A Hard-Nosed Game

The coach's voice thundered across the practice field: "Baby, have you got a play book?'' The halfback, who had just forgotten his blocking assignment, nodded guiltily. "Well," came the coach's cry, "when you go to eat. take it with you. When you go to the toilet, take it with you. When you go to see your girl, take it with you.''

The orders were issued in dead seriousness; yet no one lifted an eyebrow. For Coach Alonzo Smith ("Jake"') Gaither, 56. has been handing down such edicts ever since he showed up in Tallahassee in 1937 and began turning Florida A. & M. University into the nation's top all-Negro football school. "I've had my ups and downs," says husky Jake Gaither. "But they've been mostly ups. We've won 122 and lost 20. Bud Wilkinson at Oklahoma and I have the best records of any football coaches in the country, and I forget at the moment which of us is ahead.''*

"Not Just a Game." Following Gaither's example, many small Negro colleges have beefed up their football teams in the past decade, now play a game both solid and spectacular. Because" they meet no white teams, it is impossible to tell just how good the Negro clubs really are. "We have to wait until our players reach pro ball," says Gaither. "In pro ball I'll match my boys against anybody's."

Seven of Gaither's graduates have turned pro, including the Chicago Bears' elusive Willie Galimore. Many pro scouts are now finding stars hidden away on other Negro teams that seldom make headlines. Maryland's Morgan State produced the New York Giants' all-N.F.L. Tackle Roosevelt Brown, and North Carolina A. & T.'s J. D. Smith is "now a standout halfback for the San Francisco '49ers. Says one N.F.L. scout: "My God, we'd be crazy not to watch those Negro colleges. They've got the talent."

Gaither encourages his boys to turn pro, not so much for the money as for another sort of reward: "There is no place in the life of my people for mediocre performance. This has to be the dominating factor in our life. For a Negro boy, there is not just a game of football. He can't afford to let his people down."

"When I started here." Gaither recalls, "Florida was the dishrag of the nation as far as Negro football players went." Today. Florida has some of the best Negro football anywhere--and the state's 84 football-playing Negro high schools are staffed by nearly 100 Gaither-trained head and assistant coaches.

"They Shall Not Rise." Jake Gaither fans the fire of combat in his players, encourages rivalry among them by dividing them into three separate units dubbed "Blood. Sweat and Tears." The son of a Methodist minister. Gaither is a revivalist orator. "Baby." he cries, striding into a locker room before a game, "you know what's going against us today." The players shout their enthusiastic reply. "We'll have to hit hard," yells Gaither. "We'll have to run hard . . . We must be hungry." Each Gaither pep talk ends with the team chanting an incantation whose origins are long forgotten: "We have wounded them. They have fallen at our feet. They shall not rise. Allah."

Whereupon the Florida A. & M. team bursts out upon the field to clout its opponents. To Jake Gaither, it all has real meaning. ''Football." he says, "is a hard-nosed game. You go into it pulling no punches and asking none. Football is a character-building game--but you can build more character with a winning team than with a losing one."

* Wilkinson leads with a record of 122 won, 15 lost.

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