"Sock It to 'Em"

When the University dismantled the metal stands adjoining the Stadium three years ago, Lloyd Paul Jordan watched grimly and vowed, "I'm going to see the day when they'll be sorry they tore down those stands." Today, as the varsity football team takes the field against Yale, his determined promise will be fulfilled. Coming here when Harvard football was at its low ebb, Jordan has rebuilt the entire football organization, and losses by such scores as 47-7 are just a bad memory. Jordan has been sometimes unpleasant, often gruff, always close-mouthed, but he has always been honestly confident.

The fact that the silver-haired Jordan came to Harvard in 1950 is itself an exhibition of this determined attitude. For 18 years he had turned out winning Amherst teams, and held a secure position there as athletic director, as well as football coach. When sportswriters asked him why he left, he retorted characteristically, "Because I'm a football coach." Motivated by a philosophy as blunt and powerful as his personality--"block, tackle, and run"--he and his excellent staff have developed a Crimson eleven which today can reaffirm that "We are a football team."

For Jordan, football is far more than a means of earning a living. For him, it has always been "the greatest sport this country has had"; to play or to coach hard, winning football has been his object since boyhood. "I only got to play once before I went to college," he recalls. "It was on a home-town sandlot in Punxsutawney, Penn., against a mining team. I was in long enough to tackle a big 240-pounder before my father grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and pulled me off the field."

Jordan had trouble getting started in football as well at the University of Pittsburgh, where he went to study mine engineering. After sitting out his freshman year because of a broken collarbone, he became head of the supply room. With this august authority, he issued himself a uniform and began to practice with the varsity. "The athletic director couldn't help but notice me, and asked what the heck I was doing out there, so I told him I was going to make a football leter, or leave Pitt. He told me all right, stay out if you want, and if you make your letter, I'll buy you a suit of clothes'." Jordan won three varsity letters and captained Glen S. (Pop) Warner's last Pitt team in 1923. "It was a pretty nice suit of clothes," he recalls.

As a Warner man, Jordan went into coaching immediately after leaving Pitt, and after four years of high school work, went to Colgate as an assistant coach. In 1932, he moved to Amberst as head football and basketball coach, and later became athletic director as well. Amherst played Harvard once during Jordan's tenure. "We hit that team just right--outstanding players like "Chub" Peabody and Vern Struck were sophomores, and they only beat us, 13 to 0. We had a good back also--Al Snowball, and throughout the game, the announcer kept blaring, "Struck, by Snowball."

Jordan has had outstanding players at Harvard since--Buddy LeMay, Dick Clasby, John Culver. But he has always continued to emphasize the team. "Block, tackle, and run," has been a satisfactory motto on the field, but he has supplemented it with a three-point code. "First, I consider what's good for the boy. Second, what's good for the institution he represents, and third, what's good for the sport." These standards are not mere eyewash: Dick Clasby, injured in last year's Davidson game, might have made the difference in the Princeton game. But even though Clasby had a medical release, Jordan refused to use him, barking "I don't know when he'll be back" at the press. As a coach, he sets trite but essential examples of fitness for his team. He neither drinks nor smokes, but nibbles candy bars and drinks coke instead. And although he demands "100 percent effort" on the field, he does not police his training rules. He admits "I don't expect any great rah-rah spirit here, I know the Harvard man wants to have a winning team. At the same time, I know he doesn't want it at the expense of lowered scholastic standards."

Football--winning football--is his almost all-consuming task during the season. Once when asked how he felt about the sport, he answered with an anecdote: "A head cheerleader at Pitt was holding tryouts for new men. He told them that Pitt was on defense with the other team in possession inside Pitt's five-yard line. Then, he asked what cheers they would call for in such a situation. The first candidate picked, 'Hold that linel' The second said, 'Hold tight!' But the third yelled, 'Sock it to 'cm, Pitt!' and that's exactly the way I feel about football." After combatting alumni abuse, apathetic crowds, and devoting five years of dedicated effort, this has come to be the Harvard feeling about football. It is a good one.