A football victory to many men is as dearly longed for as any goal of ambition in life. How else would they strive so fiercely, one side to take the ball over, the other to prevent them doing so!
Very few of the public hear the exhortation and cursing as the ball slowly but irresistibly is rushed to the goal of the opponent.
"Billy, if you do that again I'll cut your heart out!"
"Yale, if you ever held, hold now!"
How the calls to victory come back!
As Hughes says in Tom Brown's School Days, a scrimmage in front of the goal posts, or the Consulship of Plancus, is no child's play.
My earliest Princeton football hero was Alex Moffat '84. My brother Johnson was in his class and played on the same team, and would often talk of him to my brothers and to me. He used to give us a sort of
"Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, etc."
Though my brother is a small man, I thought all other Princeton players must be 9 cubits and a half, or as a reporter once said of Symmes '92, center rush in Princeton team of '90 and '91, "An animated whale, broad as the moral law and heavy as the hand of fate." I consider Alex Moffat the greatest goal kicker college football has produced. One football in the Princeton Trophy room has on it, "Princeton 26, Harvard 7." In that game Moffat kicked five goals from the field, three with his right and two with his left foot, besides the goals from the touchdowns.