- By Gregg McBride

It’s all over but the shouting in
the Big Six basket ball race.

- When Kansas outshot Nebraska
in a 55-53 thriller at Lincoln Sat-
urday night, the Jayhawkers as-
sured themselves af a or of the!
championship. |
¥ Phog Allen’s boys now need to
win. over Iowa State or Oklahoma
and unless the Cyclones and Soon-
ers improve K. U. will take ’em
both.

Iowa State had to break a 31-31
tie in the closing minutes to get
past Kansas State, 36-33. Okla-
homa, only conference team to
trim the Jayhawkers, floundered
at Missouri, 42-61.

Held Matches K. U. Ace

With 24 points against Nebraska,
Howard Engleman, Kansas, boost-
ed his total to 153 points for eight
games. Sid Held, who matched the
Kansan’s performance, shot into
second with 97 for 10 games.
Leaders:

Engleman, Kansas . 8
Held, Nebraska -...10
Nicholson, Iowa St.. 9 34

G. a Oa teas
aS 4

Kansas .oces 31
22
10
15
26
Ve
16
19
10
i
Howe, Kansas St. .10 a?

Held Tops Huskers

| Held’s scoring also put him
|}ahead of Don Fitz in een

scoring. Finish:
Ce F.G. F.T. P. F. Pts.
Sid Held seereseeeeed8 33°— 22) 7168
all it 2 86
John Fitzgibbon. eee 66
John Thompson ....18 ae

Tivlev Kane tah xcs
Ted Greene sreseece aD

Les’ Lunch cagers
Council Bluffs C. Y. O. team at St. |
Francis; 40-23. Rosenbaum led tho
Omahans. |

 
February 1, 1941

Mre Me Rs Zichler
Publicity Director
Friday, Ince

114 Last $2 Street
New York, Ns Ye

Desr Ure Eichler:

I acknowledge with thanks the tear sheet from your
magezine, Friday, which wes directed to the Athletic Association,
Kanses University, Lawrence, Kansas.

Your article, "¥Yenkiller® by Foward Cann is excellent.

- Certainly the high emotional strain and the exhaustive
physical strain on a growing boy at the age of puberty is too much
for him when we ellow him to pley the game of basketball as it is
now writtene There should be some restraint or 2 slowing up of the
game periodicelly so this undeveloped boy can recuperate curing
these necessary times.

: With no thought ef replacing this present day geme of
besketbell, but rather as « lead-up game to basketball, we heve
originated e game that hes €11 the bevefits without ony of its
detriments for youth

Goal shooting, bail handling, offensive and defensive
pley 611 have their freost ceveloprent in this new game-~Coal-Hi.

I eam sending you a set of rules, together with some snap~
shots that will give you a very comprehensive idea of the possibilities
of this game. After you heve looked them over, I will be gled to
heve you or your experts poses judgment on the seme and write més

Very cordially yours,

Director of Physical Fducstion and “ecreation
Varsity Basketball Cosch

 
February 12, 1942

Mre MeSe Stewart
Esquire
919 Ne Michigan Avenue
Chicago, Tllinois

Dear Mre Stewart:

; I have read your article, "Wyhew at the Box Office",
and I think it is an excellent article, bringing out the very potent
dangers of this fire engine, pellemell, fundamental destroying, hurricane
shuttling back and forth, up and down the floor games Not only fundamental
destroying but energy and health destroyinge

In your article you tell of the research of Paul Je Fay
and Lloyd Le Messerschmidt of De Pauw University, Greencastle, Indiam,
who put the pedaneter on the boys to determine the distance traveled during
a game. Yos, they do travel quite a bit further under the present rules
of the game, but the big point has not been brought outs namely, that when
@ smaller team in stature and in weight meets a larger team, as is most usually
the case, the boys are worn to a frazzle endeavoring to get the ball off
of one or the other hackboards from one of those mezzanine}peeping coonte

You will renember that the advocates of the elimination of
the center jump: Sam Barry, Pinky lambert, John Bunn, Harold Olsen, L.We
St. John, and a host of others, said, “Eliminate the center jump and you will
- @liminate tall fellow who can do nothing but go to the center and tip the
ball over the shorter fellows’ headse 2

: In my text, Better Basketball, I have a chart showing the
tall players in the United States. These players have been increasing in |
height consistently for over a period of twenty-five years. It would be
well for sane physicists to figure out how many pounds of energy it takes
for & 6* man to outejunp a 6'5" man, and it is not the jumping in the air
that hurts a fellowes

