All-American Scrimmage

No college football star hoping to make All-America takes it more seriously than the magazines which pick them. To the magazines All-Americas are a deadly business, an important piece of promotion involving the prestige of the magazines as well as their hired experts. And none takes them more seriously than Collier's, which regards its teams as lineal descendants of the late Walter Camp's All-Americas, and for 22 years has employed kindly Grantland Rice, "dean of the sportwriters," to do its picking.

Last week three magazines were scrimmaging in an all-American squabble. In splashy newspaper ad's, Collier's announced a streamlined T-formation system for picking its 1948 team--but made no mention of "Granny" Rice. Piqued because he had turned out a football dope story for its arch-rival Look, Collier's told him he could take all his business in that direction. Rice did. As a quick replacement, Collier's lined up six big-name coaches (at $500 per coach).* This "Supreme Court of Football," aided by ballots of ex-All-Americas and campus sport editors, will scan plenty of football film footage each week to get a line on promising players they could not personally see in action.

When the Saturday Evening Post learned that Collier's had signed up the star coaches, it angrily tore up its own contract with the Football Coaches' Association, which had picked the Post's All-Americas. This week, while the Post looked for substitutes, Collier's calmly prepared to add the association to its list of pickers. Even without Granny Rice's autograph on it, Collier's appeared to have recovered the ball.

* U.S.C.'s Jeff Cravath, Columbia's Lou Little, Notre Dame's Frank Leahy, Georgia's Wally Butts, Minnesota's Bernie Bierman, S.M.U.'s Matty Bell.

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