Third Saturday

After watching the last nail hammered into the coffin of 1938 baseball (see p. 49), U. S. citizens last week turned their attention toward the wriggling three-weeks-old college football season. Monday-morning-quarterbacks began to appraise this year's players, prognosticate what teams would finish on top of the heap around Thanksgiving Day.

In the Far West, the University of California, last year's Pacific Coast Conference champion and Rose Bowl winner, having lost six of its 1937 team by graduation, looked as though it might have a tough struggle defending its title against Southern California, Oregon or Stanford.

In the Southwest Conference, cradle of wide open, razzle-dazzle play, few experts dared predict a champion. Some fancied Baylor because of its quarterback, Bill Patterson, who last season threw 150 passes--of which 50 were completed and only 13 intercepted--for an average gain of 4.5 yards for each pass attempted.

In the Midwest, football fans anticipated a better-than-last-year Notre Dame team and the perennial Big Ten dogfight.

While Northwestern waited for its potential jackpot, Freshman Bill de Correvont who scored 211 points for Chicago's Austin High School last year, to join the varsity, the Midwest lacked headline heroes. Minnesota appeared to be the team to beat. Perilously close behind in popular appraisal, however, were Wisconsin, Ohio State, Illinois, Northwestern and even Michigan.

In the South, auguries pointed toward Alabama, or Duke.

In the East, the No. 1 team last week appeared to be the University of Pittsburgh, whose backfield of Goldberg, Stebbins, Cassiano and Chickerneo, is rated one of the best of all time. For several seasons Coach Jock Sutherland has been trying to fashion an outfit that would rank with Pitt's famed undefeated eleven of 1915, on which he played. This year he thinks he has it.

Outstanding Eastern hero so far this season has been Columbia's Halfback Sidney Luckman, whose passing equals the best performances in football history. In last fortnight's game against Yale, Halfback Luckman completed ten out of 17 passes (most of them on the run) for a total gain of 146 yards, scored a touchdown and kicked three extra points. He not only throws a 50-yd. pass like a catcher pegging to second base, but feints his opponents out of position like a boxer.

Against Army at West Point last week, Sid Luckman lived up to his reputation. In perhaps the most exciting of the 300 college football games played last Saturday, a magnificently coordinated Army team kept him bottled up for almost three periods. At half time, Army was leading 18-to-6. But in the final minutes of the third quarter, Luckman began to bomb the Army's defense. In the last quarter, with Columbia trailing 13-to-18, Luckman threw three passes and three times succeeded in speeding the ball toward a touchdown in a 96-yd. drive. Although Fullback Gerry Seidel carried the ball over the goal line, the rousing cheers that came from 25,000 exhausted throats were mostly for Sid Luckman. For his earlier point-after-touchdown had won the game for Columbia. Hero Luckman, however, calmly stepped up to the ball, kicked another point-after-touchdown for good measure. Final score: Columbia 20, Army 18.

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