Out of town with the football team

McCREADY HUSTON

The work of a successful football coach does not begin or end on the field. The transportation of a team, playing a national schedule, such as that of Notre Dame, Pitt or Southern California, involves problems of health and mental attitude which demand careful preparation and study.

Spectators little realize what it takes to produce a team from a distance at two P.M., on a given Saturday, in top physical and mental condition. Preparations for the appearance, aside from the training of the team, begin weeks in advance, when the first conferences with railroad agents take place.

The trips are plotted with military precision. Every man in the party knows in advance his car and berth number, lie knows the hour at which he will go to bed, the hour at which he will eat his meals. And he knows he will be under the constant surveillance of coaches, trainers, and student managers.

Railroad equipment usually consists of three sleepers and a diner. Using three sleepers, a coach can assign his most valuable players to lower berths. Experience has taught railroad management that some porters, waiters, and dining car stewards are better fitted than others to handle college boys, so they are assigned to the football trips. An athlete may meet the same porters and waiters several times during his three years of competition.

In journeys beyond Chicago from the East, the Pullmans may be transferred to some Western line so that the boys do not have to change. They may leave personal belongings and books—for, believe it or not, they study on the train— while stopping off en-route for workouts.

When an Eastern team entrains to fill an engagement in the West, it must arrange to practice on the way. Universities in cities on the route contribute the use of their practice fields and dressing rooms. For example, a team from New York, on its way to fill an engagement in Minnesota, would arrive in Chicago on Thursday morning. It would detrain at Sixty-third Street and there would find busses waiting. Personal baggage would be left in the Pullmans. The players would ride to some South Side hotel where they would find breakfast waiting in a private dining room. After breakfast, they probably would be led in a brisk walk along the lake front by an assistant coach or trainer, returning to the hotel to rest in bedrooms until time for an early luncheon. After another rest, they would walk or ride in their busses to the University of Chicago.

At the practice field, they would find that staff members had preceded them and that the equipment trunks had been unpacked and their practice uniforms laid out.

After practice, their busses would be waiting to take them to the station for departure for Minneapolis. They would find the same cars and the same berths in which they had arrived, and they would be served dinner by the same waiters with whom they had travelled from the East.

In Minneapolis, equipment baggage would be taken to the dressing room from the train, while the players were being transported to whatever hotel or club had been elected in advance. There would be another workout on Friday, probably with the public excluded for tbe sake of the players' nerves. Where to keep a team in the city of the game is a question on which coaches dif-

fer. Some prefer a small city or town nearby, removed from the excitement and celebrations which precede games.

Teams of national prominence playing at Notre Dame usually spend Friday night in a town ten miles distant, arriving at the stadium an hour or so before game-time on Saturday. When playing at Yankee Stadium or the Polo Grounds in New York, Notre Dame and other Western teams have shown a preference for Westchester. The administration staff, however, consisting of athletic directors, business managers and others, open headquarters at a downtown hotel.

Playing Pennsylvania at Philadelphia may mean that the visiting team stops at the Germantown Cricket Club, with staff headquarters at the Benjamin Franklin or the Bellevue Stratford.

When the Army and Navy meet in Philadelphia, the Navy will have offices for distribution and exchange of tickets in a hotel, and there the officers will greet friends and visiting members of the service. A few blocks away, the Army will be doing the same. The teams, however, will be in seclusion and will not arrive at Franklin Field until time to dress.

Recently there has been a swing toward keeping the visiting teams at downtown hotels in the larger cities. In many cities, it is possible to block off a whole floor, providing sleeping rooms and dining rooms to which the other guests in the house are denied access. Student managers and bell boys prevent intrusion. It has been found that as much quiet as the players need can be had on the upper floors of metropolitan hotels, and, in addition, the important matter of diet can be handled more conveniently.

Continued on page 64

Continued from page 46

What to give football players to eat on the flay of the game is not a matter of agreement. One coach lets his men have a substantial breakfast, including a beefsteak. Then at 11 o'clock they get a cup of clear soup, a green vegetable, a salad, hard toast, and tea. Another prominent coach allows players a meat course and a dessert in addition. Some have strict supervision at table to make sure the boys do not trade portions. That is, a lad may offer his baked potato to a neighbor in exchange for his roast beef; or he may make a deal for an extra dessert. This tampering with the regulated diet is frowned upon. Indeed, every' departure from an ordered routine prior to a big game is firmly opposed.

