Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/744

722 writers, who inveigh against it either because they know nothing of it, or because they have determined to know nothing of it, since it does not square with their "historic and traditional idea" of things suitable to a college. Lastly, I wish to suggest lines along which measures for the improvement of the game should be taken, and also to advocate some measures for the better supervision of the sport.

It will surprise many good people, who have been accustomed to hear such an epithet as "brutal" applied to the game of football, that I should claim for it as the first point of superiority over other college athletic sports that it is eminently an intellectual game. A game of football between contestants evenly matched in other respects is won by the superior mental work of the winning team as embodied in the generalship of the captain and the thoughtful work of his men. The game is not simply a struggle for mastery of one body of strong men over another, but it is a contest for supremacy, in which supremacy is gained not by physical strength alone, but by this strength rightly directed by mind.

In the first place, the rules of the game must be observed by every player. He must conform his play to them. He must have them thoroughly in mind, in order to know what he can do, as well as to avoid what he is not permitted to do. These rules are very numerous—more numerous, I believe, than the rules of any other college sport, and cover a wider sphere of action. The interpretation and application of them in every moment of play call for no ordinary quickness of mind in a successful player.

Though each man has a special line of play belonging to his position on a team, yet his play is so related to the plays of the rest of the team that he can not act without regard to the other players. It is eminently a game of combinations. Individual play is important, but team play is more important. The signals of the captain must be heeded by all the players, even if they seem to be given for only two or three men. Through weeks of preparation these signals have to be studied, to be memorized, to be practiced as thoroughly and faithfully by the men as the laws of any science by successful scholars.

The only other college game which is to be compared with it in respect of team play is the game of baseball. Yet in this game the players have fixed positions. Though the men in these positions play in combination with each other, they are remote from one another, and do not at any time join together to make a particular play effective, as the players of a football team move to a common goal. Though team play is important, it is not as important as in football, while individual play, as, for instance, that of pitcher or catcher, is more important. In rowing, the work.