“What kind of a team do they think we can turn out without a coach?” he demanded, addressing the throng in general but frowningly regarding Toby Sears, Senior Class President. “Who’s going to look after the physical condition of the fellows? Why, along about the middle of the season we’ll have a hospital list as long as my arm! The trouble with that Committee is that they’re a lot of old grannies!”
Sears shrugged his shoulders and replied a bit resentfully: “Well, you needn’t blame me for it! I’m not on the Committee. Tell it to Wayland and Scott and those who are.”
“You can’t blame them for it, either,” said Pete Farrar. “They were outvoted. Will Scott told me so. Wayland couldn’t go to the meeting because he was sick. And, anyhow, with only three undergraduates against four grads and faculties, what can you do?”
“That’s so,” said someone else. “We ought to be better represented. It would be fairer to have as many undergrads as grads.”
“Don’t see as it makes much difference, anyhow,” observed Sears. “Lanny White told me Saturday that some man he was after had turned us down and that he didn’t know where to look next. So, even if the Committee hadn’t decided against a coach, it wouldn’t have made any difference. There isn’t anyone to get.”
“Well, we’ve got to have someone,” insisted Morris, aiming his apple-core at the rubbish barrel and missing it badly, “even if he’s not much of a coach. Lanny can’t run the First Team and the Scrub and look after the new fellows too. No one could. Besides, who ever heard of a football team without a coach?”
“It seems to me,” said Pete Robey, “that there ought to be some grad who could do it.”
“That’s what I say,” agreed Sears. “There must be, too, if we’d look for him. Of course he might not know a lot of football, but he’d be better than nothing, I dare say.”
“It’s Grayson’s fault,” said Bingham, a tall, bespectacled sophomore. And Bingham, as unpopular a boy as there was in school, for once found support.
“I’ll bet it is,” muttered another, between mouthfuls of sandwich. “He’s always been down on football.”