Football Days eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 400 pages of information about Football Days.

Football Days eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 400 pages of information about Football Days.
Daly attempted a field goal, which was unsuccessful.  What Billy Bull and I had discussed many times came into my mind like a flash.  I picked the ball up and walked out with it as if it had been touched back of the goal.  When I passed the 25-yard line, walking along casually, Bucky Vail, who was the referee, yelled to me to stop.  I walked over to him unconcerned and said:  ’Bucky, old boy! this ball is not dead, because I did not touch it down.  And I am going down the field with it.’  By that time the West Point men had taken their positions in order to receive the kick from the 25-yard line.  While I was still walking down the field, in order to pass all the West Point men, before making my dash for a certain touchdown, it struck Bucky Vail that I was right, and he yelled out at the top of his voice.  ’The ball is not dead.  It is free.’  Whereupon the West Point men started after me.  An Army man tackled me on their 25-yard line, after I had taken the ball down the field for nearly a touchdown.  I have often turned over in my bed at night since that time, cursing the action of Referee Vail.  If he had not interfered with my play I would have walked down the field for a touchdown and victory for Yale.  The final score remained 6 to 6.

“I have often thought of the painful hours I would have suffered had I missed the two open field chances in the disastrous game at Cambridge in the fall of 1902, when Yale was beaten 23 to 0.  On two different occasions in that game a Harvard runner with interference had passed the whole Yale team.  I was the only Yale man between the Harvard man and a touchdown.  The supreme satisfaction I had in nailing both of those runners is one of the most pleasant recollections of my football career.

“When I was a little shaver, back in 1889, I lived at South Bethlehem, Pa.  Paul Dashiell and Mathew McClung, who were then playing football at Lehigh University, took an interest in me.  Paul Dashiell took me to the first football game I ever saw.  Dibby McClung gave me one of the old practice balls of the Lehigh team.  This was the first football I ever had in my hands.  For weeks afterwards that football was my nightly companion in bed.  These two Lehigh stars have always been my football heroes, and it was a happy day for me when I played quarterback on the Yale team and these two men acted as officials that day.”

[Illustration:  ONE SCENE NEVER PHOTOGRAPHED IN FOOTBALL]

CHAPTER XIX

MEN WHO COACHED

The picture on the opposite page will recall to mind many a serious moment in the career of men who coached; when something had gone wrong; when some player had not come up to expectation; when a combination of poor judgment and ill luck was threatening to throw away the results of a season’s work.  Such scenes are never photographed, but they are preserved no less indelibly in the minds of all who have played this role.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Football Days from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.