The midland journal., 1940-12-13

a 2. If st. John and
Schmidt were so GER
tain that Snavely
W as was directing most
srart,.,a p,c. Of the signals their
first move should
have been to notify the officials at
.once-or at least between halves.
1t is to Purdue's credit-Purdue
which had q legitimate squawk--
that George AIDES alma mater made
no official protest Of any sort. Ohio
State could have made neat sport
ing gesture by refusing to accept
credit for a double illegal victory.
Out of Print
Not all the squawks reach the
headlines. have heard from many
sources that certain winning plays,
such as passing the ball forward
on laterals, have been on the illegal
side.
This was the charge made against
both Michigan and Columbia i'm the
Penn and Georgia games. A Geor-
gia photographer dug up the first
protest, but the. angle camera
takes can make a difference of 10 or
IL feet. So that ones out. The off,
cials, after all, are in charge Of the
game and doing the best they can.
Football is a completely irnpossi-
BILE game to judge, or handle per-
fectly. Looking down on the field
with no obstruction, I've seen many
penalties that should have been
called, but were overlooked in the
action of 22 men who often shut off
an officials vision.
But no good comes from any post
game squawk especially on the
part of the loser.
In regard to illegal forward pass
ing, most laterals are hairline de-
cisions. IL is impossible to pass q
ball backward to a runner in front
of you. So more than q few Of the
laterals are technically illegal. But
they are matters of iouble-spIit Sec
0nds, difficult to follow.
Another Angle
It has gotten so today that most
colleges with winning football teams
are Immediately thrown under suspi-
cion.
Not long ago / ran across two
well-known Yale and Harvard men.
They told me the squawks emanat-
ing from their campus reservations
was largely due to the fact that
Cornell and Pennsylvania were dig
ging up soft courses for certain stars
who couldn't last two weeks in Har-
ward, Yale, Columbia, etc.
"The Ivy league" one Of them
said, twas supposed to belong to a
group playing under exactly the
same conditions especially those
conditions regarding pr0selyting and
scholastic requirements. Today Har-
ward, Yale, Dartmouth, Army, Ma
Wy, Princeton, Columbia and Brown
wouldn't be far apart.
"You know what happened when
Cornell met Army and Penn met
Yale and Princeton. ALI they scored
was 141 points in the three games
/ mean Penn and Cornell"
Too Much CuesssUOrk
In the first place, Yale and Har-
ward and the others who believe
they have a squawk coming should
first be sure of their facts. As it is
now they are merely guessing.
For example, there is the course
in physical education. Bo McMillin
tells me that at Indiana this is one
of the harder courses, involving a
good part of the training needed to
finish in a medical school.
These are things that, for the good
Of football, can be ironed out back
Of the curtain, in place of vague
charges that carry no proof of any
sort. A Cornell or a Pennsylvania
degree still ranks with any that I
know about.
The idea today, in too many quar-
ters, seems to be that all winning
teams must be made the targets for
the beaten.
College football, in many places,
could use more of the sporting side.
There is no law forcing any institu-
ton to schedule football games with
any suspicious rivals.
The main purpose Of football was
supposed to be recreation and sport
for sports sake. 1t was never i'm
tended as part of Nero's schedule
in the old Roman coliseum.
II is a great game-One of the
greatest-but it is also a game that
is gradually developing entirely too
many termitic habitats in its own
system.
/ still say it would be far better
game if every student in every coli
lege and university were treated ex-
actly the same as every other stu
dent IN regard to proselyting, schol-
arships, jobs and financial handouts.
Then we'd have a true test Of col
1aoa football ranking I believe fhat