By this time no one in the audience has any definite idea of where the ball is or who has it. On the board it is hovering between midfield and second base.
"On the next play Legly punts—"
"Block that punt! Block that punt!" warns the bond-salesman, as if it were the announcer who was opposing Legly.
"Sit down, you poor fish!" is the consensus of opinion.
"Legly punts to Klung on the latter's 25-yard line, where the first period ends."
And so it goes throughout the game; the announcer calling out gains and the dummy football registering corresponding losses; Messrs. A.T. Blevitch and L.H. Yank being wanted on the telephone in the middle of forward passes; the noisy person in the back of the room yelling "Yea" on the slightest provocation and being hushed up at each outbreak; and every one wondering what the quarterback meant by calling for the plays he did.
In smaller cities, where only a few are gathered together to hear the results, things are not done on such an elaborate scale. The dummy gridiron and the dummy announcer are done away with and the ten or a dozen rooters cluster about the news ticker, most of them with the intention of watching for just a few minutes and then going home or back to the office. And they always wait for just one more play, shifting from one foot to the other, until the game is over.
About a ticker only the three or four lucky ones can see the tape. The rest have to stand on tip-toe and peer over the shoulders of the man in front. They don't care. Some one will always read the results aloud, just as a woman will read aloud the cut-ins at the movies. The one who is doing the reading usually throws in little advance predictions of his own when the news is slow in coming, with the result that those in the back get the impression that the team has at least a "varied attack," effecting at times a field goal and a forward pass in the same play.
A critical period in the game, as it comes dribbling in over the ticker, looks something like this:
YALE.PRINCTON.GAME....CHEKFMKL.......KLUNG.GOES.
AROUND.LEFT.END.FOR.A.GAIN.OF.YDS.....A.FORWARD.
PASS.TWEEDY.TO.KLUNG.NETS.....
(Ticker stops ticking).