The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-11-24
BIC EASTERN TEAMS CLOSE
 SEASON, TITLE UNCERTAIN :.
Hard Figure Out Real Champion Because of Numerous Upsets-Is Western Football Faster Than
 Eastern This Season

New York. Nov. 24-With Satur-
 days settlement of several of the most ancient rivalries of the gridiron, all but a few of the leading college
 elevens of the East brought their seasons to a conclusion, with the out
 come so far as the selection of a champion team is concerned, still as much as ever a matter for individual opinion and speculation It is diff
 cult to remember another season wherein the records of the teams have contained so many puzzling up sets. Last Saturday offered its sur prises. just as all the preceding ones had.
 For such traditional football foes as Harvard, and Yale and Lafayette and Lehigh Saturdays games repre- sented the one supreme go of the season, and, however the mythical championship may be awarded, the
 Harvard and Lafayette seasons, as they ended last week, are regarded
 by the supporters of those teams as
 unqualified successes.
 At least one championship was de- cided on Saturday, however, when | the Western Conference games reach ed their decisive point in the match betyeen Illinois and Ohio State at Co., lunbus. Coach Zuppke's Illinois eleven, with six victories to it's credit and only one game on the debit side, gains the laurel leaf beyond argu- | ment over Captain Chick Harley and
 his Buckeye outfit, who. can claim
 only three victories to one defeat. It ! was narrow margin that decided , this particular fray, but those extra
 two points in the to 1 score loomed as large, so far as settling the final i argument was concerned, as half a i dozen touchdowns. It is as hard to go ] behind the returns in football as in politics.
 1 Of the leading Eastern teams, Har- yard, Yale, Rutgers. Lafayette, Le- i high, New York University and i Stevens, among others, completed 1 their seasons Saturday, and previously 1 Colgate, Dartmouth, Amherst, Will i jams, and Wesleyan had been among 1 those to return the pigskin to the 1 locker for the last time in 1919. But i there is still a fine array of argu. i ments to be settled among this weeks | remaining games of the season. The
 Penn-Cornell, Pittsburgh-Penn State, Brown-Columbia, Syracuse-Nebrask | West Virginia Wash ington and Jeffer- | son, and eorgetown-Centre CoIleee l games constitute as rich a Thanks | ging Day fare as could comfortably 1 be dfgested by football fans, and then
 on Saturday will come what is in
 many ways the most picturesque
 gr1d1ron game of them all, wherein the Army and Navy elevens lock
 horns up at the Polo Grounds. This i will be a busy final week for the I (T T
 its meeting with Centre College. con- 1 querors of West Virginia, it will play
 Cavanaugh's Boston College aggrega-
 tiol on Saturday.
 When Harvard scored it's 10 to 3
 trlunph over Yale Saturday, compIet-
 ing its season with a record of eight victories and one tie, for once the dope ran true. Harvard's was a bet
 ter drlIled eleven than Yale's. and
 more resourceful, just tIs previous
 performances of the season had led 1 one to expect would be the case. | Yale played well in the old line-
 smashing game, and exhibited plenty
 of pluck and fighting spirit, but her
 coaches did not seem to have appre- l ciated the possibilities of the forward
 p2ss as a scoring weapon. Some old
 timers may not like what they term
 the basket ball element" in modern
 football but, none the less, any team
 that neglects that department, either
 on attack Or defense, places itself
 under a heavy disadvantage
 Dartmouth was another eleven that | had great power in the oId-time
 rushing game, but was poorly
 equipped in aerial tactics and Dart mouth came a cropper in it's final game of the season, though outrush- ing it's opponent, just as Yale did 1 w lie outrushing Harvard.
 When 1t Is possible for a single for
 ward pass to nullify a long, hard
 march down the field by Iine-tearing
 tactics, as has happened more than | once in important games of the sea-
 son, it needs no keen observer to
 make the obvious deduction. The
 forward passing attack. rightly used,
 has won more games this-fau than I the straight line-plunging game. | The greatest surprise of Saturdays results was furnished in the defeat of | Syracuse at the hands of Indiana | Indiana's record in the Western Con-
 ference had not been impressive; it
 was defeated both times it started. l On the other hand, it would be no easy matter lO IIlQ an Eastern eleven with a record for the season more 1 impressive than Syracuse's previous 1 to Saturday. True, it had lost to i Washington and Jefferson, but it's conquest of such teams as the Army. i Pittsburgh, Brown, Rutgers, and Col gate had seemed to more thai coun- i teract the effect of that setback. In- 7, diana, according to all the reports | that have come out of Bloomington, clearly outp1ayed Syracuse Yet In-
 diana, was certainly not at the top of
 the heap among Western eIevens. Did i Syracuse, after playing one of the
 hardest schedules of any team in the East, enter into a slump, Or has | Western football risen so high as the
 obvious comparison might indicate.
 Another interesting though cer- i tainly not conclusive comparison enters here in the fact that Syracuse I beat the Army, ' to 3, while Notre Dame defeated the soldiers, 12 to g. i The Syracuse-Nebraska game this week will furnish still another East | West comparison Nebraska lost to
 Notre Dame, 14 to g, but tied Minne- | sa1, :