Columbia's Coach

Percy D. Haughton, who overthrew the strongest traditions in American football when he cooled the blue blood of the New Haven bulldog, has deserted Harvard to assume control of the faltering destinies of Columbia upon the football field.

This announcement by the Columbia University Committee on Athletics apparently heralds a radical change in their policy. Heretofore they have been struggling along with frequent changes of mediocre coaches and little to show for it in the winning column. Now they have done with halfway measures and turn their wreckage over to the finest mind in football. Columbia has recognized that a fourth-class football team can stain the records of a first-class university.

Haughton was a member of the Harvard team of 1897 that held Yale to a scoreless tie and of the 1898 eleven which won 11 to 0. He was captain of the Crimson baseball team in 1899. He came to Cambridge as head coach in 1908 and in the eight years that he held the position Harvard won 64 games out of 77, five games ending in a tie. He devised and established at Cambridge the most dangerous combination of strategy and strength in American football. The " Haughton system " is virtually a synonym for victory. Since 1916, he has acted in an advisory capacity to Head Coach Bob Fischer.

In the abstract the transfer of Haughton from Harvard to Columbia will prove deeply interesting as a test of the absolute value of coaching intelligence to a football team's success. At Harvard Haughton was supplied with every modern convenience in the way of equipment, some of the greatest material in football history, and the curious Harvard spirit which presupposes supremacy. At Columbia his general coffers will be cramped in comparison, his material quite without Groton and Exeter training, and his constituency lacking in what may be termed the superiority complex. If Mr. Haughton constructs a first-class team on Morningside Heights, he has indeed a strain of genius.

Percy Haughton's recent book, Football and How to Watch It (Doran), is addressed to the laymen in the stands as well as to the players on the field. It is designed to relieve a great deal of the strain felt by the unhappy undergraduate who takes a young lady to the game and has to devote all of his time to explaining to her that the object is not murder but pleasure.