Football

Underrated all season, snowed under by Army and Dartmouth, Harvard rallied amazingly four weeks ago to tie Princeton 14-to-14. Last week, rallying again in the last half of a game apparently lost beyond all hope. Harvard found itself on the way to tying Yale identically. The score, 14-to-0 at the beginning of the third quarter, had become 14-10-7 on Struck's touchdown and conversion. Now, with less than three minutes to play, it was 14-to-13, on a pass from Oakes to Ford. Struck dropped back to kick. The whistle blew, the ball was snapped and the crowd of 60,000 in the Yale Bowl held its breath.

Had the ball crossed between the goal posts, Vernon Struck would have been the major hero of last week's biggest football surprise. But the ball spun wide. Four plays later the score was still Yale 14, Harvard 13, the game was over and its hero was a squarejawed, 21-year-old Yale senior who, playing his last college football, had done it in the style he had made famous.

Yale's right end and captain, Lawrence Morgan Kelley, makes a specialty of catching passes. Last week, in the second period, with the score 7-to-0 on Wilson's touchdown and Humphrey's conversion, he was deprived of one good chance to practice it when Yale's ace passer, Clint Frank, dropping back to throw, was tackled on Harvard's 35-yd. line. On the next play, Frank dropped back again and threw a long pass. Kelley raced down the field but caused the Yale stands to give an incredulous groan by just missing the ball. On third down, Frank passed again, this time from Harvard's 48-yd. line. Sprinting down the field, Kelley turned his head at the 10-yd. line and found the ball where it belonged, right above his shoulder. He tucked it under his arm, sprinted across the goal line. A moment later, Humphrey's place-kick brought what turned out to be the winning point.

If Yale's second touchdown last week had been made by anyone else it would have been surprising. Since Kelley made it, it was nothing of the sort. Kelley performances in football are surprising only when they fail to be. Currently, Kelley is the most famed footballer of the year. This is extraordinary because linemen, even ends, are rarely well-known. The reason most linemen are obscure is that they seldom carry the ball, almost never get a chance to score. Kelley's touchdown against Harvard last week was his 13th in three years.

A long-armed, cocksure Irish youth, reared by modestly well-off parents in Conneaut, Ohio, Kelley entered Yale after a year at Peddie, where he was noted for his skill at basketball. After a season on Yale's freshman football team, its coach Mal Stevens predicted that he would eventually be the greatest pass-catcher in Yale history. By mid-season of his sophomore year, Kelley had fulfilled this prediction. He caught passes, mostly from Yale's Quarterback Jerry Roscoe, for touchdowns against Columbia, Brown, Harvard, Princeton. The last, on a one-hand catch, broke Princeton's 15-game winning streak (17-to-0), enabled Yale to score the biggest upset of 1934. In 1935, Roscoe & Kelley functioned together as smoothly as a baseball battery. Kelley's catches of Roscoe's throws were largely what enabled Yale to beat Penn, Navy, Brown and Harvard. This season has been his best. In the Brown game, he scooped up a loose ball, ran 35 yards for a touchdown. Against Navy, he contrived to make the year's most controversial play. He kicked a fumbled punt to Navy's 3-yd. line whence Yale got the winning touchdown two plays later. Kicking a fumbled ball is illegal unless accidental. To officials, Kelley's kick looked like an accident. Against Princeton, it was Kelley's touchdown--after catching a 35-yd. pass--that put Yale ahead, after Princeton had jumped to a 16-to-0 lead.

Sportswriters are accustomed to writing mysteriously about clever football players. Kelley's smartness is not mysterious at all. To effect his touchdown against Princeton last fortnight, instead of dodging Princeton's safety man, Jack White, Kelley bowled him over with a swinging straight-arm. Last week, Kelley explained this play. Knowing White was a faster runner than himself, Kelley had reasoned that, even if he dodged successfully, White would catch up with him. The only safe way was the way that looked most risky.

Kelley's touchdown was by no means his smartest move in the Princeton game. In the last quarter, the crowd saw what looked like a tragedy when Dave Colwell, Yale's ace punter, operated on for appendicitis only three weeks before and sent into the game to kick out of the end zone, was knocked unconscious two plays later.

Last week it came out that Colwell was not knocked unconscious at all but was merely playing possum at Kelley's suggestion in order to get taken out of the game without costing Yale the five-yard penalty imposed for extra substitutions not required by injuries.

In addition to being football's No. 1 opportunist, Kelley is its most famed comedian. His contributions to the chatter that passes back & forth between two teams on the field, printed after every game, became as famed as Mae West wisecracks. A top Kelleyism was his 1934 remark to the Princeton quarterback whose team, undefeated all season, had fumbled six times in the first ten minutes: "Has the Rose Bowl got handles on it?" At Yale Kelley's nonathletic doings have paralleled his career on the football field. In his sophomore year, he refused to join a fraternity because the initiation required him to experience a paddling. This and other breaches of etiquette cost him campus prestige which, however, he regained in time to be the last man tapped for Skull & Bones, Yale's most prized undergraduate honor. In the classroom, Kelley's conduct is characteristic. He has had an average of 84 during his four years, will undoubtedly be elected to Phi Beta Kappa this year. His career could not have been more expertly designed to get him a good job after graduation if it had been arranged by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Kelley's current plan is to become a prep-school teacher and football coach. Said he last week as he left the field after his last and greatest game: "Gee, I'm sorry my career is over! I feel sort of funny. I guess I ought to go off somewhere and be by myself, alone. I want to find out if I'm awake ... it seems like a dream."

At South Bend, in its last game against a Notre Dame team whose mistakes were all behind it, Northwestern last week made all the mistakes it had saved up through an unbeaten season. Heap, hero against Wisconsin, fumbled twice. Toth, titan against Minnesota, failing to get off a punt, was tackled deep in his own territory. Capitalizing blunders like these, punching holes in Northwestern's tired line, Notre Dame put over one touchdown in each quarter, wrecked Northwestern's hopes of a national championship, 26-to-6.

Stanford's stocky Tony Calvelli may have thrown them just as straight but California's Vic Bottari had better receivers. Henry Sparks started things in the second quarter with a one-hand circus grab on the goal line and after that his teammates snaggled every pass they saw, not caring which Italian boy was throwing them. To California: 20 points, the Pacific Coast's traditional Big Game, plus a special trophy, the famed Stanford Ax. To Stanford: 0.

Sam Baugh's rifle-shot passes brought the first touchdown, set the stage for the second that put Texas Christian in a deadlock with Arkansas for the Southwest Conference title, 13-to-0 against Rice.

Jumping to knock down a Princeton pass, Dartmouth's John Handrahan bowled over Princeton's Chick Kaufman. Field Judge Dan Kelly ruled illegal interference, put the ball on Dartmouth's r-yd. line from where Bill Lynch got Princeton's second touchdown on the next play. Loudly booed by the Dartmouth stands, the decision cost their team a clean sweep over the Big Three, ended a sloppy Princeton season with a 13-to-13 tie.

Duquesne's giant-killers, conquerors of mighty Pitt, knocked down passes by Marquette's Buivid, nipped Marquette's rising Rose Bowl hopes, 13-to-0.

Fordham's "Seven Blocks of Granite" showed signs of crumbling and Coach Jim Crowley sent in substitutes, against whom Georgia rattled off a touchdown. The regulars went back but all they could do against the scrappy, underrated Southerners was a long pass and a lucky tie, 7-to-7.

Only major team unbeaten and untied, Coach Buck Shaw's Santa Clara Broncos smashed through Loyola for a touchdown in the first period, another in the third, 13-to-6.

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