Sport: California Football

When Coach Lynn (“Pappy”) Waldorf took over the University of California football team in 1947, the job held no great promise of security. Of his 21 predecessors, ten had coached for one season. But Pappy is still at California. In five seasons, his teams have won 46 games, tied one, lost six games (not including three Rose Bowl contests).

Pappy has no truck with razzle-dazzle football; his style of play is a combination of plain percentages and horse sense. In a new book called This Game of Football (McGraw-Hill; $4), Pappy gives away his trade secret: winning teams are the product of practice, sweat and Spartan training.

There is no such animal as a 60-minute player, says Pappy—and never was. “The ball is in play only about twelve minutes out of 60.” From there, Pappy counts on his players having the ball 13 times during a game, getting 65 chances to advance it, punting 5.8 times, tossing 21.4 forward passes. Pappy tells his quarterbacks not to worry if they have one out of nine or ten passes intercepted (normal: 1.8 interceptions per game), but if the defense snares “one pass in six or seven . . . we will probably lose the game on that factor alone.”

Pappy keeps his attacking game simple. California uses only 13 basic running plays and eight basic pass plays, and sometimes the coach thinks “even that . . . is too many.” He is content to let the opposing team learn a staggering 80 or 100 plays, then never get a chance to use most of them.

Because Saturday’s millions would rather roar over touchdowns than goal-line stands, “defense is something of a stepchild in today’s football.” Present rules give the offense a slight edge over the defense, and the two-platoon system also makes the offense relatively stronger.

Old Rockne fans may still believe in pep talks, but Strategist Waldorf, no orator, says that “the day of the inspired locker-room oration has long since passed.” He pins his hopes on “long hours of hard work on the practice field.”