Football

When the U. S. Academies at West Point and Annapolis agreed last summer, after a three-year breach of athletic relations, to resume playing football with each other, they failed to settle the differences on which the breach was based. Navy like other colleges observes the three-year eligibility rule; at West Point cadets who have played three years of varsity football elsewhere are still eligible for the team. This gives West Point an obvious advantage in Army-Navy games. Navy has not won since 1921. In last week's game, closing the football season for the East, stout-hearted Navy tried hard, but anyone could see that Army had more power, more experience. Its team was precisely as much better than Navy's as the score, 20-to-0, showed.

Army's first touchdown came in the second quarter. After a 54-yd. march down Franklin Field, Quarterback Pick Vidal plunged through centre across the goal line. Navy played tenacious football and had bad luck with penalties and passes in the second half. In the last quarter, Army's substitute Left Halfback Jack Buckler threw a 34-yd. pass to Bill Frenzel, who caught it on Navy's 6-yd. line, fell into the end zone as he was tackled. Five minutes before the game ended, Buckler did most of the work on a 40-yd. march in twelve plays and went around his right end for the last touchdown.

One of Army's points in the discussion of eligibility rules has always been that many of its best football players would be eligible anywhere. Jack Buckler, a yearling from Waco, substitute this season for Ken Fields, is a case in point. So is rapid little Quarterback Vidal. Brother of a famed Army end, Gene Vidal, who was on the team in 1916-17, he finished school at 15, waited a year, entered Wrest Point when he was still under age. This season, his first as a member of the first-string team, he was Army's best broken field runner. He will be graduated next spring at 20.

Auburn, ready to clinch the Southern Conference championship against South Carolina at Birmingham, ran up a comfortable lead of two touchdowns in the first half. South Carolina made a 60-yd. march to a touchdown in the third quarter but it did not seem important; Auburn scored again soon after the kickoff. Then, in the last quarter, after a weak Auburn punt, South Carolina completed two passes for a touchdown; an Auburn fumble opened the way for another. South Carolina's Quarterback Hal Mauney kicked the goal that ended the game 20-to-20. first time Auburn has been tied this year. Tennessee, by beating feeble Florida 32-to-13, and Louisiana State ended the season in a triple tie with Auburn for the championship. In a poll of 31 sportswriters on southern newspapers, 22 favored giving the title to Tennessee for winning seven conference games to Auburn's six, with one tie each.

Alabama's Captain John ("Hurry") Cain cut through St. Mary's right tackle on his own 29-yd. line, swerved toward the left side of the field, wriggled away from three tacklers and sidestepped two more on his way to the goal. After 57 more minutes of bruising, grunting, thumping, kicking and pounding, the score still remained Alabama 6, St. Mary's 0, at San Francisco.

Nebraska, Big Six champion, ended its season with a trip to Dallas and a beating, 21-to-14, for Southern Methodist.

Newsworthy as any game last week was the abrupt resignation of Stanford's famed Coach Glenn Scobey ("Pop") Warner, because of "dissatisfaction" after an unsuccessful season, to become head coach at Temple University, in Philadelphia, which had troubles of its own last week (see p. 46).

None of the college football games played last week helped at all to settle the question of which is the best football team in the U. S. The Southern California v. Notre Dame game this week will not settle it nor will the Rose Bowl game on Jan 1, in which Pittsburgh was last week invited to oppose Southern California. Experts are well aware that the best football teams in the U. S. are the eight professional teams in the National Football League. Last week the National League championship was at stake in a game between the Green Bay (Wis.) Packers and the Portsmouth (Ohio) Spartans, at Portsmouth. Green Bay, thrice League champion, had lost only one game this season; their record for three years was 35 games won, 3 lost, 2 tied. A penalty paved the way for Portsmouth's first touchdown in the first quarter; a pop-up punt gave them the chance for another in the next period. When the game was over, 19 to 0 for the Spartans, they had performed the astonishing feat of putting the Packers out of the running for the championship, needed only a victory over the Chicago Bears, in case the Bears beat the Packers this week, to clinch it for themselves.

The Green Bay Packers got their name because a packing company gave them their uniforms in 1918, the year the team was organized by its present coach, Earl Louis ("Curly") Lambeau, who had played for one year at Notre Dame on the first team that the late Knute Rockne coached. Green Bay was one of the 14 teams which in 1921 started the National Football League, after professional football, which had been played intermittently since 1895, had fallen into a decline. A heavy college line weighs 190 lb. from end to end. The Green Bay line weighs 220 lb. Heaviest lineman is Jugger Earpe, 257-lb. tackle. There are eleven former captains of college teams on the Green Bay Packers' squad, but few All-Americans. This year's star back is Arnold ("Flash") Herber, a Belgian who went to St. Regis College (Wis.) for one year, never played varsity football. Most of the Green Bay Packers live in Green Bay. Halfback Verne Lewellen is a district attorney. Halfback Bruder drives a truck. Right Guard Stahlman plays minor league baseball when not playing football. Verne Dilweg, whom famed Red Grange of the Chicago Bears considers the ablest end he has ever met, is a lawyer.

The National has been the only important professional football league in the U. S. since the collapse of C. C. Pyle's American League in 1927. The first thing that spectators accustomed to college football notice about professional games is an immense, swift precision which makes the game compare to college games as college games compare to the higgledy-piggledy contests of gangling schoolboys. Professionals are almost always huge (an exception is Boston Braves' 167-lb. Center Tony Siano) but they do not lumber awkwardly like most huge college players. They must be light-footed, quick as eels, dextrous as jugglers. Professional line-play is clever, titanic and almost always evenly matched. Backfields use complex maneuvers which require split-second timing and the accuracy of basketballers in passing. Lateral passes develop from forwards, forwards from laterals, spinners and reverses have complications impossible and unnecessary for amateur teams. There are few long end runs because professional ends are too fast to flank, almost no double wing back formations for the same reason. Serious injuries are rare, not because professionals lack zeal and dirty craft, but because, since substitutes are usually as able as the men they replace, there is nothing to be gained by disabling opponents.

The ablest professional players are less likely to be All-Americans than crack players from obscure teams, like Stapleton's Quarterback Bob Campiglio, from West Liberty Teachers, and the Giants' end, Ray Flaherty, from Gonzaga. Some professionals are discovered by scouts. Others, like the Giants' Fullback Mulleneaux, who arrived from Arizona as a hobo, ask for employment. Professional players who have been famed in college get salaries much higher than the average of $125 per game, during their first season. Minnesota's Bronko Nagurski, now fullback for the Chicago Bears, gets about $300. Cagle gets $500. Red Grange, who made a poor start in professional football six years ago, now gets more than any of his confreres, $550. As a professional, he is more useful as a blocking back than as a runner.

The most desirable quality in professional football players is durability. Teams are allowed to have rosters of only 22, to keep payrolls low. The Green Bay Packers, in addition to having the best team in the league, have the cheapest; salaries for this season averaged $110. The Packers' profits go to the Green Bay American Legion. A profitable new team in the league this year is the Boston Braves, owned by a laundryman of Washington, D. C., one George Marshall. While college football gate receipts this year declined 15%, professional receipts did not decrease at all. Standing of the teams after last week's games:

Won Lost Tied p.c.

Portsmouth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 1 4 .857

Green Bay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2 1 .833

Chicago Bears. . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1 6 .833

Boston. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4 2 .500

New York. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 6 2 .400

Brooklyn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 9 0 .250

Chicago Cardinals. . . . . . . . . 2 6 2 .250

Stapleton. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 7 3 .222

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