The Fargo forum and daily republican. [volume] (Fargo, N.D.) 1894-1957, 1913-09-25
NJ GOVERN BEST
OF ALL GOPHERS

John McGovern Is Minnesota's great
est football player, according to a Chi
.cago paper, which is printing a series
of photographs of the heroes of the
gridiron" at leading universities Of the
country.
The article accompanying the Nc
Govern photograph says:
WHO vas the greatest football play
er at the University of Minnesota? It
is easy to get into an argument over
the selection, as there have been some
mighty warriors who sported mole
skins within the sound of st. Anthony's
rails. Big men. both physically and
mentally. have been the output of that
mighty institution of learning on the
banks of the Mississippi. There, for
instance, were Pillsbury. the man real
ly responsible for the game at Minnei-
sofa; Van Camper, the great quarter
back; Finlayson, Larson, Harding,
Harrison and Sykes, mighty men of
the line; Schacht, one of the greatest
tackles eve produced in the west, and
later Fee and Flynn, and Strathern,
the great center, and Rogers, the In
d1an, and Marshall, colored, both ends,
and still later such heroes as Walker,
Rosenwald, Pickering and Capron.
Product of Modern Game.
q "As a rule alumni and students go
back to the dear old days of the 1y-
ing wedge when the ambulance corps
not used for an ornament. In
this case the reformed game brought
out the hero, the one great man in
Gopher football history, a player not
classed among giants in build, but in
deeds, one speedy of foot, with a level
head and nimble toe-John McGovern.
McGovern was the meteor of the
northern football world. He came in
a night, but, unlike the heavenly wan
derers, he stayed his allotted time of
three years to dazzle the pages of
gridiron lore at the University Of
Minnesota.
Came Utterly Unknown.
mo one except his neighbors in Ar
lington, Mimi, had ever heard of
Johnny before he entered the univer-
sity in 1907. He. had never had any
football experience until he appeared
on Northrop field, and he took up the
game simply as a means of fulfilling
his obligations to an exacting gymna-
SUM instructor. i
TT was not long, however, before the
eagle eye Of Coach H. l.. Williams
spotted him, and from then on he was
a marked mar in more than one
sense. There was not a.. team which
the University of Minnesota met DUR
ing the years 1908, 1909 and 1910, which
did not keep it's weather eye open for
this same slippery McGovern, and his
second yea on the team made him
University of Minnesota's greatest
football player, and one has taken
the laurels away from him.
.'- Ganoa ord None.4;In
1T was his marvellous running in
an open field, his versatility in punt
ing and drop-kicking, and above all,
his gameness, that marked this mite
of humanity out of the ordinary. It
in the game against Chicago in
the fall of 1909 when his Spartan blood
anne to the surface. He practically
played through an entire game with a
broken collar bone. He had put Min
nesota ahead with a drop-kick before
the collar bone went wrong. AS it was
a fairly tight game, he added two
more goals after the injury, a feat
which probably stands by itself in the
gridiron game.
r'.sH -..-s i. L~-~nnJ L. - .- -r,