Hunting a Coach

From the columns and columns printed about the football situation at Cambridge, the newspaper reader is fairly safe in assuming that Harvard will either have a new head coach or not have one; that Mr. Fisher will either return or fail to; that Maj, Daly is not coming as head coach but will be merely the head coach of the backfield; that Harvard is (1) satisfied; (2) unsatisfied, or (3) dissatisfied with Mr. Fisher; that Messrs. Leary, Crowley and the immortal Mahan will or will not be among those present and accounted for, and that the sun will or will not set in crimson as it has and has not set before. Thus, the situation is stabilized, crystallized and clarified, and there is nothing ahead but the perfectly perfunctory task of turning out a so-called eleven, consisting of fifteen or twenty men, who will humiliate Yale and annihilate Princeton and teach the minor opponents a thing or two.

To the person who does not know the difference between a fumble and a forward--and there are some few thousands of them--and who wonders why it is so easy to find a new secretary of state and so difficult to get a master coach, the searching of the committees for a superman is not so entertaining as some other aspects of the thing. One is the post-season interest in the sport. People are discussing Harvard football while waiting for the next cross-word puzzle to come out. As baseball has burst the bounds of the playing months, so football now has a carry-over. Another phase of interest is the great desire to have a winning team. Moral victories are splendid for the other fellow, and sport for sport's sake is always a fine subject, but the average graduate or undergraduate wants something that he can throw up his hat for. A losing team that goes down fighting gloriously brings no thrills.

Mr. Logan, Mr. Pennypacker and Mr. Moore have a trying task. The cry for a winning team is loud. The mechanics of producing it is not at all simple. The success of the Haughton teams was so sweet to Harvard men that, as they remember the scores, there is likely to be forgetfulness of the long path that led to victory. There is a competent body of men working on the problem, and impatience seven months before the first game is hardly called for, even if the stories of it make diverting reading. --The Boston Herald.