Football Days / Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball

by William H. Edwards

Val Flood, once a trainer at Princeton, recalls a game at New Haven, when Princeton was playing Yale:

"Frank Bergen was quarterback," he says. "I saw he was not going right, and surprised the coaches by asking them to make a change. They asked me to wait. In a few minutes I went to them again, with the same result. I came back a third time, and insisted that he be taken out. A substitute was put in. I will never forget Bergen's face when he burst into tears and asked me who was responsible for his being taken out. I told him I was. It almost broke his heart, for he had always regarded me as a friend. I knew how much he wanted to play the game out. He lived in New Haven. When the doctor examined him, it was found that he had three broken ribs. There was great danger of one of them piercing his lungs had he continued in the game. Of course, there are lots of boys that are willing to do such things for their Alma Mater, but the gamest of all is the man who, with a broken neck to start with, went out and put in four years of college football. I refer to Eddie Hart, who was not only the gamest, but one of the strongest, quickest, cleanest men that ever played the game, and any one who knows Eddie Hart and those who have seen him play, know that he never saved himself but played the game for all it was worth. He was the life and spirit of every team he ever played on at Exeter or Princeton."

Ed Wylie, an enthusiastic Hill School Alumnus, football player at Hill and Yale, tells the following anecdote:

"The nerviest thing I ever saw in a football game was in the Hill-Hotchkiss 0 to 0 game in 1904. At the start of the second half, Arthur Cable, who was Hill's quarterback, broke his collar-bone. He concealed the fact and until the end of the game, no one knew how badly he was hurt. He was in every play, and never had time called but once. He caught a couple of punts with his one good arm and every other punt he attempted to catch and muffed he saved the ball from the other side by falling on it. In the same game, a peculiar thing happened to me. I tackled Ted Coy about fifteen minutes before the end of the game, and until I awoke hours later, lying in a drawing-room car, pulling into the Grand Central Station, my mind was a blank. Yet I am told the last fifteen minutes of the game I played well, especially when our line was going to pieces. I made several gains on the offensive, never missed a signal and punted two or three times when close to our goal line."

No less noteworthy is the spirit of a University of Pennsylvania player, who was handicapped during his gridiron career with Penn' by many severe injuries. This man had worked as hard as any one possibly could to make the varsity for three years. His last year was no different from previous seasons; injuries always worked against him. In his final year he had broken his leg early in the season. A short time before the Cornell game he appeared upon the field in football togs, full of spirit and determined to get in the game if they needed him. This was his last chance to play on the Penn' team.

I was an official in that game. Near its close I saw him warming up on the side line. His knee was done up in a plaster cast. He could do nothing better than hobble along the side lines, but in the closing moments when Penn' had the game well in hand, a mighty shout went up from the side lines, as that gallant fellow, who had been handicapped all during his football career, rushed out upon the field to take his place as the defensive halfback. Cornell had the ball, and they were making a tremendous effort to score. The Cornell captain, not knowing of this man's physical condition, sent a play in his direction. The interference of the big red team crashed successfully around the Penn' end and there was left only this plucky, though handicapped player, between the Cornell runner and a touchdown.

Putting aside all personal thought, he rushed in and made a wonderful tackle. Then this hero was carried off the field, and with him the tradition of one who was willing to sacrifice himself for the sport he loved.

Andy Smith, a former University of Pennsylvania player, was a man who was game through and through. He seemed to play better in a severe game, when the odds were against him. Smith had formerly been at Pennsylvania State College. In a game between Penn' State and Dartmouth, Fred Crolius, of Dartmouth, says of Smith:

"Andy Smith was one of the gamest men I ever played against. This big, determined, husky offensive fullback and defensive end, when he wasn't butting his head into our impregnable line, was smashing an interference that nearly killed him in every other play. Battered and bruised he kept coming on, and to every one's surprise he lasted the entire game. Years afterward he showed me the scars on his head, where the wounds had healed, with the naïve remark: 'Some team you fellows had that year, Fred.' Some team was right. And we all remember Andy and his own individual greatness."

There is no finer, unselfish spirit brought out in football, than that evidenced in the following story, told by Shep Homans, an old time Princeton fullback: