Sport: Calculated Risk

From the opening kickoff, Michigan’s Wolverines took a calculated risk. They knew it would take something special to stop the versatile multiple offense (TIME, Oct. 8) of Coach Duffy Daugherty’s Michigan State powerhouse. Almost as if they had never heard of mousetrap blocks, Michigan’s linemen wore themselves out firing into the State backfield. Ends slashed hard and fast at the ball carrier, linebackers gambled and charged headlong into offensive holes. For half the game the tactic worked. Until they put on one sustained 45-yd. drive late in the second quarter, the Spartans gained a total of only six yards on the ground. They did not come close to scoring. But Michigan muffed its scoring chances, too.

Between halves, Daugherty had time to reshuffle his forces. When they took the field again, Duffy’s Spartans threw a seven-man line at Michigan’s tiring Wolverines. State’s superior power began to force Wolverine mistakes. Michigan’s Sophomore Fullback John Herrnstein tried a jump pass, was rushed and tossed the ball to an interception by Spartan Linebacker Arch Matsos. Minutes later, Spartan Captain Matsko, who had never kicked a field goal in his life, dropped back, took aim, and booted his team into a 3-0 lead.

The fourth quarter was all State. End Jim Hinesly got a crack at Herrnstein and shook him loose from the ball. Hinesly recovered it, and six plays later Halfback Dennis (“The Menace”) Mendyk drove over for a touchdown. It hardly mattered that Matsko missed his kick for the extra point. The score stayed 9-0, and Michigan State, safely past its most dangerous rival, was sighted-in squarely on the Big Ten Championship.

Across the country, football provided its usual quota of autumn excitement:

¶ Encouraged by the superb defensive play of 240-lb. Tackle Proverb Jacobs, California’s twice-beaten Golden Bears pushed favored Pitt all over Berkeley’s fog-shrouded Memorial Stadium, upset the Panthers, 14-0.

¶ In the Ivy League, the University of Pennsylvania won its first game since 1953, ended a 19-game losing streak by scalping Dartmouth’s Indians, 14-7. While Princeton was toying with Columbia, 39-0, Yale’s Big Blue team smothered Brown, 20-2. Harvard, however, took an embarrassing whipping from little Tufts, 19-13.