Long odds on the gridiron

A. C. M. AZOV

An account of the greatest football flukes of all time, recalled by the leading coaches and star players themselves

Football prowess, in the long run, means superior man-power, smarter tactics, snappier thinking, or the downright competence of individual stars.

But, look back through your file of exciting football Saturdays, and you'll he reminded of a number of games whose final scores cannot he explained away so easily games in which Yale, Princeton, Harvard, or the Army had more than a lion's share of brains and man-power, hut lost, ignominiously, to the Army, Harvard, Princeton, or Yale.

Games, you will recall, in which plays were tried which had no business to succeed, hut did, incredibly, just the same. . . . Games in which some damned thing happened, to misplace victory in the last seconds of play. . . .When Santa Claus, as it were, popped up in the nick of time and, out of his sack, pulled a sugar-plum for Stanford, when it ought to have been a touchdown for California.

II you don't believe in this extra factor of Chance, Mischance, and Santa Claus, when it comes to winnings on the gridiron, just try to account for the following football mysteries on any other ground. They comprise an account of some of the fanciest flukes in football history, and most of them put the team with the longer odds on the shorter end of the score.

Come hack to the old Yale Field in November of 1899. Yale and Princeton are entering the last minute of their annual game, with Yale leading 10-6. Princeton has the hall on Yale's 25-yard line, hut there seems as little hope, as there is time, left for the Tigers to get it any further, since all hut three of their regular varsity have been obliged through injuries to give up their places to substitutes. The Horalian trio is composed of Messrs. "Big Bill" Edwards, Pell, and the diminutive Arthur Poe. The latter, standing on tiptoe, whispers to Edwards that the only chance to score is by a drop kick. "But we've got no drop kicker left. sa\s Bill. "Ill try it." replies the suddenly-inspired Poe, and he calls the necessar) signal. As he has never kicked a drop before, his notion of the procedure is vague, hut he walks back a few yards, holds out his arms as he has seen regular kickers do, and the ball is snapped to him. Dropping it, he catches it on the rebound with his instep, and then ducks the charge of the giant Yale forwards. Meanwhile the hall clears the line of scrimmage and floats towards the goal. As it nears the posts, it is seen to be heading to one side; hut, just as the Princeton cheering section is about to break forth in a communal groan, a gust of wind hits the pigskin, veers it back on to the correct course, and it clears the crossbar as the game ends. Final score: Princeton 11, Yale 10.

During the 1911 season Princeton won another game by means of an incredible drop kick. It was in the game with Dartmouth. and so fantastic that it caused a revision of the kicking rules. The game had almost run its course, without a score, when the Princeton team found itself in possession of the ball deep in Dartmouth territory. As they had been unable to gain against the Green on the ground, the Tigers turned to aerial tactics and called upon fullback Wallace DeWitt to attempt a drop.

The ball was almost squarely in front of the posts and DeWitt, unlike Poe, was an experienced kicker; a score for Princeton seemed assured.

It was, but not quite as DeWitt intended. He was apparently hurried in getting the ball away; it barely cleared the men before him and then fell to the ground where it rolled and bounced aimlessly along towards the goal line. Just as the Hanoverians were breathing sighs of relief, the hall suddenly, and for no good reason, hounded high in the air—and over the crossbar! The officials interpreted this as a legal scoring kick and Princeton won, 3-0. By an odd coincidence, exactly the same thing happened that same afternoon in the Andover-Exeter game, but the officials there ruled it "no goal"! That winter, the Rules Committee passed a special ruling making such freak goals illegal.

Santa, however, does not always wear the orange and black in a Princeton game; in the contest against Yale in 1927 it is remembered that he sported the blue jersey. Princeton was ahead 6-0, and Yale was getting nowhere with the hall. At the moment they held it on Princeton's 40-yard stripe, hut had taken three tries to get three yards, and it was fourth down and seven to go. In the huddle, Quarterhack Hoban called for a desperate, door-die trick play known as "73". At this inopportune moment, Charlesworth, Yale's center, almost broke up the proceedings. He had recently received a crack on the head, and was not at his brightest. "What the hell is '73 ? growled this bemused individual. I here was no time to explain or argue, so in frantic haste Hoban switched his signals and called for a routine forward pass play, one of those fundamental manoeuvers that every junior high school team knows backwards. Princeton spotted the play as soon as it started and had Hoban nearly cornered when he made a prayerful heave of the hall in the general direction of where he hoped Fishwick might he. I he latter caught it on the dead run, and never stopped running until he had given Yale the touchdown that paved the way for their winning score.

I here is also the amazing case of Riegels of California, playing against Georgia in a Rose Bowl melee, who snatched up a fumble and ran in the wrong direction, until he was dragged down by a pursuing team mate just before he scored a touchdown for the other side.

In 1921, Captain "Mac" Aldrich of Yale tried his best to give Harvard a helping hand, and sue(Continued on page 66) ceeded admirably. Yale was threatening the Crimson goal and Aldrich ran back to pass, a form of devastating the enemy to which he was much addicted. Standing on his own goal line, Chapin of Harvard shouted. "Here I am, Mac; throw it to me!" Rattled and confused, Aldrich obligingly complied! Chapin caught the pass safely and sprinted past midfield with the ball before he was tackled by the very man he had bluffed.

