Football

On fields all over the U. S., thousands of school, college and professional football teams last week played the first noteworthy games of the season. Results:

Colleges, Biggest crowd of the week (73,000) saw Ohio State swamp New York University, 60-to-0, at Columbus. At Berkeley, Calif., St. Mary's nosed out California, 10-to-0. At New Haven, Yale won the first Yale-Cornell game in 47 years, 23-to-0.

New rules and the names of the Notre Dame backfield are things all football addicts want to know at the start of every season. This year there are no new rules. Notre Dame's backfield is Puplis, Wilke, Wojcihovski and Danbom. Last week, in South Bend, Puplis, Wilke, Wojcihovski and Danbom made their presence felt by Carnegie Tech, 21-to-7.

Professionals. Played informally as early as 1895, organized professional football really began to flourish in 1925, when famed C. C. ("Cash & Carry") Pyle signed famed Illinois Halfback Harold ("Red") Grange to play for pay. Last year, a million people paid more than $1,000,000 to see the 54 games played by the nine teams of the National League, No. 1 organization of the game. This season professional football has two major leagues, named after baseball's. Leaders of the six teams in the American League last week were the Boston Shamrocks. In the National League, the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions had yet to lose a game.

Founder of professional football in the U. S. and organizer of both its major leagues is a 60-year-old general practitioner with offices at Broadway & 103rd Street, Manhattan, named Dr. Harry Addison March. Dr. March grew up in Canton, Ohio, played football at Mt. Union College in 1893, became a reporter for the Canton Repository. When William McKinley, a friend of his Army officer father, campaigned for the Presidency, Reporter March joined him, followed him to Washington, landed a job there as $7-a-week assistant to Dramatic Critic Channing Pollock. When McKinley advised him that newspaper reporters were lounge lizards, he studied medicine, went back to Canton to practice. Meanwhile he played or watched hundreds of football games when the best professionals were such characters as Christy Mathewson, Fielding Yost, Walter Okeson, Knute Rockne and Yale's legendary Walter William ("Pudge") Heffelfinger, wearing long bobbed hair instead of leather helmets.

After the War, in which he became a Major, Dr. March organized two dozen or so professional football teams into a loose organization which later crystallized into the National League. When a squabble with Laundryman George Marshall, owner of the Boston Redskins, put him out of the National League two years ago, Dr. March wrote a book called Pro Football, which stamps him as the leading U. S. authority on the subject. Last spring he promoted the idea of a second professional league, which got quick backing. Burly, pipe-smoking Dr. March is currently its president. Most remarkable of the League's teams are the Yankees and the Tigers, both owned and backed by New York socialites. Owner of the Yankees is Broker James Irving Bush. Among its stockholders is Playwright Sidney Kingsley (Men in White). The team plays in red, white & blue uniforms, has two lady pressagents.

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