Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1911-11-20

MONDAY. November 20. 1911.
FOOTBALL WEATHER.

As the day Tor the greet Army-NaFy
game at Franklin Field approaches,
everybody Is interested in the kind
Of weather the Weather Bureau is go
Jag to handout for the occasion. The
following editorial from the New York
Sun Of November Is is, therefore, APP
propriate:
Football weather is the weather
desired by the players; the spectators
DO not count. The stands will be
crowded whether it rains or shines,
thaws or freezes, or blizzard RACES,
and the price of tickets is never pro-
hibitive.
Football weather should be frosty
&C least; the temperature cannot be
to low TO suit the youths in harness.
Padded and helmeted, shin protect
"a and nose guarded, they do not
care to exhibit their proves when
GUNNER strays into the lap of winter.
Hipping cold is preferred, the kind
that makes carriers stamp their feet
and hackmen in thick gloves slip their
arms across their breasts. The play
efs are soon aglow in their toggery.
A man bucking the line is oblivious
Of a cold wave. A good tackle
warns up the man that makes it,
and the victim has no time u dwell
on the weather. The man with the
ball buried under a pyramid of arms
md legs is amply protected from
the elements.
Football as played by the colleges
Is essentially a tropical game in its
effects upon the performers. The most
congenial weather so far as they are
concerned is the most inclement for
the spectators-the undergraduate
body, the graduates, the sport loving,
fashion hunting, non-college public,
an the tender womenkind of all of
tlem chiefly girls in furs and pumps.
The first choice of the players is
the kind of weather associated with
Thanksgiving. cold, clear, sharp and
shivery. but they prefer snow to rain.
AID like least of all an Indian sum-
ner day when chanticleer crows that
spring has come again.
"A warm, hazy afternoon is an inn
position upon the 'pigskin warriors,
however welcome it may be to their
imirers sitting in huddled masses on
the hard boards for which privilege
they pay from two to fifty dollars
rpiece. Those maniacal jumping
lcks, the cheer leaders, are less con-
cerned about the weather than players
or spectators, but if they have a pref
erence. il is for an atmosphere that
Permits them to strip to whiteshirt
and barehead. so that their antics may
be unhampered. free and convulsive.
] the cheer lader is not hero to the
onlookers, he is hero to himself.
He thinks he deserves something bet
ter than pneumonia.
'When thirty thousand people, more
or less. travel from ten to three hum
dred miles in automobiles, railway
trains and trolley cars, submitting to
the discomforts of overcrowding, hun
ger and thirst, Drawing disappoint-
ment and disillusion and risking pneu-
monia and rheumatism, to witness a
game that most of them do not under
stand and know they will never under
stand, they deserve propitious wealth
err; their feet should be warm, their
teeth should not chatter or their noses
be blue, and they should glow as much
with comfort as with the excitement
Of the contest, if they can derive ex-
citement from it, and that depends
mainly upon which team wins. But
football weather the ideal football
weather, or what approximates it, is
not for them. The rigor of the
game demands cold: cold it may be
with snow squalls or high winds, but
at any rate cold. The players have
a right to the choice. and the end
of November is generally kind to
them.
ITO those who do not go to football
games, seeing no pleasure in freezing
on ten inches of board while twenty
two unreognizable young men push
and grapple and tug and run about
and stumble their length uncouthly in
contention for ball which is seldom