Football

With some thudding dialog in Michigan, California, Ohio, and a few words of comedy in Cambridge, the Football of 1925 came virtually to an end. There were still some encores--Washington, although it is already considered the champion of the Pacific Coast, was to meet Oregon; the Army and Navy were to hold their yearly drill; Notre Dame was to play Nebraska. But the rest has, been decided: Michigan and Northwestern are tied for the Conference Championship; Princeton purrs smugly with one paw on Harvard, one on Yale; Dartmouth, best team in the East, rounded off its unbroken string of victories with the superb soliloquy of "Swede" Oberlander in Chicago; Missouri's wiry tumblers still lead in the Missouri Valley Conference, although Kansas spoiled one of their matinees.

If Rip Van Winkle had awakened last week in Leningrad or Tokyo, or Cape Town, he would not have known that Stanford had not beaten California for 20 years, but if he had awakened in Stanford Stadium he would have known it. There were 75,000 people there to convince him, half of them quite crazy with delight. Captain Nevers, "blond behemoth" of the Stanford team, showed quite conclusively that Stanford could beat the California team--beat it 26 to 14--to the tune of incredulity and frenzy.

Harold ("Red") Grange leaped up in the twilight, intercepted a forward pass, and started to weave through a blur of tacklers toward the Ohio State Goal line, while 85,000 spectators rose howling to their feet. All day the 85,000 had been pouring into Columbus by bus, by automobile, by train from New York and San Francisco, by airplane, by buggy. They had not come to see a football game. They had come to see Grange, the most advertised player. They knew, as they watched his galloping feet cross line after white line, that they were looking at the last amateur run of a quarterback who, in three years of college football, had gained a total number of yards amounting to more than two miles; who had scored 31 touchdowns in 19 games, many of them after runs of 60, 70, 80 yards; who had been forced, by the unwelcome attention of pressmen, to go into a sentineled retirement before this game. On and on he raced, through pools of shadow that spotted the field, swaying past poised tacklers; and the roar of the prodigious hippodrome rose to delirium, for it seemed for a moment that he might get away, might do the thing that was half-expected of him and end his 20th game with a touchdown. But a covey of runners brushed down on him, bore him out of bounds before he had run 43 yards. The 85,000 went home, content. They had seen what they came for. They had seen, also, Marek (Ohio State) break lose from one tackier, jump another, cross Grange's goal line. Score: Illinois 14, Ohio State 9. All autumn the skilful toe of Benny Friedman and the oaken-bound bucket-ribs of "Bull" Molenda have kept Michigan high in the Conference League. On Saturday this pair, with, alternate punts and bucks, drop-kicks and hurtling off-tackle plays, performed against Minnesota. Score: Michigan 35, Minnesota 0. Northwestern was tied with Michigan for the Conference championship.

Chicago sporting editors have a great way of writing up a game when it is only half over; without going so far as to invent the final score, they try to hint pretty clearly who they think has won. Naturally, they were confident that Northwestern, after getting a 10-point lead in the first half, would beat Notre Dame. What was their surprise, when they had wired in their stories, to see Rockne's men stiffen on the defense, riddle Northwest-era's wavering line, circle its ends, pound twice across its goal line. Score: Notre Dame 13, Northwestern 10.

"Barnum was right," mournfully stated a bruised and dislocated Chicago linesman as he looked in the shower-bath after the Wisconsin game. He referred, not to the famed circus promoter, but to the plunging, heady Wisconsin fullback who had loudly affirmed before the contest that his team would win, and backed up his assertions by performing prodigies all afternoon. Score: Wisconsin 20, Chicago 7. Everyone in the Harvard stands agreed that Yale was carrying the joke too far. Both teams had been deriving a great deal of amusement from that joke; they had passed it back and forth between them, they had given it clumsy kicks; sometimes a player on one side would try to throw it to a teammate, but then it always rolled on the ground. Once Fishwick (Yale) had started for the goal line with it, but while he waddled along with no one in front of him, Captain Marion Adolphus Cheek (Harvard) ran up behind him and threw him to the ground. Once the Yale centre rush had sent it speeding into the arms of nobody, so that it bumped foolishly along the ground far behind the line. But now, by short dashes, Yale had carried it too far; Caldwell gained a few feet on one plunge, a few feet more on another; the joke lay on Harvard's 3-yard line. Watchers prickled; was there to be a touch of melodrama in this comedy? Distant listeners who were getting the game by radio heard a metallic voice say, "Harvard's line is making its last stand. Will they hold?" There was a long, crackling pause in which the listeners pictured the Yale backs crouching, the ball snapped, a runner who, springing at that line which wavered, crumbled. . . . The metallic voice returned. "Harvard held," it said. Score: Harvard 0, Yale 0.