Sport: Open Season

Last week on more than 125 college fields, more than 250 football teams got their new uniforms dirty for the first time in the 1934 season.

At Palo Alto. Calif., where the temperature was almost 90°, the biggest crowd of the week (45,000) saw Santa Clara tie Stanford, 7-to-7, in the last quarter.

At Los Angeles, Southern California barely nosed out College of the Pacific, coached by Amos Alonzo Stagg, 6-to-0.

At West Point, Army gave its young Coach Gar Davidson the jitters for three periods, finally managed to beat Washburn, 19-to-0.

Northwestern’s first appearance, against Marquette, was featured by forward passes by a tall senior named George Potter which enabled his team to win 21-to-12.

On a rain-drenched field at Nashville, Vanderbilt nosed out Mississippi State, 7-to-0.

Rules. New football regulations this year are based on the premise that crowds want to watch an open game. Forward passing is favored with a ball an inch thinner than last year. The first incomplete forward pass across the goal line (except on fourth down) no longer causes loss of the ball. The 5-yd. set-back for two incomplete passes in one series of downs has been removed. Because coaches last year decided that the defense had too many advantages, another rule, designed to popularize quick kicks, permits a punter to have a teammate hold the ball in position for a kick.

Schedules. In 1926, the Harvard Lampoon published a cartoon which implied that Princeton men were pigs. The result of this appalling insult was one of the most profound and bitter academic breaks in the history of sport. For four years, no Princeton teams played Harvard at any sport. After four years, contests in everything but football were arranged. Last winter, officials of both universities held an epochal meeting. The result was an agreement whereby Princeton will play Harvard at football for the first time in eight years at Cambridge, Nov. 3. Since Army and Navy settled their historic differences and resumed their annual games two years ago, there are now no major feuds left in intercollegiate football.

Other novelties on the season’s schedule: 1) this week’s game, the first in 29 years between Yale and Columbia. Rose Bowl Champions, instead of the “setup” with which the Yale season normally starts; 2) an Eastern Big Four, composed of Princeton, Yale, Harvard and Dartmouth; 3) ten teams in the Pacific Coast Conference which will travel a total of 71,000 miles during the season.

Material, the uncomplimentary word with which at the start of the season college football coaches describe undergraduates who play the game, was one main subject of discussion last week. At Princeton. 30 members of the squad were ill from food poisoning. At the University of Missouri. Coach Frank Carideo, one-time Notre Dame quarterback, ordered his players to attend classes in corduroy trousers, wear no ties or vests. Reason: “When a player begins to worry about his clothes, he becomes less of a football player and more of a loafer. I’d like to have my men dress so that when they walk down the street people will recognize them as football players.”

With a few minor exceptions, coaches complain about their material. Most gloomy forecasts came last week from Army, where only three members of last year’s almost invincible team reported for practice. At Southern California, Coach Howard Jones will build his team around his small All-America Quarterback Irvine (“Cotton”) Warburton (5 ft. 6 in., 145 lb.). At Notre Dame, a new coach, Elmer Layden, member of Knute Rockne’s famed “Four Horsemen,” had for the nucleus of a team two veterans coached by Rockne in 1930.

Coaches. Noisiest aftermath of the season of 1933 was the uproar that surrounded the appointment of a new football coach at Yale (TIME, Jan. 22). At New Haven last week, Coach Raymond W. (“Ducky”) Pond, Yaleman, hurried to get his team ready for Columbia, assisted by a staff which included no Yale graduates. At N. Y. U., Yale’s onetime coach, Marvin (“Mai”) Stevens, expressed himself well satisfied with his prospects. At College of the City of New York, Michigan’s All-America quarterback, Benny Friedman, who has played professional football for the past seven years, last week saw his inexperienced squad win their first game creditably against Brooklyn College, 18-to-0.

At Notre Dame, students are so football-minded that they call the third president of their University “Fair-Catch”‘ Corby. The reference is to a campus statue of Rev. William Corby with his hand raised while granting absolution to the Irish Brigade under fire at Gettysburg. The fact that Notre Dame, until the death of famed Knute Rockne, had the most feared football team in the U. S., made Coach Elmer Layden especially interesting to U. S. football observers.

After graduating in 1925, Layden played professional football for a year, coached at Columbia College at Dubuque, Iowa for a year, and then became coach at Duquesne. Last year Duquesne lost only one game. Mild-mannered, almost scholastic in appearance, he last week showed signs of being almost as eager to calm the hostility of the Press, resulting from the regime of his predecessor, “Hunk” Anderson, as he was to overcome the deficiencies which caused Notre Dame to lose all but four games in 1933. To prepare for his first game this week against Texas University, Layden ordered six new radio-broadcasting booths placed on top of the Press-box at Cartier Field, installed new windows for newspaper photographers.