When the dish of stewed fruit had reached Jake and been sampled he resumed. “I don’t suppose there’s any limit to the different plays that could be invented. Of course, most of them would be a whole lot like a whole lot of others, and not many of them would be--er--practicable, but just consider that you’ve got, say, four backs and two linemen who can carry the ball and that there are eight holes for them to go through. There you’ve got forty-eight straight plays right off the reel. Then you’ve got all sorts of forward-passes, punts, drops and placements: maybe another twenty-five or thirty. And you haven’t started on fakes and tricks at all yet! Two hundred? I’ll bet there are three hundred already! And all over this benighted land Smart Alecks are sitting up with paper and pencils trying to dope out more. It’s a fearsome thought, if you ask me.” “I suppose all the good plays have been used, anyway, by this time,” reflected Jim. “Well, I don’t know. No, I don’t believe so. Besides, the Rules Committee sees to that. Just as soon as there aren’t any more nut plays to spring on us poor players the Committee changes the rules and the parlor strategists start all over again. And then there’s this forward-pass, Slim. That’s got all sorts of possibilities that haven’t been--what you might call developed yet. Last year folks thought there wasn’t anything new under the sun and two or three wild western coaches had brain-storms and showed the eastern guys how they’d been asleep at the switch. You know, Slim, it takes those western chaps to spring the new stuff. If it wasn’t for them we fellows back here in the effete east would still be thinking the criss-cross the absolute knees plush ultra of trick football!” “What are you fellows gassing about so earnest-like?” inquired “Tip” Benning from across the table. “Football plays,” answered Jake. “I was saying that if it wasn’t for the fellows out west we’d still be doddering along with the delayed pass and the good old criss-cross. They’re the guys who give us the new stuff.” “How do you get that way?” demanded Billy Frost derisively. “Who invented the unbalanced line, for instance?” “Well, who invented the shift? And what about the pass to moving back? And--” “All right! What about the concealed pass? I suppose Harvard sent west for that? And what about Cornell’s--” “I’ll tell you one play the west did invent,” interrupted Latham, “and that’s the concealed ball trick! It took an Indian to spring that, and if Indians aren’t Westerners--” “Listen! Who was coaching the Indians that year?” demanded Billy Frost. “How do I know? I wasn’t born, I guess!” “Well, it was a man named Warner. Maybe you’ve heard of him?” “I’ve heard of two Warners,” laughed Latham. “One of ’em makes speedometers.” “Well, I’ll bet that Indian would never have thought of hiding the ball under his jersey. It was the coach pulled that one. And, anyway, it was against the rules.”