Basketball is a game of contact under each basket. Theo=
retically, they say basketball is a nonecontact game, but when players are
jumping for the ball there is cmtacte However, the saving grace of thie
geme is that the players play the ball, but everytime they jump, even th
they play the ball, they are cautioned to protect themselves. Even this
skill, so highly developed, has a wearing down process on the shorter fellowes

No team is beaten in the center of the court at the Lipeoff.
The teams are beaten on the rebounds under the offensive or the defensive
baskets Any team that wins consistently must have at least two tall mene

 
Page Two : Febe 12, 1942

If the team does not have extraesized men, combined with speedy floor covering
fellows, then the players are forced to fight their hearts out in this fast,
breikenesk, speedy gamee |

Pardon the personal reference, but in our own Conference
a fellow can use the best examples The University of Nebraska has two guards,
Don Fits, 614", Sidney Held, 6°4", their center, Al Randall is 6*7", and then
they have a great croup of sizeable fellows, ‘practically all of them 6* or more
in height. Nebraska uses a few short fellows for speed occasionally, but when
the power is turned on these big boys do their stuff. You can easily see that
& Kansas team with Howard Englemen, 643" tall, 157 pounds; Bob Allen, 6" tall,
157 poundss John Kline, 6'2" tall, 190 pounds; Marvin Sollenberger, 6* tall,
175 poundss and Vance Hall, 6* tall, 170 pounds; or TePe Hunter, 615" tall,
155 pounds (this is our regular line-up) is easily outweighed by Nebrasia
by fifteen pounds to the mans Now height plus weight kills the opponent when
the boys run their hearts out in the breakeneck game, and then they are forced
to obtain the rebounds off the backboards This is the point that the advocates
of the madcap, pell mell, hell bent for election jausters fail to take into
accounte

: I em only talking about college athletics, Should you go down
into a high school, or a junior high school, then more disastrous results
are shown because the emotional instability of these youngsters is much more
pronounced.

Back to our BigeSix Conferences Oklahoma has Hugh Ford, 616",
185 poundss guards, Paul Heap, 6'4" and Allie Paine, 6's the other Oklahana
boys are 612", 611", etce Now to Iown State, Iowe State has a big fellow
transferred from Purdue, Gordon Nicholas, 6*3", 185 pounds and Carol Schneider, —
66", 195 poundse Kansas State at Manhattan has Danny Howe, 61"; Larry :
Beaumont, 695"3 and Tom Guy, 69S", All the boys range about 693® and weigh
from 190 to 195 pounds. Beaumont is 26 years of age and the Aggie team averages
about 255 yearse , :

3 When a team in a conference is forced to play against those
types of fellows when you have no men of height and power to match them, then
the heart train is double. I believe the best illustration T can give is
regarding the automobile in its speed differential, Any physicist can tell
you that the car will burn nearly twise as much gasoline running at 70 miles
an hour than it will burn at 40 miles an houre And so, overcoming this
, ge 0 a against taller and more powerful opposition, the heart strain
is double. hy

: It is not merely running on the floor as indicated by the

pedometer that kills the boys, it is not merely being in action, but it is
being in action against this powerful heighte If the basket were raised
twelve feet than the archof dispersement would be greater, the ball would bound
further away from the basket and this tall, mezzanineepeeping goon could not
block out the other fellows and with his fingers a few inches from the hoop,
push the ball into the basket, or hold it above his head, or barely dunk it into
the hoops 3

 
Page 8 . Febe 12, 1942

: If the basket were 12 feet high the player would have to
shoot the ball two fect higher than he is forced to do at present, and this
_ would cause the big husky defensive man to play further back away from the
basket in order to get the ardiof reboumd from a shote This would remove
a few feet from his present blockingeout position, By the same token, if a
high arch shot would miss the basket and fall short, then this big fellow
being removed from the basket a short distance, would give an opportumity
for the speedier, shorter men to cut in and retrieve this falling shot that
would light inside the playing field, before the powerful yet slower man
could get to a vantage pointe

ss the fact that the end line is four feet back of the basket
would further give the shorter man an opportunity to retireve and to place
the ball quickly back into scoring territorye All of this would be an
advantage for the shorter man and an equalizer for the exceptionally tall
fellow who can reach over and dunk the ball into the basket.

