Egg in Your Beer

Charles W. Caldwell, Jr., well-to-do New Jersey football coach, is undoubtedly a man of great conflict.

Most important among the things that guide his actions is his desire to win. This is commendable in a football coach, particularly so in Mr. Caldwell because he has been highly successful at it.

But there are things other than plain old-fashioned winning that Mr. Caldwell wants from football. He wants a lot of young boys to play football and because of this he is unhappy with the new NCAA substitution rule.

Apparently, he thinks that under the new rule eleven players will go out for the opening kickoff, not to leave again except for half time and the game's end. In reality, few will play the full sixty minutes and probably almost as many men will play as before, though some of them--defensive backs--not for so long.

But the surprising thing about Mr. Caldwell's attitude is that he never seemed to worry about letting all the boys play under the old rule. Frank McPhee played almost sixty minutes per game at end, while other backs and linemen, though more specialized, rarely left their particular jobs. When the score mounted to say, 41 to 14 in the last quarter, Mr. Caldwell removed some of his starters. It is entirely conceivable that if Harvard manages to lead some team by twenty-seven points in the last five minutes, Lloyd Jordan may take Dick Clasby out, thus proving both the versatility of the new rule, and the fallacy of Caldwell's argument.

But the Princeton coach is not alone in his denunciation of the new rule. Homer Smith, captain-elect of the team, president of his class, and next to God and Caldwell at Nassau, doesn't like it, either. The persevering Smith, who kept running for a full afternoon last fall against Harvard to set a record, feels that "it is a shame for the thousands of boys who won't get a chance to play." We must remind Smith that there were, indeed, many thousands of boys who didn't play under the old rule.

Caldwell is at least consistent. Last fall, after the Yale-Princeton game, when his conflicts must have clashed bitterly and Yale almost won, he told reporters that Yale almost won, he told reporters that Yale would beat Harvard, tactfully adding, "Harvard doesn't have a defensive line worthy of the name." From his viewpoint this is quite true; most of the Crimson line played at least part of the Princeton game two ways, and a defensive line of offensive players is hardly a defensive line.

The kindly Mr. Caldwell is worried about the spectators, too, saying that the rule will result in a "less appealing type of football." This also is quite true from a Princeton perspective; but for people with Crimson, Blue, and Green scarves the sight of good old-fashioned dirt blending with Orange and Black will probably be quite pleasing, if not downright "appealing."