Football for Fans

The postwar vogue of the T-formation on gridiron after gridiron has made the old-fashioned single-wing formation seem almost like a relic of the days when players drop-kicked field goals. But a lot of spectators have been grumping about the trend. With the T-attack, they complain, football has become a game of "Button, button, who's got the button?" It takes a good grandstand man to tell.

Watching Princeton unroll its single-wing attack in Palmer Stadium last week, fans had a much simpler time: there was the ball, right out in the open, beginning with the old-fashioned pass from center to the ballcarrier. Cornell could follow the ball too, but it had its hands full all afternoon trying to stop it.

On Princeton's first play from scrimmage, Fullback Jack Davison carried the ball. Instead of taking off from a scant three yards behind the line of scrimmage and weaving his way through the openings (as in the T), Fullback Davison got up his speed well back, power-piled his way into the Cornell line the way fullbacks used to do. To make it slightly fancier, the play included an old-style fake reverse. Davison ripped through center for ten yards.

For the rest of the afternoon, using line-bucks, spinners, deep reverses, end runs and an occasional pass, Princeton rolled up 356 yards (297 of them by rushing) while holding Cornell's Ivy League champions to 157 yards (only 27 of them by rushing). The final score: 27-0.

Like the handful of other coaches who have stuck to the single-wing, Princeton Coach Charley Caldwell long had to listen to alumni and fellow coaches who wanted to know when he was going to get hep to the T. This season Caldwell has been hearing less & less of that question. His single-wing team has averaged 440 yards a game this year, is still unbeaten and, with Cornell out of the way and only Yale ahead to threaten it seriously, has its best chance in 15 years of ending the season unbeaten.

Princeton's success did not in itself prove the superiority of the single-wing, but other results last week showed that the single-wing was certainly no Dodo, either. George Hunger's Pennsylvania team, strictly single-wing, scuttled the Navy's T, 30-7. Michigan State, combining single-wing and T, beat Notre Dame, 36-33. Ohio State, also mixing the wing and the T, rolled over Iowa, 83-21.

Football experts were satisfied they knew why the single-wing was proving so effective: with the vast majority of the nation's teams now trained to defend against the T, the old single-wing was hitting them with all the dazzle of novelty and they were simply not fully trained to handle it. Whatever the reason, U.S. fans might be seeing more of the single-wing --and more of the football--again.

Other football winners last week:

P: In Boston, Syracuse over Boston University, 13-7, for first-time possession of the spanking-new Old Bean Pot (TIME, Oct. 23).

P: In Minneapolis, Michigan in a 7-7 tie with Minnesota, to retain its grip on the venerable Little Brown Jug.

P: In Ames, Iowa, undefeated Oklahoma over Iowa State, 20-7, to stretch Oklahoma's winning string to 26.

P: In Providence, Colgate over Brown, 35-34, despite a 27-point last-period spurt by Brown, in the day's top thriller.

P: In Berkeley, Calif., California's Golden Bears over St. Mary's, 40-25, to bring their unbeaten streak to six straight and pave the way for a Rose Bowl-settling tilt this week with Washington (21-7 over Stanford).

P: In Atlanta, Kentucky's Wildcats over Georgia Tech's Yellow Jackets, 28-14, extending Kentucky's 1950 winning streak to seven straight.

P: In Cambridge, Mass., in a clash of victory-less teams, Dartmouth over the Ivy League's whipping boy, Harvard, 27-7.

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