"I played football in my prep. school days," he says, "and on the 'Varsity teams of the University of Pennsylvania in the years '82-'83-'84. After graduation, following a sort of nominating mass meeting of the students, I was elected to the football committee of the University, about 1886, and served as chairman of that committee until 1901; retiring that season when George Woodruff, after a term of ten years, terminated his relationship as coach of our team.
"I also served, as you know, as a representative of the University on the Football Rules Committee from about 1886 until the time I was appointed Attorney General in 1911.
"More pleasant associations and relationships I have never had than those with my fellow-members of that Committee in the late '80's and the '90's, including Camp of Yale; Billy Brooks, Bert Waters, Bob Wrenn and Percy Haughton of Harvard; Paul Dashiell of Annapolis; Tracy Harris, Alex Moffat and John Fine of Princeton; and Professor Dennis of Cornell. Later the Committee, as you know, was enlarged by the admission of representatives from the West; and among them were Alonzo Stagg, of Chicago University, and Harry Williams of Minnesota. Finer fellows I have never known; they were one and all Nature's noblemen.
"Some of them, alas! like Alex Moffat, have gone to the Great Beyond. Representing rival universities, between whose student bodies and some of whose alumni, partisan feeling ran high in the '90's, nothing, however, save good fellowship and good cheer ever existed between Alex and me.
"I am genuinely glad that I played the game with my team-mates; witnessed for many years nearly all the big games of the eastern colleges; mingled season after season with the players and the enthusiastic alumni of the competing universities in attendance at the annual matches; sat and deliberated each recurring year, as I have said, with those fine fellows who made and amended the rules, and in this way helped to develop the game, the manliest of all our sports; and that I have thus breathed, recreated and been invigorated in a football atmosphere every autumn for more than a third of a century. Growing older every year, one still remains young—as young in heart and spirit as when he donned the moleskins, and caught and kicked and carried the ball himself. And all these football experiences make one a happier, stronger and more loyal man.
"I remember in my prep. school days playing upon a team made up largely of high school boys. One game stands out in my recollection. It was against the Freshmen team of the University of Pennsylvania, captained by Johnny Thayer who went down with the Titanic.
"Arriving after the game had started, I came out to the side-lines and called to the captain asking whether I was to play. He glowered at me and made no answer. A few minutes later our 'second captain' called to me to come into the game, saying that Smith was only to play until I arrived. Quick as a flash I stepped into the field of play, and almost instantly Thayer kicked the ball over the rush line and it came bounding down right into my arm. Off I went like a flash through the line, past the backs and fullbacks, only to be over-taken within a few yards of the goal. The teams lined up, and thereupon Thayer, with his eagle eye looking us over, called out to our captain 'how many fellows are you playing anyway?' Instantly our captain ordered Smith off the field saying 'you were only to play until Bell came,' and poor Smith left without any audible murmur. This is what might be called one of the accidents of the game.
"Perhaps the most memorable game in which I played was against Harvard in 1884 when Pennsylvania won upon Forbes Field by the score of 4 to 0. It was our first victory over the Crimson, not to be repeated again until the memorable game of 1894, which triumph was again repeated, after still another decade, in our great victory of 1904. This last victory came after five years of continuing defeats, and I remember that we were all jubilant when we heard the news from Cambridge. I recall that Dr. J. William White, C. S. Packard and I were playing golf at the Country Club and when some one brought out the score to us we dropped our clubs, clasped hands and executed an Indian dance, shouting "Rah! rah! rah! Pennsylvania!" Why, old staid philosopher, should the leading surgeon of the city, the president of its oldest and largest trust company, and the district attorney of Philadelphia, thus jump for joy and become boys once more?
"Recurring to the game of 1884 I can hear the cheers of the University still ringing in my ears when we returned from Harvard. A few weeks later our team went up to Princeton to see the Harvard-Princeton match and I recall, as though it were yesterday, Alex Moffat kicking five goals against Appleton's team, three of them with the right and two with the left foot. No other player I ever knew or heard of was so ambipedextrous (if I may use the word) as Alex Moffat. I remember walking in from the field with Harvard's captain, and he said to me 'Moffat is a phenomenon.' Truly he was."