Football days : $b memories of the game and of the men behind the ballEdwards, William H. (William Hanford)
General
Football days : $b memories of the game and of the men behind the ball
Edwards, William H. (William Hanford)
Football
"Burr, the great Harvard captain," said Pooch, "was a natural born
leader of men. He knew a lot of football and Haughton thought the world
of him. Burr went along finely until the last week of the season. Then,
in falling on the ball, he bruised his shoulder, and would not allow
himself to go into the Yale game. It was really this display of good
judgment on his part that enabled Harvard to win.
"Too often a team has been handicapped by the playing of a crippled
veteran. As a matter of fact, the worst kind of a substitute is often
better than a crippled player. The fact that the great captain, Burr,
stood on the side lines while his team was playing, urged his team mates
on to greater efforts.
"In this same game the opposite side of this question was demonstrated.
Bobbie Burch, the Yale captain, who had been injured the week before the
game, was put in the game. His injury handicapped the Yale team
considerably."
Pooch Donovan has been eight years at Harvard. He has five gold
footballs, which he prizes and wears on his watch chain. During the
eight years there have been five victories over Yale, two ties and one
defeat. Pooch has been a football player himself and the experience has
made him a better trainer.
In 1895 he played on Temple's team of the Duquesne Athletic Club. He was
trainer and halfback, and was very fond of the game. Later on he played
in Cleveland against the Chicago Athletic Club, on whose team played
Heffelfinger, Sport Donnelly, and other famous knights of the gridiron.
"In the morning we did everything we could to make the stay of the
visiting team pleasant," says Donovan, regarding those days, "but in the
afternoon it was different, and in the midst of the game a fellow
couldn't help wondering how men could be so nice to each other in the
morning and so rough in the afternoon."
Pooch Donovan cannot say enough in favor of Doctor E. H. Nichols, the
doctor for the Harvard team. Pooch's judgment is endorsed by many a
Harvard man that I have talked to.
Keene Fitzpatrick
When Biffy Lea was coaching at the University of Michigan in 1901, it
was my opportunity and privilege to see something of Western football. I
was at Ann Arbor assisting Lea the last week before Michigan played
Chicago. Michigan was defeated. That night at a banquet given to the
Michigan team, there arose a man to respond to a toast.
His words were cheering to the men and roused them out of the gloom of
despair and defeat to a strong hope for the coming year. That man was
Keene Fitzpatrick. I had heard much about him, but now that I really had
come to meet him I realized what a magnetic man he was.
He knew men and how to get the best out of them. Fitzpatrick went from
Michigan to Yale, from Yale back to Michigan, and then to Princeton,
where Princeton men hope he will always stay.
Michigan admirers were loath to lose Fitzpatrick and their tribute to
him on leaving was as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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