line. Yale recovered. Bob Lassiter. the black-haired North Carolinian who has been Yale's outstanding halfback this year, threw a pass to Dud Parker for a 25-yd. gain. Joe Crowley smashed through Harvard's left guard for 12 yd. With a first down on Harvard's 3-yd. line, it was three plays before Walter Levering splashed through tackle for the touchdown. Sullivan scuttled around end for the extra point.

After that, the teams settled down to a game which was sometimes brilliant, strategic football, sometimes a sort of exaggerated water-polo. Harvard's attack, with Jack Crickard running the ball three times out of four, got under way in the second period. Yale stopped it, as it had stopped Princeton's the week before, once in the 13-yd. line and again 2 yd. from the Yale goal. In the third period, Lassiter began to find soft spots in the right side of the Harvard line. In Yale's 55-yd. march to its second touchdown, he gained 45 yd. in four rushes. Drenched and determined, Harvard was disgusted by the first play of the last quarter. On fourth down with 10 yd. to go Lassiter tossed the soggy slippery ball to Marling who waded 24 yd. for a touchdown. A few minutes later the game was over, Yale 19, Harvard o, most decisive score since 1915 when Harvard won 41-to-0. Yale men, apparently bewildered by rain, wind, mud and the excitement of seeing their team win its second game this year, rushed down and tore up their own goalposts.

At Berkeley, Calif, the sun blazed down, hotter because of a characteristic mist, on Stanford and California. A crowd of 78,000 in light summer clothes watched the two teams, oldest football rivals on the Pacific Coast, end their conference seasons with a scoreless tie in which Stanford, picked to lose, rushed 208 yd. to 124, made seven first downs to the six that California got in the last six minutes.

Not since Michigan's famed Benny Friedman has the Western Conference had a forward passer like Michigan's Harry Newman. Last week, Harry Newman executed his wiliest play of the year.

It was fourth down, 4 yd. to the Minnesota goal line, with 36 seconds of the first half to play. Harry Newman dropped back for a high place kick that missed hitting the goalpost by just enough to give Michigan the game which clinched the Big Ten Championship 3-to-0. Nebraska took the championship of the Big Six--Kansas. Oklahoma, Kansas State, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa State-- by nosing out Oklahoma, 5-to-0, on Masterson's field goal in the third quarter and a safety in the fourth, when Right End Cherry ran back to pick up a pass from center that had gone over his head. Auburn (Alabama Polytechnic Institute) has an extraordinary football team, called "Tigers" or "Plainsmen." Its coach is Chet Wynne, Notre Dame fullback in 1921. Captain and left halfback is Jimmy Hitchcock, baldish, small, fast, whom Auburn publicists like to compare with famed Red Grange. Quarterback "Ripper" Williams is a clever arrogant field general. The Tigers have a chinless end, David ("Gump") Ariail, who may make the All-American, a stuttering sophomore end named Bennie Fenton. So far this season. Auburn has made 255 points to its opponent's 34. Last week Auburn emerged from a close shave--14-to-7-- against Georgia with a claim to its first Southern Conference Championship that will probably be substantiated by the Auburn-South Carolina game this week. Navy got only four first downs to Notre Dame's 20, rushed 71 yd. to Notre Dame's 282 but it was so stubborn near its own goal line that two Notre Dame teams were lucky to grind out two touchdowns at Cleveland, 12-to-0. Pitt found Carnegie Tech a touchdown harder than Notre Dame, a touchdown easier than Nebraska, 6-to-0 in a sooty Pittsburgh snowstorm. Coach Ike Armstrong's Utah team, which has not lost a Rocky Mountain Conference game since the one the Colorado Aggies won, 12 to 0, in 1927, played the Colorado Aggies again last week, clinched its fifth Conference Championship in a row, 16 to 0. In three New York mud-puddles. Fordham nosed out Oregon State on a safety, 8-to-6, Columbia & Syracuse and Holy Cross & Manhattan played scoreless ties. Iowa State's Captain Magnussen performed a strategem suggested to him by Iowa State's new Coach Ossie Solem. He stood 20 paces away from a pile of burning straw, tossed a burning football shoe at it over his left shoulder. Next day Iowa State lost to Northwestern, 44-to-6. After 40 years of football against North Carolina, Duke and its new Coach Wallace Wade managed to win for the first time, 7-to-0. Ever since their 6-to-6 tie last month there has been bickering between Vanderbilt and Tulane. Tulane accused Vanderbilt's Assistant Coach Russ Cohen of spite in having Tulane's Captain Nollie Felts barred for professionalism. Vanderbilt accused Tulane of booing Coach Cohen at their game. Last week, Coach Cohen announced that Vanderbilt and Tulane had severed relations, that Vanderbilt would play Louisiana State University instead next year. Tulane showed no mortification; its second team ran through Sewanee, 26-to-0.

The Green Bay Packers, National League (professional) champions, had not been beaten this year until Jack McBride of the New York Giants, onetime Syracuse University star, threw a 40-yd. forward pass.

Biggest score of the week: West Liberty's 137-to-0, against Cedarville, at Wheeling, W. Va., with 71 points by Left Halfback Joe Korshalla.

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