Backs

In football, linemen do the dirty work but the backs get the bouquets. This year, as usual, pre-season football prognosticators focused their attention on the outstanding college backs of the year. Most experts agreed that this year's crop was the most brilliant collection of all time: Michigan's Harmon and Kromer, Purdue's Brock and Brown, Notre Dame's Saggau and Zontini, Tennessee's Cafego, Pitt's Cassiano, Fordham's Eshmont, Duke's McAfee, many & many another.

Last week, on the third Saturday of the season, some of these stars twinkled, others were dimmed:

At Pittsburgh, Dick Cassiano and George McAfee took turns dazzling a crowd of 50,000--but Cassiano's teammates were quicker on their feet, defeated Duke by the margin of a point-after-touchdown (14-to-13) in the biggest upset of the week.

At New Orleans, Len Eshmont (No. 1 ground gainer last year) was swamped by Tulane's smashing Green Wave--and Fordham, pre-season pride of the East, was beaten (7-to-0) by a team from the Deep South for the second week in a row (last fortnight it lost to Alabama, 7-to-6).

At Minneapolis, Purdue's famed halfbacks, Lou Brock and Jack Brown--aided by a third buzzing B, Mike Byelene--swarmed over a Minnesota powerhouse, held it to a 13-to-13 tie.

At Chattanooga, Quarterback George Cafego, who led Tennessee to an undefeated, untied season last year, led his teammates to their third successive victory this season--over Chattanooga, 28-to-0.

The back who shone most brilliantly last week was Tom Harmon of Michigan. Against Iowa, Junior Harmon, a 9.9 sprinter and champion hurdler, scored every one of Michigan's 27 points: four touchdowns (including a 90-yd. dash after intercepting a forward pass) and three conversions-- as magnificent a display of fancy field running, forward passing, blocking and place-kicking as has been seen on a college football field since the days of Red Grange. Michigan 27, Iowa 7.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.