EARLY-SEASON THOUGHTS

With the "largest squad in the history of the University" the days of football are ushered in. Gloom emanates daily from New Haven on account of the ineligible Sophomores and from Princeton for some other well-known reason. But pre-season gloom from the camps of the enemy is a customary phenomenon to the football world. Coach Roper has a bad habit of fooling most of the people until about November first by predicting chaos for his team, and at Yale championship Freshman teams always dwindle to nothingness in the autumn of their sophomore year. Beyond reporting the extraordinary number of candidates few prognostications are being made at the University. But Coach Fisher and his charges are hard at work twice a day to meet the tests of October and November. And after all actions speak louder than words. That they merit the confidence which the University is ready to place in them and that the constant support of the University is essential to success is evident from past experience.

All of this is as it should be. But there is something entirely unprecedented in the 1923 season. It marks the first year in which the "Presidents' Agreement" is actually in force. Despite a somewhat curtailed season the shortening of pre-season practice no longer arouses the fury which greeted the proposal when first broached in the columns of the college newspapers. Unfair though it may be in some of its details, the agreement has admittedly done something to curb the abuses of football, especially in shortening considerably the hitherto excessive period of pre-season practice. If for nothing else, the 1923 season will be remembered for this.