You accommodate the muscles of your eyes to height the same
@S you accommodate your eyes to distance. Whena player shoots the ball
for the basket when he is fifteen feet out he naturally guages the distance
and shoots with a certain arching of the belle When he is twenty-five feet
out he arches higher and takes into account the distance he is to shoot,
The fact that he would shoot at a twelveefoot basket instead of a tenefoot
he would naturally accaumodate his eyes to height the same as he doses to
distance and arch the ball highere ‘The shorter man than would be handicapped

the less by this changes

| Again, 80% of the fouls are called on men driving in,
endeavoring to shoct for a layup or a close shote By having the basket
higher you would do away with these layeups and rive in and it would be
more advantageous not to be wider the basket, but out a piece so the bank
shots and the arch shots would hit more accurately, ‘therefore, it would
clear up the congestion that now exists under the basket. By reducing
‘the number of fouls it necessarily would improve the ball handling and
therefore improve the games | |

A field goal could cowmt three points, and one point could
be given for a free throw, which is about the proper ratiog The fact that
two free throws are given for so many shots that are attempted near the basket
when the player is fouled is hardly the right balances Many clever players
"draw" fouls from their opponents merely to get the two wmeuarded shots from
the free throw lines

: Back to the BigeSix Conferences ‘The University of Missourt
for the first time in a great many years, does not have a pleyer taller than
62" and she has not won a single game in the Conferences She has lost five
and won mones Last year she had Blain Currence, a great end in football and
a fine basketball player, who was 6'5" tall. She also had Haskell Tison, a
center, 6172" ta11 and Missouri finished im a tie with Oklahoma dma Kansas for
the BigeSim Chempionship, This year without these two players Missouri is
in the cellar positions I am giving you the present standing of the BigeSix
Conferences . Mees

 
Pago 4 Febe 12, 1942

Oklahoma.

. Nebraske
Iowa State
Kansas State

8
3
4
Mis sour’. 5

Our boys are badly outweighed at the present time playing
against these terrific odds» We did not practice much Monday and Tuesday, today,
we will not practice at all, In the waning months of a strenuous season the
coach must conserve tho strength of the boys and if he practices then hard
they will not have the strength te go throughs Therefore, we use our men
very sparingly, and further than that we give them vitamins and glycogen, and
betulin regularly, and for an energy producer we give them dextrine So you
see we would not be able to exist unless we very carefully watched the
intake ‘of energy as well as the output, and even then it is not possible to
balance the two because we are putting out more energy by the tear~down
method than we have been able to conserve by the special feeding processe

Perhaps this will serve of some interest to youe last year
we played the Miversity of Oklahoma et Norman to finish our BigeSix season —
on March 3 Then on Merch I we had a threowwmy tie playeoff between :
Missouri, (Oklahoma and Mansass In the drawing we drewa byes Oklahoma
with big, powerful, ranging men and Missouri with excessively tall men
in the linseup played the first game and Oklahoma wone Then on Merch 12
we played Okinhom. at Wichita and defeated then by 59 to 45— Since our
NeCeAshe Pifth District has two conferences, and since Oklahoma Ae and Me
won their Conference championship and we were declared the winner of
ours, the playeoff to determine the Fifth District Representative was

played between Oklahoma Ae and Me and Kansas at Oklehome. Citye Kansas won
by a 45 to 435 scores — |

7 «Om the 22nd and 25rd of Merch the Western District NeCeAeAs Chompione
ship was played in the Kansas City Municipal Auditorium between Southern

California, representing the Eighth District; the University of Colorado,

representing the Seventh Mstricts Rice institute, representing the Sixth

Districts and Kansas, representing the Fifth Districts Kansas defeated Rice

by @ score of 50 to 44 and Southern California defeated Colorado by @ score

of 38 to 32. The next night Kansas defeated Southern California 43 to 42

and Rice defeated Colorado 60 to 56. ‘then on March 80 Indiana and Kansas

played, indiana winning by 60 to 42, | :

. This is the payeetf; To conserve our player's strength who were
short end iumature, Kansas did not appear on the floor for practice but twice
from the time of the last University of Oklahana game until the Indiana game,

 
We continued to give the boys vitamins and told them to go to school
and forget basketballe We figured that they had learned fundamentals
during the regular playing season and we could better afford to give

