"Now I want to tell this tea-party something," continued Bost. "Either
you're going out on that field and score thirty points this last half or
I'm going to let the girls of Siwash play your football for you. I'm
tired of coaching men that aren't good at anything but falling down
scientifically when they're tackled. There isn't a broken nose among
you. Every one of you will run back five yards to pick out a soft spot
to fall on. It's got to stop. You're going to hold on to that ball this
half and take it places. If some little fellow from Normal crosses his
fingers and says 'naughty, naughty,' don't fall on the ball and yell
'down' until they can hear it uptown. Thirty points is what I want out
of you this half, and if you don't get 'em--well, you just dare to come
back here without them, that's all. Now get out on that field and jostle
somebody. Git!"
Did we git? Well, rather. We were so mad our clothes smoked. We would
have quit the game right there and resigned from the team, but we didn't
dare to. Bost would have talked to us some more. And we didn't dare not
to make those thirty points, either. It was an awful tough job, but we
did it with a couple over. We raged like wild beasts. We scared those
gentle Normalites out of their boots. I can't imagine how we ever got it
into our heads that they could play football, anyway. When it was all
over we went back to the gymnasium feeling righteously triumphant, and
had another hour with Bost in which he took us all apart without
anæsthetics, and showed us how Nature would have done a better job if
she had used a better grade of lumber in our composition.
That day made the Siwash team. The school went wild over the score. Bost
rounded up two or three more good players, and every afternoon he
lashed us around the field with that wire-edged tongue of his. On
Saturdays we played, and oh, how we worked! In the first half we were
afraid of what Bost would say to us when we came off the field. In the
second half we were mad at what he had said. And how he did drive us
down the field in practice! I can remember whole cross sections of his
talk yet:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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