The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-12-16

'. w. Heisman, the famous football coach. writes the following story or sThe South's Greatest Football Hero" Nat Mitcham. The football player or '98 is now a professor m the college whose coiors he defended so vel. .,., nowned player. Neither do refer to sthe man who may have pulled on the greatest circus stunt, whoever he may Be. | refer simply to the man who un- der all the heavy vlcissitudee. trying situations and crushing conditions ny' most credit for the truly heroic way ha rose to the occasion time after time Ind oyercame obstacle after obstacle, to be crowned with perfect success in
 That man was Nat Mitcham. of tho Auburn team of '9S.
 That was a year and campaISn Sea any part in 1t: Only one veteran fF ,97 was back-Mitcham. Not even the captain had returned. and but few via-Auburn Thanksgiving Day game the year before and the treasury was quite enpty--less than empty~-for the owea os soese ssap poea football was at a low ebb, due to the many untoward incidents and accidents of the year before. and h the I,o hopeless pc ss even had failed to return, and there were no uniforms on hand and, as be- fore noted, no money with which to ally, no schedule of games whatever q little hard to see what we were to prnseifis ssnse is iUl soins n ahead seSd at % aiis
 But I, the coach, was on hand in pursuance of contract signed months bsfSrs the tba ass ooach he was itable white elephant on the athletic association's hands. Yet ths associa. tion wa, not ,nc9rpo,rpaeed, PIP ,ps na Tno MoD body. Nor would 1t have been the first time in football history had the white elephant been turned adritf to graze
 don't know into how many Auburn heads that thought entered-not many i really believe-but do know one man to sna whom a,s9 sacn man 'n,ss was Miteham. niitcham answered, "we'll make one, ne, When they said 1,, we we it faxeH if Hou wish
 Saln When hl they ey said. we have no pni, forms" forms hs replied. 'Ill engage what When on Tk sk.y own sala deS0ossl tays s ,s no tas mannssr manager ne when ths asked, "what about coach's salary?" h. rejoined, "Il1 raise it.
 Talk of captains courageous" wher
 WOutQ you ioOh AoA O oIoNNSA ---~
 spoke there?
 We'll we went ahead. Such mate rial! Ten new men, A team averag'
 of 149 IA pounds. Mitcham was man ager and captain. He gave signal
 and played guard--a new position To
 him: he headed all the end interfer
 ence. He coaxed. cajoled and wheedle
 money out of people who had neve
 given a cent before in their lives. An'
 such uniforms as we had! We locke
 more like a lot of scare-crows tha
 anything else I can think of. And w
 found 1t almost impossible to ge
 games, for we had no money witt which to guarantee visiting teams Truly the troubles of George Washing ton and his Valley Forge outfit wer hardly greater than those of Mitchar and his little band of scrubs.
 I recall we defeated Tech after while 29 to 6, and everybody at Aubur went crazy. Then along came abou the last team North Carolina eve turned out, and after beating Georgi 54 to 0. the Tar Heels came down an cleaned us up 22 to 0. but we were de liriously happy that it wasn't 100 to And then along came Thanksgivin day and Georgia. And Georgia had stunning array ofNmen-=men of Erea size. power and speed, such as Waider Thrasher, Cox and others whose name forget. and Jones the great kicke and. altogether. team calculated f smother our ragamuffiins. aud devou