_. them a rest and take a chance on their lmowing the play situations rather

then to slowly fatigue them in a short workeout for a post-season games

The fact that we only practiced twice in that nearly threeeweeks time,
shows we realized our boys were worn to shrewds end we desired to conserve
their health rather than to even win @ championship at their expenses

| I was a member of the Rules Committee when the elimination of
the center jump was mide @ rules I opposed it but wher the majority of
the Rules Committee were for it I ws not militant and seid that perhaps
basketball without the center jump would retain enough of its attractions
to mke it a fine and interesting pames

Runing, jumping, leaping, vaulting and climbing are the fundae
mental activities of mane We still jump for the ball on held balls, and
there is no possible way of equalizing the height when two men come in
contact with a held ball. By rotating the jumping process, as in the batting
order in baseball, each ecach would have a chance to list his jumping
order just the same as you list your batting order, for strength and strategye
It would be a very simple matter in the edministration of the game to handle
the jumping order from the scorer's benche If any player jumped out of
order he would suffer the same type of penalty as the batter who bats out of
order in basebelle We would have no trouble theres

I maintain that when they eliminated the eenter jump all they
did was to add another outeofebounds play without giving the players an
opportunity to sain their physical breath and also they do not allow the
spectators to gain their mental or emotional equilibrium or breaths
The game is entirely too exéiting for the spectators at the present times
We could still retain all the fine qualities of the game and not injure
our players merely on the pretext that it is e boxoffice attraction and the
public likes ite The public has liked it with the center jump, and with
any modification of the center jump it still would be a fine games

Certainly a better rule than the one now in force would be to give
the ball at the division line to the side scored upone Rut I have never been
much in favor of giving the ball out\ofebounds to the team scored upons I
am still one of those rugged individvalists who believe that when a team
scores by cleverness cr by its power that the opponent should never have the
ball, but both teams should have a fair and equal chance to gain possession
of the balle Mr, Naismith was exactly of the same opiniones 5

| I am not going to push the twelve-foot goal to any embarrassment
to anyone because I know someday it is going to be accepted, simply
because Dre Naismith tacked a basket on © running track that happened to be
ten feet high should be no reason why intelligent legislators should continue
to refuee to elevate the basket two feete We have done everything else to the

 
rules by way of reducing the size of the ball for better ball handling
to improving the backboard and yet at the present time we refuse to
ey into aecoumt the great evil that this tenefoot basket is doing to
t. SAMSe i

‘If there are other questions that you wish to ask me, I will
be very ahppy to give you my opinion on theme

I congratulate you and Mre Leo Fischer on your exellent

articles

Sincerely yours,

Director of Pyysical Education and Recreation
Varsity Basketball Coach

 
Erquir FOR MEN

“ 919 NORTH MICHIGAN AVENUE
CHICAGO

February 7, .1941

Mr, Forrest A, Allen
Kansas University
lawrence, Kansas

Dear Mr, Allen:

Is basketball -= as you coach it today -= heading your boys
for heart disease in later life? There's been a lot of dis-
cussion about this modern race-horse basketball, a lot of pro
and con. Certainly it's a question worth thinking about.

Leo Fischer had done a lot of thinking about it, and in the
March issue of Esquire, out February 14th, there will appear
an article written by him, called "Mayhem at the Box Office",
We're enclosing an advance proof of the article, because we
thought that you might be particularly interested in reading
this comprehensive discussion of the problem facing basket=
ball today. :

We'd like very much to have your opinion of this Esquire article,
and to hear your stand on the subject -- not only for our own
Cur ROR AGy s but for possible publication in Esquire's “Sound

and Fury" reader department. Won't you read over this advance
proof, then drop us a line about your reaction to "Mayhem at

the Box Office"?

Incidentally, since the March Esquire will not be published
for another week, would you please regard this advance proof
as confidential? Although, of course, we don't mind your
mentioning the article to your friends, we'd prefer that no
one but you read this proof, Thanks.

_ We hope that you'll enjoy reading "Mayher at the Box Office".
May we look forward to hear ing from = soon?

Gordially yours,
ESQUIRE - The Magazine for Men

4
{ r, =
¥ .
BS e
3
.

mss /eu

 
Mrs MeSe Stewart

919 North Wichigan Avenue
Chicago, Tllinois

Dear Mr. Stewart;

I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter together
with your very interesting article on basketball, “myhen
at the Box Offices"

IT will review this at once and write you in detail.
I think you have something heres

Sincerely yours,

Director of Physical Education and Reereation
Varsity Basketball Coach