The World Wags

To understand how sharply football differs from other games one has only to glance at the Harvard record for the current season. It has been less than four weeks since Harvard was defeated by Geneva, a college of little football reputation, and less than three weeks since it was defeated by Holy Cross, a college surely not of the first rank. Yet, under the tutelage of one Horween, Harvard had learned enough football by Saturday to defeat Dartmouth, which was said to have one of the best teams in the country. Could such a change be wrought in a baseball team in two short weeks? Hardly. Baseball is chiefly a game of skill, and it takes months and sometimes years to build a team which can master its difficult technique. But football is direct combat, and so eleven husky boys can be taught all they have to know in a dozen days of practice.

The puzzling point about Saturday, however, is how Horween convinced his players that they had a chance to win. Ordinarily a team as badly rocked as Harvard was would require two or three games to gain confidence before it rode to glory at the end of the season. But at the first play Harvard showed the snap of a team that knows what it can do. This Horween must be a wonder. If he can do so much for Harvard, think what he could do for William G. McAdoo! --New York World, October 25.