Football

Upon learning that his undergraduates had been invited to play a game of football with the University of Michigan, President Andrew D. White of Cornell snapped: "I will not permit 30 men to travel 400 miles merely to agitate a bag of wind!" That was in 1873. Last week there was not a corner in the land which did not hold a college president who would not have been delighted to dispatch a trainload of players, coaches, rubbers, managers, bandsmen on the long, expensive trip to Pasadena for the publicity and profit of playing in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day. Named by the Pacific Coast Conference week before to represent the West, Stanford was not to select its Eastern opponent until this week. But the regiment of sportswriters and radio commentators that converged on Fort Worth, Tex. last week to see Southern Methodist play Texas Christian felt sure that the winner of this, perhaps the season's most spectacular game, would get Stanford's bid. The Southwest Conference, now embracing six Texas colleges and the University of Arkansas, was organized in 1914. That was just four years after Texas Christian moved from Waco to Fort Worth and one year before Southern Methodist opened its doors. Short on tradition, the conferees were not particularly long on competence at the game itself for more than a decade. Then last year readers of the nation's sport pages suddenly became aware of the Texas league when in a series of exciting intersectional games Rice whipped Purdue, Texas nosed out Notre Dame, Southern Methodist ran through Fordham, Texas Christian beat Santa Clara. The football centre of the country seemed to have moved south. It had done so because the Texans had developed a hell-for-leather style of play which employed plenty of passes of all kinds, sweeps and power plays, lots of deception. Emerging into the national sportlight like a whole league of Centre Colleges, the Southwest Conference this year produced not one but a pair of teams of championship stripe. Among a coeducational student body of less than 1,000, Texas Christian's Coach Leo Robert (''Dutch") Meyer had discovered a squad which remained unbeaten and untied for ten games. A Texas Christian graduate, Dutch Meyer was commercially hardheaded enough to observe upon taking over his job year ago: "I believe the fans want a club which will go places." To send his club places, he developed a boy named Sam ("Slinging Sam") Baugh. Sam Baugh throws passes like a catcher shooting a fast one to second base. In the matter of material, fortune had also smiled on Coach Madison A. ("Matty") Bell of Southern Methodist. From 1,300 undergraduates, he selected a team good enough to whitewash the University of California at Los Angeles (TIME, Nov. 18), to remain undefeated, untied in ten games. A Centre man himself, Matty Bell has now worked for three of the seven colleges in the Southwest Conference. In 1923-28 he coached at Texas Christian. Two bad seasons at Texas A. & M. had left him without a job until he was put on last year as Southern Methodist's assistant coach. When his predecessor went to Vanderbilt, he left Matty a priceless keepsake, one Robert Edward Wilson. ''Bobby" Wilson's legs have to carry only 147 lb., so they carry them incredibly fast. Last year he played just five minutes against Fordham, during which he racked up two touchdowns. Last week the crowd that jammed the 30,000 seats of Texas Christian's incompleted stadium and paid to stand on the surrounding hillside knew that the issue would really be settled by Sam Baugh's right arm versus Bobby Wilson's two legs. The Methodist Mustangs began by marching 73 yd. for the first touchdown. Both teams scored in the second period, but something was wrong with the Horned Frogs' ends and backs. In all, Texas Christian tried 45 passes. Though Sam Baugh was shooting them right into their arms, his receivers could not hold them. Even so, Texas Christian tied the score 14-all at the beginning of the last period. Thereupon little Bobby Wilson slipped down to the Frogs' goal line, caught the pass that made the score that ended the game 20-to-14, leaving Southern Methodist one of the three major unbeaten, untied teams in the U. S. as the curtain rang down on the regular season for 1935. Next day Stanford invited Southern Methodist to the Rose Bowl. Southern Methodist lost no time accepting. No team is ever more uneasy about Yale than Princeton. Taking no chances of a repetition of last year's fiasco, a coolheaded, well-disciplined Princeton eleven began by modestly kicking a field goal. Their first touchdown was made by Jack White at the end of the first half, after Pepper Constable seemed to have given the ball to everybody else on the Princeton team. Then in the fourth period, the Tigers opened up, pushed over four touchdowns in rapid succession. Meantime, having thrown four of its passes straight into Princeton's arms, Yale shot an astonishing one into the Princeton end-zone which Larry Kelley, after a long circling run, caught for the score that kept Yale from being whitewashed in a game which ended 38-to-7. Intoxicated by an undefeated football season and Princeton's most crushing defeat of Yale in the history of the 62-year-old series, a swarm of Princeton rooters prematurely tore down both goal posts long before the game was over, almost made way with the ball after a placement kick, were roundly booed from the Yale stands.

As predicted, Army walked over Navy 28-to-6.

Not as predicted, Joe Vollmer, substitute halfback for the mediocre Columbia Lions, romped 63 yd. in the last quarter through eleven surprised Dartmouth Indians, to win the game 13-to-7.

Violating a five-year-old undergraduate "peace treaty," Louisiana State students raided Tulane's campus on the eve of the Deep South's big game, stuck their colors on the flagpole, smeared TO HELL WITH TULANE all over walks and buildings, predicted L. S. U. 40; Tulane 0. The Louisiana Staters were not quite extravagant enough. Final score: L. S. U. 41, Tulane 0.

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