The Waterbury Democrat., 1940-12-19
TODAY'S SPORT PARADE
RY HENRY McLEMoRE

Los Angeles, December 19. = (UP) = From Palo Alto comes the sad news that Clark Shaughnessy has buried his face in his fat coach ing contract and is crying because he has scapt scouting information on NebraskaS.
 From Lincoln comes the distress ing word that Riff Jones can scarce ly hold the shears steady to clip his coupons for sobbing over his lack of facts on the Stanford style of football play.
 It makes tragic picture, doesn't it? Two big. strong. silent men all broken up because they haven't had access to information that rightfully doesn't belond to them.
 I'm as tender hearted as the next fellow, but I say great, fine, hurrah, huzzah, and let Jones and Shaugh- messy suffer and suffer and suffer and Stanford and Nebraska play for the Rose Bowl victory starting strictly from scratch.
 Come to think of it, who ever started the business of football scouting? I don't know, but my guess is that it was begun by a coach who wasn't quite sure of himself and his ability to cope with any play that wasn't right there in the book on how to play football. l Come to think of it still further, why should there be any scouting? In my book it's accepted cheating = sort of wholesale legalized Peeping Tom business.
 Suspicious
 There have been a,Cempts among coaches to abolish the business of scouting, but they died as quick deaths as if they had been hit ill the head by a two-headed cobra. l don't know the reason for the failure of this sensible legislation unless 1t be the fact that the coaches didn't trust one another - and for good reason.
 Football would be a much better game to watch if there were no such thing as spying on the enemy and seeing what he had in the way | of offense and defense. A meeting between two clubs who knew noth- | ing about one another would make for spectacular performances. And that is why the game is played, isn't | 1t? Isn't the No. reason for foot balls existence the mony that is paid in by the customer? I think it is, not because am cynical, but because I have never seen a decent | game of football played in stadium | where there was no admission charge. And as long as you're play ing with not one eye, but two eyes on the customer, why not give him the best? Why not let the boys come out and have at one another I without benefit of information con- cerning the plays to be run?
 But that isn't what the freight payer gets. For from it. The only l reason Nebraska and Stanford 1 haven't secuted one another down to the wisdom teeth of the third string halfbacks is that they didn't know they were going to tie up in the Rose Bowl until the season was over. Had they known in advance their spies would have been there with note- books. carbon paper, indelible pen cils. binoculars, and all the neces' sary equipment.
 A coach admits a definite weak ness when he scouts 8 rival. He admits that he hasn't enough knowl- edge to figure out a defense or of- fense on the spur of the moment and that to combat anything with an element of surprise in it he must be given weeks of quiet thought and l practice.
 And we refer to coaches as 1 geniuses.
 To obtain coal in Italy consum-