The Washington herald., 1918-01-09
CLAIMS DOBIE
IS TOP COACH
Expert Says Former Mime
sofa Star Bests Haughton
as Grid Mentor.

Detroit, Jan. S-Gii Dobie and Percy
Haughton are the most discussed foot
ball coaches in the East. And the East
finds 1t hard to decide which is the
better tutor.
Haughton, as head coach OF Har-
ward, has from one to ten assistants.
the number depending on the impor-
tance of the schedule. Nine out ot
every ten boys who go to Harvard
come from feeder" Andover. Hill,
Country Day and numerous other pref
schools being included In the list that
send thir athletes to Harvard. NJ
school they are taught football By
Harvard graduates. They learn thS
fundamentals of Harvard defense ant
the ordinary line OF offense.
As soon as they reach CambridE
they go out for the freshmen team
They get finer points in football &C
ence and late In the season meet u
yearlings from Yale and Princeto
so that they know the individual sty
Of their next seasons opponents.
In their sophomore year they repor
early and work for weeks under Lee
Leary and other assistant coaches,
And when they are fully prepared for
the strategic knowledge HauRhton en-
ters. He spends few hours week
at the blackboard. builds his onenses
around one or two stars. and send
his men into the game. In reality b"
is nothing more than field marshS
of the team. II he had to go out an,
build. from the ground up he would
undoubtedly be a failure. Few Of I'll
men who graduated from the Haugh
ton school Of football ever got by a
coaches.
Dobie, on the other hand. start
with raw material The best teau,
he ever had, and the team which 4
his opinion was the best organize
consisted Of players who were taxi
from the "hayfields" by Dobie. Whe
he got them they were the rawest OF
raw material and knew practically
nothing of football. For four years,
these men were invincible on the
Western gridiron. Dobie started them
on the very fundamentals, teaching
them how to hold the ball, blocking.
charging, tackling and other things
which any man who ever made Har-
wards team under Haughton, knew
well at the age of Is years.
At the end of three weeks, a squad
under Dobie's style of teaching is
ready for signals and plays. The plays
he gives are simple, in fact very few
of Dobie's plays are ever trick forma-
tions. But the few he does hand out
are new and are run OF with lightning
rapidity.
Dobfe's test as a coach came this
fall; he found practically green ma
terial at the Naval Academy when he
arrived at Annapolis two weeks be-
fore the middies' first game of the
season. They lost the first game to
West Virginia, Z to 0. but walked
away with every team they met al
ter that, setting up a phenomenal
scoring record.
To accomplish this Dobie was allow
ed to use the men for practice three
afternoons week for one hour and
half each of the three days. The
Navy has no feeders" The men are
sent there from all over the coun-
try, by political appointment. Most
Of them have been bookworms more
than athletes or they could never pass
the stringent entrance examinations
The general run of them are not good
physically when they enter the In
stitution. And on top OF that two OF
the classes where there was physical
material at least had been graduated