"I enjoyed my football days at Harvard so well that I would like to go back each fall and play football for the rest of my life. I wish to goodness I could go back and play just one game over—that is the Cornell game of 1915. My freshman team won all its games, and during the three years that I played for the Harvard Varsity I never figured in a losing game except that one. Cornell beat Harvard 10 to 0. The score of that game will haunt me all my life long. This game has been a nightmare to me ever since. Every time I think of football that game is one of the first things that comes to mind. I fumbled a lot. I don't know why, but I couldn't seem to hold onto the ball.
"We blocked four kicks, but Cornell recovered every one. We sort of felt that there was more than the Cornell team playing against us—a goal from the field and a touchdown. Shiverick, of Cornell, stands out in my recollection of that game. He was a good kicker. Once he had to kick out from behind the goal post down in his own territory. Watson and I were both laying for a line buck; playing up close. Shiverick kicked one over my head, out of bounds at his own 45-yard line.
"I felt like a burglar after this game, because I felt that I had lost it. I was feeling pretty blue until the Monday after the game, when the coaches picked eleven men as the Varsity team, and just as soon as they sent these eleven men to a section of the field to get acquainted with each other—that was the beginning of team work. From the way those fellows went at it that day, and from the spirit they showed, we felt that no team could ever lick us again, neither Princeton nor Yale. The Cornell game acted like a tonic on the whole crowd. Instead of disheartening the team it instilled in us determination. We said:
"'We know what it is to be licked, and we'll be damned if we'll be licked again.'"
Jack de Saulles' football ambitions were realized when he made the Yale team at quarterback, the position which his brother Charlie, before him, had occupied. His spectacular runs, his able generalship, his ability to handle punts, coupled with that characteristic de Saulles' grit, made him a famous player.
Let this game little quarterback tell his own story:
"Billy Bull and I have often discussed the fact that when an attempt for a goal from the field failed, one of the players of the opposing side always touched the ball back of the goal line (thereby making it dead), and brought it out to the 25-yard line to kick. Of course, the ball is never dead until it is touched down. It was in the fall of 1902 when we were playing West Point. In the latter part of the second half of that game, with the score 6 to 6, Charlie Daly attempted a field goal, which was unsuccessful. What Billy Bull and I had discussed many times came into my mind like a flash. I picked the ball up and walked out with it as if it had been touched back of the goal. When I passed the 25-yard line, walking along casually, Bucky Vail, who was the referee, yelled to me to stop. I walked over to him unconcerned and said: 'Bucky, old boy! this ball is not dead, because I did not touch it down. And I am going down the field with it.' By that time the West Point men had taken their positions in order to receive the kick from the 25-yard line. While I was still walking down the field, in order to pass all the West Point men, before making my dash for a certain touchdown, it struck Bucky Vail that I was right, and he yelled out at the top of his voice. 'The ball is not dead. It is free.' Whereupon the West Point men started after me. An Army man tackled me on their 25-yard line, after I had taken the ball down the field for nearly a touchdown. I have often turned over in my bed at night since that time, cursing the action of Referee Vail. If he had not interfered with my play I would have walked down the field for a touchdown and victory for Yale. The final score remained 6 to 6.
"I have often thought of the painful hours I would have suffered had I missed the two open field chances in the disastrous game at Cambridge in the fall of 1902, when Yale was beaten 23 to 0. On two different occasions in that game a Harvard runner with interference had passed the whole Yale team. I was the only Yale man between the Harvard man and a touchdown. The supreme satisfaction I had in nailing both of those runners is one of the most pleasant recollections of my football career.
"When I was a little shaver, back in 1889, I lived at South Bethlehem, Pa. Paul Dashiell and Mathew McClung, who were then playing football at Lehigh University, took an interest in me. Paul Dashiell took me to the first football game I ever saw. Dibby McClung gave me one of the old practice balls of the Lehigh team. This was the first football I ever had in my hands. For weeks afterwards that football was my nightly companion in bed. These two Lehigh stars have always been my football heroes, and it was a happy day for me when I played quarterback on the Yale team and these two men acted as officials that day."
