Trophies and Gophers
Toward the mythical championship of U.S. college football, Minnesota still leads the nationwide march this week. The goal ahead is a new team trophy whose donor is Minnesota's own M Club (lettermen).
Its members have just put up a walnut-&-silver plaque in memory of the father of Minnesota football, Dr. Henry L. Williams, head coach from 1900 to 1922.
Like its two predecessors,* the Williams award will go to the college winning the mythical U.S. championship three times during the next ten years. But instead of a private jury, its basis of reckoning will be the annual Associated Press poll (consensus of 125 sportswriters), now recognized as the foremost appraiser of college football teams.
The late Dr. Williams, a shaggy-browed, sot-in-his-ways New Englander, who loved his old checkered cap more than he did the limelight, is less famed than his coaching contemporaries: Chicago's Amos Alonzo Stagg (his friend and football teammate in their turtleneck days at Yale) and Michigan's Fielding H. Yost (his archrival for 20 years). But the good doctor, who practiced gynecology nine months of the year during his coaching days at Minnesota, conceived many football maneuvers--notably the Minnesota Shift, forerunner of all quick shifts--that played an important part in the development of U.S. football.
On his turn-of-the-century teams, Dr. Williams had a center that weighed 320 lb., a guard that weighed 289 and several other linemen he fondly called his "mountains of fat." Under Coach Bernie Bierman, one of Williams' star pupils in 1913-14-15, the Gophers have retained many of the traits that made Dr. Williams' boys the terrifying monsters of football's stone age.
If Dr. Williams had been alive last week he would have been proud of this year's Gophers. At Ann Arbor, before the largest crowd (85,753) that ever crammed into the Michigan Stadium, Minnesota met its old rival in a titanic tug of war for the Little Brown Jug for which they have tugged since 1903, when Dr. Williams' upstarts held Yost's famed point-a-minute Michigan team to a 6-to-6 tie. The water jug Michigan used that day was held as hostage by delirious Minnesota students, has since served as their traditional trophy.
This year more than the jug was at stake. For Minnesota, undefeated this season, was ranked No. 1 in last week's Associated Press poll. Michigan, also undefeated, was ranked No. 3 (No. 2: Texas). The scrappy Wolverines, still clinging to Yost's "punt, pass and a prayer," were bent on kicking Minnesota off its perch.
But Minnesota, in a combination of skill and luck, licked them at their own game.
Near the end of the first half, brilliant Bruce Smith, 200-lb. triple-threat, got off a 78-yd. punt, then threw a 43-yd. forward pass that put Minnesota on Michigan's 5-yd. line. Smith was injured on the next play, but his teammates scored for a 7-to-0 lead that the Wolverines were unable to budge. It was Minnesota's eighth successive victory over Michigan. More impor tant, Minnesota is now in a place where, if it gets by Northwestern this week, it should beat its remaining opponents (Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin), should deserve a leg on the Williams Trophy.
> Another Williams pupil who gained headlines last week is Coach Ossie Solem of Syracuse. Onetime (1925-32) athletic director at Drake, where he did much to build the Drake Relays into a famed sport event, Solem is this year putting Syracuse back on the map with a freak football formation. On the offense, in Solem's Y formation, the center, instead of bending over and "viewing his mates from an upside-down position," faces his own backfield. Instead of reaching forward to put his hands on the ball, he reaches backward between his legs to get it.
The reversed center has certain advantages: 1) the center can flip accurately to any of four backs; 2) for this reason, ballcarriers can get into the open faster; 3) guards do not have to be pulled out of the line to block inasmuch as the center can easily go back to do so. Baffling its foes with Solem's Y, Syracuse has won four out of five games this season. Referees have tried but failed to find anything in the rule book that can force Solem to turn his center around.
* The Rissman Trophy, put up by a Chicago tailor and sewed up by Notre Dame in 1930; the Knute Rockne Trophy, sponsored by Notre Dame's Four Horsemen and awarded to Minnesota last fall. * Held by Minnesota Halfback Bud Higgins.