Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 11, Number 3, DeMotte, Jasper County, 5 December 1940 — Sportlight [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Sportlight

by GRANTLAND RICE

TT MUST be remembered, in your 1 remaining prognostications and your selections that while American football is the greatest game ever invented when it comes to a mixture of spirit and skill, to condition, to player interest and to crowd excitement, it is still an unbalanced game in the way of just rewards. The better team doesn’t always win—not by 50 kilometers. I have

talked this season with over 20 leading coaches about this phase of football, and they all agree. They admit that you can outplay another team badly along the ground and through the air—and still lose the ball game. I’ve located over 40 teams this season

who have made more yards along the ground and through the air and hav,e had the better kicking, and still have lost. When two good teams meet, the breaks almost always carry the winning story. Which means the flip of a coin. This is no indictment of football, as a game. It is the turn that gives the underdog his chance against better football people. It is the factor that gives its thrills to big crowds, which have realized there are few setups. First downs have become minor factors. On a recent Saturday 17 teams made more first downs and greater yardage—in many cases by decisive margins—and yet lost. It is something like an open golf championship with a vast roulette wheel spinning the answer. But it is stupid to say always that “the better team won.” It is often truer to say, “The lucky team won.” And most coaches know this. Calling'the Turn The forward pass came along in 1906. That was 34 years ago. Four years later, some 30 years ago, I happened to be with Hurty-up Yost of Michigan and Bill Hanna, one of the star football writers who was a veteran when Frank Hinkey was a freshman at Yale “This is a new game,” Yost told us. “I’ve found at Michigan we can beat the second team by seven touchdowns on Tuesday, and fail to score on Wednesday. Passes and plays click one day. They don’t the next. It’s all different.” That was 30 years ago. But Yost saw what was coming—a better game foV the player, a far better game for the crowd, but no longer a game for past performance nor for accepted form. Yost at that time saw ahead how many better football teams were going to be beaten by underdogs, by ■ minor teams. For Exam pie , Minnesota * This season Minnesota stepped into one of the toughest schedules of' the year. I’d say the toughest. The Gophers barely scrambled by Washington, and I happen to know that both Jimmy Phelan and Washington thought they should have won —with 30 per cent of the breaks. Ohio State had two easy chances to beat Minnesota and blew both, which is nothing to Buckeye credit. An intricate play called in the rain for a one-yard touchdown wasted one of them. One * point after touchdown for Northwestern would have tied Minnesota. Two points after touchdown would have won. ‘ The point after touchdown is the cheap concession from the rules committee to the crowd—not to the good of football. In the Michigan gatne the Wolverines were all over the Gophers—something like 15 first downs to 5. Michigan that day was the better team on the field. But Minnesota won on a single play. Yet, I still say Minnesota has turned in the best job of the year, barring nobody, "when you look at the Gopher schedule. Yet, without the breaks, Minnesota could easily have lost at least three ball games. Maybe four. “Minnesota this fall,” a veteran Big Nine coach told me, "was like lowa was last year. lowa last year could easily have been beaten by Indiana, Minnesota, Purdue and Notre Dame, which Eddie Anderson knows. Notre Dame was in the same spot. Notre Dame on the day’s play could easily have lost to both Army and Navy. When you play tough schedules, anything can happen. “You’ve got to give Minnesota credit for taking the year’s big gamble—a gamble that even Minnesota might easily , have lost three ways. But it has still been the big job of 1940.” For One Game "The main angle in football,” Elmer Layden of Notre Dame said, “is the mental attitude for one game. I know how Army and Navy shoot for us. I told you that you could throw out all other games. When you get set to win one game, no one can say what will happen. For example, blocking and tackling are about 80 per cent spirit for that one day. "Don’t figure that any unbeaten team rides safely. They definitely dp not.”

Grantland Rice