Page:The fighting scrub, (IA fightingscrub00barb).pdf/149

 course other fellows had thought of the same thing, or something like it. You can't invent a new football play very often; a radically new one, I mean. The best you can do is work out some better way of making an old one. Now and then, though, they change the rules a bit and you get a new line of thought. This year the forward-pass offers a chap the best chance for hitting on new stuff. There's one play there—just let me see it a minute, will you? Yes, here it is. I'd like to see that tried some time. It's a fake run around the short side with the ball going from fullback to end, who has come around behind, and then on a forward-pass over the long side to the other end. And here's another one that I really think could be worked nicely under the proper conditions."

Clif had pulled his chair beside Loring's. His praise of the diagrams had been genuine, but his admiration was rather for the skill shown in their drawing than for their practical value, for the science of football strategy had never engaged his interest. Loring turned the sheets forward until he came to the one he sought. "Now, this, you see, is a scoring play, pure and simple. It depends first of all on a quarterback who can carry the ball and is fast."

Clif nodded, leaning over to stare fascinatedly at the red and black circles and squares, the straight lines and curved lines and dotted lines, the letters and figures and arrow-heads. He was beginning at last to translate the symbols into panting, crouching players and follow in imagination the flight of the ball along its wavy