John Harding was another of the famous old Yale stars who played on Walter Camp's team.
"It is now more than thirty-five years since my days on the football gridiron," writes Harding. "What little elementary training I got in football, I attribute to the old game of 'theory,' which for two years on spring and summer evenings, after supper, we used to play at St. Paul's School in Concord, N. H., on the athletic grounds near the Middle School. One fellow would be 'it' as we dashed from one side of the grounds to the other and when one was trapped he joined the 'its,' until everybody was caught. I learned there how to dodge, as well as the rudiments of the necessary football accomplishment of how to fall down without getting hurt. As a result of this experience, with my chum, W. A. Peters, when we got down to Yale in the fall of '76, we offered ourselves as willing victims for the University football team, and with the result that we both 'made' the freshman team, and had our first experience in a match game of football against the Harvard freshman at Boston. I don't remember who won that contest, but I do remember the University eleven, under Eugene Baker's careful training, beating Harvard that fall at New Haven and my football enthusiasm being fired up to a desire to make the team, if it were possible.
"Of course, Walter Camp has for many years, and deservedly so, been regarded as the father of football at Yale, but in my day, and at least until Baker left college, he was only an ordinary mortal and a good halfback. Baker was the unquestioned star and I cannot disabuse my mind that he was the original football man of Yale, and at least entitled to the title of 'grandfather' of the game there and it was from him that my tuition mainly came.
"My impression is that Baker was always for the open running and passing game and that mass playing and flying wedges and the various refinements of the game that depended largely on 'beef' were of a later day.
"For four years I played in the rush line with Walter Camp as a halfback, and for two years, at least, with Hull and Ben Lamb on either side of me, all of us somehow understanding each other's game and all being ready and willing to help each other out. Whatever ability and dexterity I may have developed seemed to show itself at its best when playing with them and to prove that good team work and 'knowing your man' wins.
"I got to know Walter Camp's methods and ways of playing, so that, somehow or other, I could judge pretty well where the ball was going to drop when he kicked and could navigate myself about so that I was, more often than any one else on our side, near the ball when it dropped to the ground, and, if perchance, it happened to be muffed by an opposing player, which put me 'on side,' the chances of a touchdown, if I got the ball, were excellent, and Hull and Lamb were somehow on hand to back me up and were ready to follow me in any direction.
"During my last two years of football the 'rushers' were unanimously of the opinion that the kicking, dodging and passing open game was the game we should strive for and that it was the duty of the halfback and backs to end their runs with a good long punt, wherever possible, and give us a chance to get under the ball when it came down, while the rest of the team behind the line were in favor of a running mass play game, particularly in wet and slippery weather.
"I remember once in my senior year our divergence of views on this question, about three weeks before the final game, nearly split our team, and that as a result I nearly received the doubtful honor of becoming the captain of a defeated Yale team. Camp, fearful of wet weather and possible snow at the Thanksgiving game, and with Channing, Eaton and Fred Remington as the heavy Yale ends and everybody 'big' in the rush line excepting myself, was trying to develop us with as little kicking as possible, and was sensitive because of the protests from the rush line that there was no kicking. We were all summoned one evening to his room in Durfee; the situation explained, together with his unwillingness to assume the responsibility of captain unless his ideas were followed; his fear of defeat, if they were not followed, his willingness to continue on the team as a halfback and to do his best and his resignation as captain with the suggestion of my taking the responsibility of the position. Things looked blue for Yale when Walter walked out of the door, but after some ten minutes' discussion we decided that the open game was the better, despite Camp's opinion to the contrary, but that we could not play the open game without Camp as captain. Some one was sent out to bring Walter back; matters were smoothed out; we played the open game and never lost a touchdown during the season. But during the four years I was on the Yale varsity we never lost but one touchdown, from which a goal was kicked and there were no goals kicked from the field. This goal was lost to Princeton, and I think was in the fall of '78, the year that Princeton won the championship. The two men that were more than anybody else responsible for the record were Eugene Baker and Walter Camp, but behind it all was the old Yale spirit, which seems to show itself better on the football field than in any other branch of athletics."
Theodore M. McNair