Arizona republican., 1912-12-23
Modern Football k
 Players Stars

COACH AMOS ALONzO STAGG of
 the University of Chicago comes to the defense of the modern football player. Assertions that no longer are there any 'tstar" players are. accord ing to the "old man." decidedly erro- neous. There are more stars to the square mile now, he declares, than ever before.
 'It seems to me-" he remarked re- gently, there are far more good play- CTS now than ever in the history of the game, and the reason we do not hear so much about them is that newspaper writers are becoming educated to the fine points of the game and are devot- ing as much space and as many en- comiums to the men who open the holes in the line as they do to the man who carries the ball through those holes. When football was new in the middle west the apparent in the game received all the attention. Take the average spectator nowadays and he will pick out one man and give him credit for winning the entire game. Experts however, are now doing | SOHlelHiHS lO JuSllIy tlle dppcHdtAOA l and see more than the spectacular. T think there are just as great play CTS. now as there used to be- but be- cause there are so many their work | does not stand out the way it did for merly. Take for instance, some of the men of this year. l have none of | spectacular ability on my team, but | take some of the teams in the west. | Purdue has a player in Oliphant | who is as spectacular as one would l want to see. No fault could be found either with Parsons of Iowa or with | Curry of the same team. for they per | formed against Chicago in a way | which brought back memories of the times when teams popularly were SUD- posed to be built around one man. | Gillette of Wisconsin is that type of star the absence of which critics are bewailing, while McAlmon of Minne- sota is in the same class.
 Going down to linemen, we have Des Jardien on the Chicago team, who is as f1ashy a center as I have seen in many years. Des Jardien's work is un- polished to a degree. but there can be no doubt that he is spectacular and conforms to what some critics seem to desire. Last year we had Scruby. while there were a number of linemen on other western teams who conform ed to what the critical seem to want to see"
 Other critics than Coach Stagg evil dently believe today's football public is better educated than that of half dozen years ago and demands team work rather than individual stars. Just as theatrical managers are abandoning the star system and sending out bal anced companies, so football coaches 1 are abandoning the idea of featuring any individual player and are sending out elevens which are a unit. Team play is the slogan at all western schools this year, and the wonderful success Chicago had in the last two games of last season, when the Maroons were a well rounded team, instead of featur- ing one player, seems to indicate the | public appreciates this.
 Even in the days of "old footbalr' | team play was more appreciated than individual starring. The most famous game in Chicago was the Michigan Chicago contest of 1905, which the Ma rooms won 2 to O. This was a game in which there were twenty two men on the field, and every one of these played an equal part and shared equal ly in the result
 There were a number Of stars" on each team, it is true, but the stars got little more credit that day than did their mates. These same stars had appeared in previous games and have
 worked in later ones and done spec
 tacular work, but none of the games ever compared with the 1905 champion ship contest, in the rooter's opinion.
 Coach Stagg is a firm believer in the
 new rules He declares that from the
 standpoint of the spectators the rules
 of 1912 are the best yet devised, while from the players viewpoint the code is
 in many ways superior to the one in
 force previous to 1906 and inferior in
 none. He says the experiments of the year from 1906 to 1911 have at las,
 given the rule makers knowledge o1
 what they want and how to get it and
 that the days of experiment are done
 with save in minor particulars.
 study of rooters at this years
 games compared with those at the olt
 time contests demonstrates that not
 withstanding the lapse of time there
 has been no change in what the public 3 wants Although old timers declar, " the chief beauty of football was the
 old line plunging, the crowds at thos, : contests scarcely bore out that asser.
 ton. Nothing was applauded in tn, e old game like the sweeping end run.
 and the unexpected trick plays whicf ,n got the runner out in the open in viev "a of all the spectators. The rushing 7 game. where the man in the granC j stand could not see what was happen ing, may have been popular, but tn, cheering at those times did not seen M to indicate this.