“I’ll bet anything you’ll make good, too, Foster, when you fellows meet Kenwood. I hear they’ve got only a fair team over there this year. I was talking to a fellow from there only a couple of days ago. ‘We aren’t telling it around, Art’—my name’s Maurice Arthur, you know, and some fellows call me Art,” he explained parenthetically. “‘We aren’t telling it around, but between you and me we’ve got a pretty punk outfit this year. We’re trying to keep Parkinson guessing, but if they play the sort of game they played against Chancellor they’ll have us on the run from the beginning.’ Maybe I oughtn’t to tell this to a Parkinson fellow, but he didn’t tell me not to, and you and I are friends, so I guess there’s no harm. Besides, I’d like mighty well to see you fellows lick that Kenwood bunch. They’re too stuck-up for me.”
“I won’t say anything about it to any one,” said Myron virtuously. “Probably your friend wouldn’t want it to get to our team.”
“Oh, never mind what he wants. If telling your fellows’ll do them any good, you go ahead and tell them. I’ll stand for it. How is the team getting along, by the way? That was certainly a peach of a licking you gave Chancellor. I was reading about it in the paper last Sunday.”
Myron replied that the team was getting on famously, and went into rather intimate details to prove it. Millard was flatteringly interested and encouraged Myron to talk, which Myron was nothing loath to do since he was on a subject that appealed to him vastly. Millard had many questions to ask, questions which showed conclusively that he had a close understanding of football and a wide acquaintance among players. With such a listener Myron found it easy to pursue his subject. Millard introduced debate by throwing doubt on the ability of the Parkinson ends. He said he thought Cousins and Leeds, the Kenwood ends, would have the better of the argument, and was only convinced to the contrary after Myron had very thoroughly explained Stearns’ and Norris’ methods, both on offence and defence. There was simply no end to Millard’s interest in football, and once—they were running through the town of Sturgis at the moment—when Myron feared that he was boring the other, in spite of apparent willingness to listen, and sought to change the subject, it was Millard who soon brought it back again.
How the matter of signals came up, Myron didn’t afterward recall, but it did, and it was exhaustively dealt with. Millard spoke of a case he knew of where the intricacy of the signals had lost an important game for a certain high school team. “I always think that the more simple the signal system is the better it is. You take the big colleges, now, Foster. They don’t ball the men all up with double numberings and ‘repeats’ and all those silly tricks. They select a simple system, one that’s easy to learn and remember. Why, I’ve seen quarter-backs stutter and fumble around for whole minutes trying to get their signals straightened out. And as for the number of times that backs have spoiled a play because they didn’t get the signals right——” Millard whistled eloquently.
“Guess we won’t have any trouble that way,” answered Myron complacently. “Our system’s as simple as simple.”
“That so? Holes and players numbered from left to right, eh?”
“No, we begin at the ends.”
“Yes, that’s a better scheme. Left end is 1, left tackle, 3, and so on, I suppose.”
“No, we don’t number the players that way. The openings——”