"When I think about the 11 to 10 game at New Haven, which Princeton won," said Sharpe the last time I saw him, "I remember that after I had kicked a goal from the field and the score was 10 to 6, Skim Brown rushed up to me, and nearly took me off my feet with one of his friendly slaps across my back. Well do I remember the joy of that great Yale player at this stage of the game. Later, when Poe made his kick and I saw that the ball was going over the bar, I remember that the thing I wished most was that I could have been up in the line where I might have had a chance to block the kick.
"My recollections of making the Yale team centered chiefly around three facts, none of which I was allowed to forget. First, that I was not any good, second that I couldn't tackle, and third that I ran like an ice-wagon. Since then I have seen so many really good players upon my different squads that I must admit the truth of the above statement, although at the time I am frank to say I took exception to it. Such is the optimism of youth."
Jack Munn, a former Princeton halfback, tells the following story:
"My brother, Edward Munn, was the manager of the Princeton team in 1893. In the spring of that year there was a conference with Yale representatives to decide where the game was to be played the following fall. Berkeley Oval, Brooklyn, Manhattan Field, and the respective fields of the two colleges all came under discussion, and I believe that some of the newspapers must have taken it up. One afternoon in the Murray Hill Hotel, when representatives of Yale and Princeton were discussing the various possibilities, a bellboy knocked at the door and handed my brother an elaborately engraved card on which, among various decorations, the name of Colonel Cody was to be distinguished. Buffalo Bill was invited to come up, and it seems that, reading or hearing of the discussion about the field for the game, he came to make a formal offer of the use of his tent. After setting forth the desirability of staging the game under the auspices of his Wild West Show, he brought his offer to a close with his trump card.
"'For, gentlemen,' said he, 'besides all the other advantages which I have mentioned, there is this further attraction—my tent is well and sufficiently lighted so that you can not only hold a matinee, but you can give an evening performance as well.'
"And those were the days of the flying wedge and two forty-five minute halves with only ten minutes intermission!"
Walter C. Booth
Walter C. Booth, a former Princeton center rush, was one of the select coterie of Eastern football men that wended its way westward to carry the eastern system into institutions that had had no opportunity to build up the game, yet were hungry for real football. Booth's trip was a successful one.
"In the autumn of 1900, after graduating from college, I arrived at Lincoln, Nebraska, in the dual rôle of law student and football coach of the State University," says Booth. "This was my first trip west of Pittsburgh and I viewed my new duties with some apprehension. All doubts and fears were soon put at rest by the hearty encouragement and support that I received and retained in my Nebraska football relations.
"Most of the Faculty were behind football, and H. Benjamin Andrews, at that time head of the University, was a staunch supporter of the game. Doctor Roscoe Pound, later dean of Harvard Law School, was the father of Nebraska football. He had as intimate an acquaintance with the rule book as any official I have ever known. His advice on knotty problems was always valuable. James I. Wyer, afterward State Librarian of New York, was our first financial director, and it was largely by reason of his unflagging zeal that football survived.