Isbell-to-Hutson-to-Title?

This year, for the first time since the National Football League was organized, a double play-off is necessary to determine the professional football champions of the U.S. Finishing their regular seasons with ten victories and one defeat (at the hands of each other), the Chicago Bears and Wisconsin's Green Bay Packers will fight it out this week in Chicago for the Western Division title and the privilege of meeting the thrice-beaten New York Giants, Eastern champions, in the national playoff, Dec. 21.

The Chicago Bears, masterminded by Quarterback Sid Luckman, are the most powerful all-around team in the history of professional football. But the Green Bay Packers have at left end a streak of lightning named Don Hutson. Hutson, onetime Alabama star who looks more like a fancy figure-skater than a footballer, has been the Bears' nemesis ever since he joined the Packers in 1935.

That year, on his very first play as a professional, Hutson faked big Bear Beattie Feathers out of his way, caught a 60-yd. pass and scooted for a touchdown that beat the Bears, 7-to-0. Later in his rookie year, he trapped the Bears again with two sensational touchdown passes in the last three minutes of play. Since then--though the Bears' strategists have lain awake nights trying to figure out ways to stop him--the Alabama Flash, pussyfooted and sure-fingered, has robbed the mighty Bears of at least two more Western Division titles.

Accomplice in Hutson's recent robberies has been red-headed left halfback Cecil Isbell (Purdue '38), one of the slickest passers in the game. Since they teamed up. Isbell-to-Hutson has become to football what Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance once was to baseball. This season, completing 117 passes in 206 attempts (for a gain of nearly a mile), Green Bay's Isbell has put Washington's "Slingin' Sammy" Baugh in the shade.

But it is Hutson, the scamper end, who has turned in the most brilliant perform ance in pro football. He not only holds practically every pass-receiving record in the National Football League, but has this season set a new record for points scored: twelve touchdowns (ten on passes), 20 points after touchdown and one field goal for a total of 95 points. The only pro ever to catch three touch down passes in each of four games, his football record has begun to take on the glamor of baseball's Babe Ruth's. In seven seasons, Hutson has scored 386 points -- a feat unparalleled in big-league football.

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