WHAT THE SYSTEM CAN STAND

"The trouble lies deeper than individuals", says the Yale Alumni Weekly in regard to Yale football, "and is essentially the lack of a wining system". In the popular mind of the world's greatest demagogue, the sporting writer of today, "system" is a word considered indigenous only to Harvard, yet most of the winning Harvard plays found their origin in the old "Yale system" which won its namos with customary regularity for over a decade. Most of the vertabrae in the backbone of this system were made up of the imperial Yale triumvirate of captain, coach, and Walter Camp. But this inter-working continuity and ever-working salubrity was at length abandoned for the present restless, "fall once try something else" method. The result, only one victory over Harvard since 1910 and eight defeats, has been disappointing. Now the Bulldog is wondering where that bone is he buried some ten or fifteen years ago.

When Yale was losing a system, Harvard was gaining one to which it has clung with vigorous tenacity ever since. But in the eyes of the sporting critics it is now Harvard's turn to crumble. The edict comes from the press writers of the metropolis that the "Haughton system" is obsolete and must be completely revamped if it is to hold its place among the football powers. The old deceptive style of playing; when the right halfback carried the ball around the right end and the opposing team thought the left halfback was carrying it around the left end, is no longer so successfully worked. "The background of the phantasmagoria deception" has become quite transparent. What the Harvard offense is going to be next fall the sporting writer does not know, but it is prophesied that the shift play will be the "primum mobile" of the attack.

The evolution of sport is also threatening the life of another Harvard system. For years the Winsor style of hockey has been practically supreme in America. But a rule changing the number of players from seven to six and various others adopted last year have made the American game more like the Canadian. Canadian hockey, individualistic, open, spectacular, is fundamentally opposed to the team play and passing game that Harvard has always used. Sporting writers predicted the prompt exit of the Winsor system down the back-stairs of obscurity. But the three man defence was developed, and the team sat on its high pinnacle as firmly as ever. This year more new rules have caused the further progress of American hockey towards the Canadian, and the Winsor system again faces trial by combat.