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SPORT

 

The T a

The football professors had been dead
wrong, and humanly slow to admit it.
Four years ago, coaches labeled the T
formation a precarious stratagem suitable
only for such star performers as Quarter-
back Sid Luckman of the Chicago Bears
and Fullback Norm Standlee of Stanford.
Without such power and polish, said the
coaches, the T formation wouldn’t work.

Last week, contrary evidence was appar-
ent on almost every college gridiron: pink-
cheeked freshmen scurried and whirled out
of the T formation to touchdown after
touchdown. More than 50% of college

 

coaches now start their football alphabet
with a capital T. The other half burn mid-
night oil devising ways & means to stop it.
Few have succeeded.

Theme with Variations. Converts to
the T have concocted all kinds of pet vari-
ations and exclusive trademarks. Colum-
bia’s Lou Little has a “split T,” Michi-
gan’s Fritz Crisler an “unbalanced T,”
Nebraska, Minnesota and Iowa a “part-
time T.” The Boston (professional)
~ Yanks call theirs the Q.T. Washington’s
~ Coach Ralph (‘Pest’) Welch, who took
on a T with man-in-motion last year, this
year dropped the man-in-motion, spread
his linemen (see diagram) for a basic off-
tackle slice, scrambled this formation with
the old Notre Dame box style of offense
(a man on each corner). In the quiet of
the locker room, he calls this conglomera-
tion the “bastard T.”

But in all variations, the ball-handling
quarterback forms the stem of the T, the
other three backs the top crossbar. By any
name, its razzle-dazzle pattern of spinners,
flankers, man-in-motion, dive-tackle plays
pack a wallop that makes scores and
delights the fans. -

At the head of the non-T list are Navy
and Georgia Tech, whose conventional
single-wing formations clashed last week
in a weird, fumbling game at Atlanta.
Tech’s gained yardage was minus 6 against

TIME, OCTOBER 30, 1944

the Middies’ plus 221, but the final score
was Tech 17, Navy 15. Bo McMillan’s
Indiana team is the lone Big Ten eleven
shunning the T. Last week the Hoosiers

_upset Northwestern’s T, 14-to-7.

Gambling in the Garden

College basketball in Manhattan’s
Madison Square Garden has become a big
business. Teams travel from all over the
country to play there before crowds which
last season averaged 15,657 a game. Last
week a famed coach, University of Kansas’
Dr. Forrest C. (“Phog”) Allen, charged
that it is also becoming a dirty business.

Predicting an imminent “scandal that

TIME Diagram by James Cutter

would stink to high heaven,” he declared:
“Vadal Peterson, Utah University coach,
knocked down a gambler who came to his
room in New York last spring and asked
how much it would cost to have Utah
lose to Dartmouth in the N.C.A.A.
finals. . . .* Professional gamblers al-
ready have caused two boys to throw
basketball games.”

Retorted the Garden’s acting president,
Ned Irish: “If Allen has any proof of
dishonesty in basketball games at the
Garden, he’d better come through with it.”
(Allen promptly wired the name of one
player who had “sold out,’ had been ex-
pelled from college for it.) President Irish
announced that he would have 36 uni-
formed policemen, almost as many plain-
clothesmen and private detectives on duty
this season with express orders to prevent
all known gamblers from entering the
Garden.

At Rhode Island’s Pascoag track near
Providence last week, 40 racehorse owners

-and trainers issued an ultimatum to State

racing officials: unless an immediate end
was put to “race-fixing by a gambling
ring,” they would stop entering their
horses at Pascoag.

* Said Coach Peterson last week, denying that

he had struck the gambler: “I shut the door in |

his face, and that closed the incident.”

81

 

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