Peace & War

"Modesty forbids," grinned Knute Rockne when asked to name football's greatest coach. "But if I can name the two best football coaches in America, one of them is going to be Clark Shaughnessy."

In the twelve years since Rockne's death, tall, gaunt-faced Clark Daniel Shaughnessy has indeed proved himself a top-flight coach. Last week he uncovered a second talent: military tactics. In Football in War & Peace (Jacobs Press; $1) he convincingly underscores the remarkable similarity of football strategy to tactics in warfare.

Winning touchdown of his argument is an amazing parallel between Montgomery's victory at El Alamein and a "fullback counter" run from Shaughnessy's T formation (see cut). The tactics are almost identical:

The British Eighth and Afrika Korps faced each other as on a line of scrimmage. Montgomery had the ball. His right halfback (44th Division) started the play by faking to the left and drawing off the defense. His left half (50th Division) took a fake from the quarterback, then plunged through center. Meanwhile, the fullback (United Kingdom's armored division) had started to the left. Quickly he doubled back, took the ball from the quarterback (51st Highlanders) and sliced through the right side of his line, between the defensive left and tackle. His guard (9th Australians) blocked the defensive halfback and a historic advance had begun.

Air Power. Football's Pantelleria, says Shaughnessy, was Notre Dame's 35-to-13 upset of Army in 1913. Described by a New York paper as "a team from South Bend, Ill.," Notre Dame uncorked the historic Dorais-to-Rockne passing combination for the first convincing demonstration that air power alone can overcome land strength. From the sidelines a lightweight halfback named Dwight Eisenhower watched 13 Irish passes whistle by the hopelessly confused West Pointers. That game was the beginning of a new kind of football.

After brilliant records at Tulane, Loyola at New Orleans and Stanford (where in 1940 he won eight straight and the Rose Bowl championship), this season Shaughnessy is trying to rescue Pittsburgh from doldrums brought on by a violent attack of simon-pure amateurism. His Panthers have yet to make a touchdown, but he has found his dream team in football's record book, sets it out in his Football in War & Peace for fans to mull over.

His alltime, all-star eleven (none of whom ever played on a Shaughnessy team) :

ends: Don Hutson, Alabama 1935, and Brick Muller, California 1921;

tackles: Bronko Nagurski, Minnesota 1929, and Wilbur Henry, Washington and Jefferson 1919;

guards: T. Truxton Hare, Pennsylvania 1900, and Pudge Heffelfinger, Yale 1889;

center: Bob Peck, Pittsburgh 1916;

quarterback: Dutch Clark, Colorado 1927;

right half: Red Grange, Illinois 1924;

left half: George Gipp, Notre Dame 1919;

fullback: Jim Carlisle 1911.

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