Former U. S. Attorney-General William H. Lewis, who is one of the leading representatives of the colored race, needs no introduction to the football world, says Kersburg. 'Bill,' or 'Lew,' as he is familiarly known to all Harvard men, laid the foundation for the present system of line play at Cambridge. He was actively engaged in coaching until 1907 when he was obliged to give it up due to pressure of business.
"In 1905 'Hooks' Burr and I played the guard positions. 'Lew' seemed to center his attention on us as we always received more 'calls' after each game than the other linemen for doing this, that, or the other thing wrong. In the Brown game of this year Hooks played against a colored man who was exceptionally good and who, Hooks admitted afterward, 'put it all over' him. The Monday following this game we received our usual 'call.' After telling me what a rotten game I had played he turned on Burr and remarked. 'What the devil was the matter with you on Saturday, Hooks? That guard on the Brown team "smeared" you.' Burr replied, 'I don't know what was the matter with me. I used my hands on that nigger's head and body all through the game but it didn't seem to do any good.' Several of us who were listening felt a bit embarrassed that Hooks had unwittingly made this remark. The tension was relieved, however, when Lew drawled out, 'Why the devil didn't you kick him in the shins?' A burst of laughter greeted this sally."
Donald Grant Herring, better known to football men in and out of Princeton as Heff, is one of the few American players of international experience. After a period of splendid play for the Tigers he went to England with a Rhodes Scholarship. At Merton College he continued his athletic career, and it was not long before he became a member of one of the most famous Rugby fifteens ever turned out by Oxford.
Heff has always said that he enjoyed the English game, but whether the brand he played was American or English, his opponent usually got little enjoyment out of a hard afternoon with this fine Princeton athlete.
"In the late summer of 1903, I was on a train coming east from Montana," Heff tells me, "after a summer spent in the Rockies. A companion recognized among the passengers Doc Hillebrand, who was coming East from his ranch to coach the Princeton team. This companion who was still a Lawrenceville schoolboy, had the nerve to brace Hillebrand and tell him in my presence that I was going to enter Princeton that fall and that I was a star football player. You can imagine what Doc thought, and how I felt. However, Doc was kind enough to tell me to report for practice and to recognize me when I appeared on the field several weeks later. I soon drifted over to the freshman field and I want to admit here what caused me to do so. It was nothing more nor less than the size of Jim Cooney's legs. Jim was a classmate of mine whom I first saw on the football field when he and another tackle candidate were engaged in that delicate pastime known to linemen as breaking through. I realized at once that, if Jim and I were ever put up against one another, I would stand about as much chance of shoving him back as I would if I tried to push a steam roller. So I went over to the freshman field, where Howard Henry was coaching at the time. He was sending ends down the field and I remember being thrilled, after beating a certain bunch of them, at hearing him say: 'You in the brown jersey, come over here in the first squad.'
"DeWitt's team beat Cornell 44-0. For years there hung on the walls of the Osborn Club at Princeton a splendid action picture of Dana Kafer making one of the touchdowns in that game. It was a mass on tackle play, and Jim Cooney was getting his Cornell opponent out of the way for Kafer to go over the line. The picture gave Jim dead away. He had a firm grip of the Cornell man's jersey and arm. Ten years or more afterward, a group, including Cooney, was sitting in the Osborn Club. In a spirit of fun one man said, 'Jim, we know now how you got your reputation as a tackle. We can see it right up there on the wall.' The next day the picture was gone.
"After I was graduated from Princeton in 1907 I went to Merton College, Oxford. There are twenty-two different colleges in Oxford and eighteen in Cambridge. Each one has its own teams and crews and plays a regular schedule. From the best of these college teams the university teams are drawn. Each college team has a captain and a secretary, who acts as manager. At the beginning of the college year (early October) the captain and secretary of each team go around among the freshmen of the college and try to get as many of them as possible to play their particular sport; mine Rugby football. After a few days the captain posts on the college bulletin board, which is always placed at the Porter's Lodge, a notice that a squash will be held on the college field. A squash is what we would call practice.
"Sometimes for a few days before the game an Old Blue may come down to Oxford and give a little coaching to the team. Here often the captain does all the coaching. The Cambridge match is for blood, and, while friendly enough, is likely to be much more savage than any other. In the match I played in, which Oxford won 35-3, the record score in the whole series, which started in 1872, we had three men severely injured. In the first three minutes of the game one of our star backs was carried off the field with a broken shoulder, while our captain was kicked in the head and did not come out of his daze until about seven o'clock that evening. He played throughout the game, however. Our secretary was off the field with a knee cap out of place for more than half the game. A game of Rugby, by the way, consists of two 45-minute halves, with a three minute intermission. There are no substitutes, and if a man is injured, his team plays one man short. We beat Cambridge that year with thirteen men the greater part of the game, twelve for some time against their full team of fifteen. Their only try (touchdown in plain American) was scored when we had twelve men on the field. We were champions of England that year, and did not lose a match through the fall season, though we tied one game with the great Harlequins Club of London, whom we afterward beat in the return game. Of the fine fellows who made up that great Oxford team, six are dead, five of them 'somewhere in France.'"
Carl Flanders was a big factor in the Yale rush line. Foster Sanford considers him one of the greatest offensive centers that ever played. He was six feet three and one-fourth inches tall and weighed 202 pounds.