Football days : $b memories of the game and of the men behind the ball — John Shaqi
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
"Snake Ames for some reason was never able to do anything against the
Yale team during the time I was playing, but his work in some later
games that I saw and in which I officiated, convinced me that he was
worthy of his nickname, because there are only a few men who are able to
wind their way through an entire field of opponents with as much
celerity and effect as Ames would display time after time.
"In the fall of '86 Yale beat Harvard 29 to 4, with great ease, and if
it had not been for injuries to Yale players, could probably have made
it 50 or 60 to 0. Most of the Yale players came out of the game with
very disgraceful marks of the roughness of the Harvard men. I had a
badly broken nose from an intentional blow. George Carter had a cut
requiring eight stitches above his eye. The tackle next to me had a face
which was pounded black and blue all over. To the credit of the Harvard
men I will say that they came to the box at the theater that night
occupied by the Yale team and apologized for what they had done, stating
that they had been coached to play in that way and that they would
never again allow anybody to coach who would try to have the Harvard
players use intentionally unfair roughness.
"When I entered Pennsylvania I found a more or less happy-go-lucky
brilliant man, Arthur Knipe, who was not considered fully worthy of
being on even the Pennsylvania teams of those days, namely: teams that
were being beaten 60 or 70 to 0 by Yale, Harvard and Princeton. I
succeeded in arousing the interest of Knipe, and although in my mind he
never, during his active membership of the Pennsylvania team, came up to
75 per cent. of his true playing value, he was, even so, undoubtedly the
peer of any man that ever played football. Knipe was brilliant but
careless, and was at once the joy and despair of any coach who took an
interest in his men. He captained the 1894 Pennsylvania team with which
I sprung the 'guards back' and 'short end defense.'
"Jack Minds I remember seeing, in 1893, standing around on the field as
a member of the second or third scrub teams. I suppose he would not have
been invited to preliminary training except for his own courage and
pertinacity which caused him to demand to be taken. With no thought that
he could possibly make the team I gradually found myself using him in
1894, until he was a fixture at tackle, although he dodged the scales
throughout the entire fall in order that I might not know that he
only weighed 162 pounds.
[Illustration:
Wharton Bull Woodruff
Rosengarten Osgood Brooke Knipe Gelbert
Minds Williams Wagonhurst
OLD PENN HEROES]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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