“There is much good fellowship in football.  I played against teams whose cheer leaders would give you a rousing cheer as you made a good play; then again you would meet the fellow who, when you were down in the scrimmage, or after you had kicked the ball, would try to put you down and out.

“One of the pleasantest recollections I have of playing was my experience against the two great academy teams, West Point and Annapolis.

“Never shall I forget one year when Bucknell played West Point.  At an exciting moment in the game, Bucknell players made it possible for me to be in a position to kick the goal from the field from a difficult angle.  After the score had been made the West Point team stood there stupefied, and when the crowd got the idea that a goal had been kicked from a peculiar angle, they gave us a rousing cheer.  Such is the proper spirit of American football; to see some sunshine in your opponent’s play.

“Cheering helps so much to build up one’s enthusiasm.”

Al Sharpe was one of the greatest all-around athletes that ever wore the blue of Yale.  He, too, recalls the Yale-Princeton game of 1899 at New Haven, but the memory comes to him as a nightmare.

“When I think about the 11 to 10 game at New Haven, which Princeton won,” said Sharpe the last time I saw him, “I remember that after I had kicked a goal from the field and the score was 10 to 6, Skim Brown rushed up to me, and nearly took me off my feet with one of his friendly slaps across my back.  Well do I remember the joy of that great Yale player at this stage of the game.  Later, when Poe made his kick and I saw that the ball was going over the bar, I remember that the thing I wished most was that I could have been up in the line where I might have had a chance to block the kick.

“My recollections of making the Yale team centered chiefly around three facts, none of which I was allowed to forget.  First, that I was not any good, second that I couldn’t tackle, and third that I ran like an ice-wagon.  Since then I have seen so many really good players upon my different squads that I must admit the truth of the above statement, although at the time I am frank to say I took exception to it.  Such is the optimism of youth.”

Jack Munn, a former Princeton halfback, tells the following story: 

“My brother, Edward Munn, was the manager of the Princeton team in 1893.  In the spring of that year there was a conference with Yale representatives to decide where the game was to be played the following fall.  Berkeley Oval, Brooklyn, Manhattan Field, and the respective fields of the two colleges all came under discussion, and I believe that some of the newspapers must have taken it up.  One afternoon in the Murray Hill Hotel, when representatives of Yale and Princeton were discussing the various possibilities, a bellboy knocked at the door and handed my brother an elaborately engraved card on which, among various decorations, the name of Colonel Cody was to be distinguished.  Buffalo Bill was invited to come up, and it seems that, reading or hearing of the discussion about the field for the game, he came to make a formal offer of the use of his tent.  After setting forth the desirability of staging the game under the auspices of his Wild West Show, he brought his offer to a close with his trump card.