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Consider Eddie Dooley, Dartmouth's dynamic quarterback who almost—but not quite—succeeded in breaking the "blue jinx" that Dartmouth followers claim dogs their teams in games against Yale. In this particular game Dooley, by superb use of the potentialities of one of Dartmouth's greatest elevens, had worked the ball to within two yards of Yale's goal and a winning score. Looking across the bluejerseyed backs opposed to him into the promised land a scant six feet away, Dooley called his own signal for a dash through center. With a slashing charge the Creen linesmen swept the Elis off their feet, and through the opening sped Dooley. His head was lowered to further his impetus, and so be did not see the goal post looming in front of him—in those days the posts were on the goal line, instead of ten yards behind it. And so. also, he crashed head-on into it. Ho fell stunned to the ground, backwards, instead of forward over the goal line. The ball dropped from his arms, and a Yale man embraced it. And Dartmouth lost another Yale game.

For sheer madness, rampant on the gridiron, few games can be mentioned in the same breath with the Yale-Dartmouth imbroglio of 1931. To start with, the Green's redoubtable Morton booted a field goal to put his team ahead, 3-0, late in the first quarter. The Hanoverians then kicked-off to Yale —and not only to Yale, but to the Eli's Albie Booth who promptly scampered ninety-four yards up the field for a touchdown, through the entire Dartmouth team! Score 6-3, as the try for point failed. Dartmouth received the next kick-off, and at once Morton essayed a pass which Booth intercepted. On the next play, Booth caught a pass from his own team and again ran over the Green goal line. Score 12-3, the try for point being missed. The Elis then received the kick-off and hardly had the ball been put in scrimmage when Booth once more broke loose and this time sprinted fifty-four yards for another Yale score! He made good on the try for point, and the score was Yale 19, Dartmouth still 3. Dartmouth received the kick-off and on the first line-up Morton again tried a pass; this time it was not intercepted but, to the entrancement of the Green cohorts, fell straight into the emerald arms of McCall, who never let it down until he had borne it across Yale s goal, fifty yards away. The goal was kicked to make the count Yale 19, Dartmouth 10. Both teams had scored the amazing total of twenty-nine points in less than thirty minutes of play but there was more to come before the half was over. It came with stunning suddenness. In the few minutes remaining before the

whistle blew, Yale had made another touchdown and kicked a goal and time was up with Dartmouth at the short end of a 26-10 tally.

Hostilities were reopened after the half by Yale, kicking to Dartmouth. The unbelieving eyes of 60.000 frenzied spectators saw McCall gather in the ball, lower his bead, kick up his heels, and sail ninety-two long yards through the Eli host, straight down the field to a touchdown! The score now read 26-17, and Yale began to worry. Their fretting was short lived, however, for another Yale touchdown brought the Yale total to 33, which was a comforting distance from the Green's 17. To conserve their lead, the Blues began a punting campaign, but stopped at once. The reason was that Donner of Dartmouth blocked the first punt Yale tried, scooped it up and ambled unhindered across the intervening yards to the Bulldog's goal. With the point after touchdown, the score crept up 7 points to make the complete tally 33-24—still in Yale's favor but not as much so as formerly.

Yale's lead waned still further within the next two minutes. Intent on the margin of safety another quick touchdowm would give Yale, Todd heaved a pass to Booth. The score was made but not as young Mr. Todd had intended, for the ubiquitous McCall from New Hampshire intercepted the pass and stormed along for sixty yards and another touchdown for the Indians! The latter missed the extra point and the score was 33-30, when the teams lined up for the kick-off. Impossible as it seemed to those spectators, if any, who were still capable of thinking rationally, there were more fireworks to come. Dartmouth finally got the ball on Yale's 10-yard line, third down and 4 to go. Line plays were not gaining, passes were risky; amid a deathlike silence, Morton dropped back of the Dartmouth line and kicked a placement goal to tie the score at 33-all of probably the most delirious football game ever played.

To the legendary touchdown exploits of Dick Merriwell at Yale, and Dick Rover at Putnam Hall—remember how Rover used to exchange smiles with Dora Stanhope in the stands as he dashed down the field?—there should be added the famous touchdown of Dick Hyland, a fiesh-andblood hero of Lei an cl Stanford l niversity. This score was made against the University of California, in 1926, under conditions which even the wildest of the dime novel authors would have balked at using.

Previous to the game, a group of guests at one of the l . C. fraternities had been teasing a young lady of their number about her partisanship for Stanford. She was up from Hollywood for her first big game and knowing nothing of football, had decided that Stanford ought to win. Would she bet? She would. And what would her bet be? Well, she had heard of a Stanford player named Hyland, and just to make it interesting she would bet that he would make a touchdown on the first play of the game after Stanford got the ball!

The girl was firm; her friends had asked for it. and there it was—she didn't know Hyland, had never seen him. but her offer stood; furthermore she would stake $400 at l-to-10 on it. In less time than it takes to tell it. the bet had been covered with 84.000, and all went to the game. Stanford kicked off, and the California receiver was downed on his 15-yard line. Two plays were ineffectual and then California kicked out of bounds on the 47-yard line. Stanford's ball, and Stanford's first play of the game coming up!

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The teams lined up. and the Stanford center snapped the ball to fullback Hoffman. As California surged

through on him, he ran a few steps, whirled, and gave the ball to a waiting halfback, whose name happened to he Hyland. The latter shot between his right tackle and end, and with the latter taking out the California safety man, Mr. Hyland ran 47 unmolested yards for a touchdown!

Just to put the finishing touch on the story, of course the girl should have asked to meet Mr. Hyland after the game, should have thanked him for helping her win $4,000, Rave fallen in love with him and eventually have married him. Well, as heaven and the marriage bureau records are our witnesses, that is exactly what she did!