Most of the major football teams now transport water from home on all their trips. Changes in drinking water are feared as a cause of digestive upsets, which may lead to the loss of an important player. The drinking water is carried in five-gallon bottles, taken to hotels, and served in place of the local water. It is also used to fill the drinking tanks on Pullmans and the decanters in the dining cars. The handling of fifty or a hundred fivegallon bottles of water is a task for the custodian of property and bis assistants. A typical trip to the West Coast may require three hundred such bottles in the baggage cars. It is not customary to take enough home water to California for the return trip.

Popular teams and popular coaches always have the problem of guests for long trips. The late Knute K. Rockne, in his hey-day at Notre Dame, always had more requests for the vacant berths in the players' cars than he could fill. Such guests may be a pleasure or a source of trouble. They may be wealthy and powerful alumni who have befriended the school and whom the administration does not desire to offend. If they are desirable, a few may be invited to accompany the team, eating with the staff and staying at the same hotel. At the end of the season, such persons receive a bill for their proportionate share of the travelling expenses.

The tendency today is in the direction of eliminating guests for the reason that, with all their good intentions, they are liable to disrupt discipline. With the return of liquor sales on trains, the problem became complicated, for drinking in the club cars and private rooms on the trains sets an example and creates an atmosphere to which coaches naturally object.

By refusing all such outsiders, the coaches and assistants can confine their attention to the players. On the long rides, quarterbacks can be given additional schooling in strategy by coaches who have scouted the opposition. Other backs and linesmen can be given instruction and quizzing. Anything which diverts from the main business of the trip, which is victory, is to be discouraged by the modern coach.

After the game it is customary to give the boys liberty, sometimes until midnight and always until train time. On the return trip, coaches frequently provide some extra luxury at table and relax discipline within limits.

The modern football player is not a rowdy. He can go into the finest hotels and clubs and conduct himself with credit. Hotels now solicit the business of football teams without fear of damage or disorder. This was not always the case, but, with the development of big-time football, it became imperative to have every' movement toward the field of conflict regulated by discipline.

Spectators who see a spic-and-span varsity from a thousand miles away run out on the green turf a few minutes before two would be amazed by the detail handled by the coaches, student managers, athletic directors, trainers and other assistants. Four or five enormous trunks have been packed, unpacked and repacked perhaps three times. These contain, in duffle bags, each player's equipment—shoes, j>ads, helmets, socks, stormcoats, two or three pairs of pants and extra jerseys.

One pair of extra shoes is carried for each size worn on the team. There are boxes of cleats, for the style of cleat to be worn depends on the condition of the field. A last-minute change of cleats on forty pairs of shoes is not uncommon.

The medical trunk contains everything that may be needed for first aid to an injured player. Every contingency is foreseen and prepared for.

Dressing for a game means much more than merely changing clothes. Taping and bandaging are the work of expert trainers and the team doctor, and may require an hour or more. Not only must injured players be taped but those known to have weaknesses must have protective surgical tape wound around the faulty ankles or shoulders.

If a team arrives the morning of the game the taping may take place on the train. The scrupulous care of the college athlete by his coaches should be a great reassurance to anxious parents.

Contributing to the successful kick-off at 2 P.M. is the press department of the university. Usually one or two men are assigned to athletics and it is their business to see that the newspapers are supplied with all the information they desire about the team.

This form of press-agentry has developed into a service valuable to the newspapers, for no newspaper could carry a sports staff large enough to gather this information alone. The athletic publicity men usually travel with the team and sometimes precede it. On arrival, they visit the newspaper offices to see that the sports editors lack nothing in the way of service.

Another duty of the publicity department is, when the team is playing at home, to see that the visiting sports writers have their press box tickets and anything else they may need. They furnish students known as play spotters to sit in the press box and identify players for the writers. Expert play spotters are needed by radio broadcasters who must know instantly who made the play.

Cordial relations between a team and the newspapers are considered vital, for powerful sports writers can enhance a team's prestige or hurt it.

The kick-off at 2 P.M. in the stadiums throughout the country is no mere thrilling accident. It is the result of planning which is in progress the year round.