Hotel New Yorker. He came here to make ry chap of medium height. He played seven in college. His face bears witness os eetNrSs His nose=-broken nine times=- - : ; a f eae " + - F ‘ oa t : x a ay & . aa r He \ Fs oy fe i i ‘ = i ie ; - Y ; + K ; i ‘ is SP Nee ae i Sah is dh era aie ese UG face ie tae Ma ae ales ARs NS ae kai bca she sd SLL TEs = S ae : eR ee = ai yez ate - ¢ aia 'PHANTOM TACKLE? OF 199 TELLS OF (DISAPPEARANCE! CHARLESTON? W. VA. =~ (AP)=- The 'phantom tackle' of Kansas University who helped defend the Midwest title against Missouri in 1899 told today why he "disappeared" after the game instead of going back to the Lawrence campus to the hero's welcome that awaited hime George R. Krebs, 60 now, and a mining engineer, sat behind his draw- ing board and chuckled. "You see," he said, "I wasn't the green farm boy from Colorado that I was supposed to be. "They said I didn't know anything about football until that season in Kansase Well, maybe not, but I had played for five years at West Virginia University and on a professional team in Latrobe, Pa. : Krebs was a sensation in that Kansas-Missouri game and his dis- appearance caused a furor that has built about him a tradition of mystery. Reams have been written about the “Colorado farm boy" who made foot- ball history that day as Yost's eleven beat Missouri 34 to 6, for the Mid- West title. : "At Kensas I matriculated as a farm boy from somewhere in Colorado-- I don't remember exactly where, butssome hick place. I had to be from somewhere, didn't I? "Well it was October and the season was already well under way, so at first I just ambled around over the campus, stumbling over my own feet, and it was easy to pass for a farm boy. I looked like one. "Then I went out for the team and Yost put me on the scrubs. I just stumbled around and when the ball came to me, I'd be awkward, let it hit my chest end bounce off." "But I caught on pretty quick," he continued, the grim breaden- ing e Quickly there followed the Nebraska and Washburn games, which Kansas won by big margins. Then the big game--Missouri, for the title. Kansas won, 34 to 66 "Two-of those Missouri men who played against me were carried off on stretchers," Krebs said, "But the third one was pretty good. He finished the game. "Ten I just caught a train and came home." JAYHAWK A TRUE ACTOR USUAL ROLE IS PLAYED WITH HUSKERS, YE ED OBSERVES. All That Is Classic About the En- gagement Is the Regular At- tendance by Fans Who Al-_ ready Know Ending, By Ys Ep or RouNnpABOUT. Ye Ed wishes to rush into the burning building in the nick of time _|and warn the sports writers, who are even now sharpening their pencils— or would be if they used pencils— getting ready to write of the Kansas- Missouri football game on Thanks- giving day as a “classic.” A classic, as Ye Ed has. pointed out before, is something everybody -lalready knows all about, including the outcome, but still something one likes and loves to read or goes to see, For example, “Hamlet” is a classic because whether you see it played traditionally by John Barry- more or in modern dress by Walter Hampden, you know Ophelia is go- ing to drown, and Polonius is going to be punctured and Hamlet is go- ing to be very unhappy about every- thing, and in spite of that you enjoy going back over the show every chance you get. WHY IT IS NO CLASSIC. So “Hamlet” is a classic, and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and “Blossom Time,” and Secretary Ickes and the Sixty. Families and Governor Leh- man—they’re all classics, too. But not the Kansas-Missouri -game.., Sometimes it goes one way and some- times another—generally the way it isn’t supposed to go. For that rea- son it is distinctly not a classic. The only classic in the Big Six, in Ye Ed’s opinion, is the Kansas-Ne- braska game, for which some 15,000 antiquarians poured into the K. U. Memorial stadium Saturday. The statistics on this game show that fortune has favored Nebraska, with :|the trifling exception of ‘two or three tie games, every year since 1916, and most of the time before that. ; But the fact that the outcome is so uniformly monotonous isn’t the main reason the game is a classic —it’s the fact people insist on gath- ering in large figures year after year, many of them hoping to see the Cornhuskers pushed around finally, but knowing in their hearts that it isn’t in the book that way. TRADITION ALMOST SACRED, They know that any radical in- novation in the final score would be a violence against a traditional work of art, like introducing a Benny Goodman’s swing solo into the finale of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony at a Toscanini concert—an unthink- able proceeding, but one it would be! - a shame to miss oy eters it had to happen. Se Every student of the ehcaics. like Ye Ed and Bert Beach and Alf Lan- don and Tom Grant and ‘other an-| tiquarians who were on hand at Lawrence Saturday, knows the plot. of the Tragickal Historie of the Jay- hawk and the Cornhusker as well as he knows the Boy Scout oath, or better. It moves along a good deal like the plot of “Hamlet,” except that instead of the appearance of the ghost in the first scene, it is a Jayhawk fumble, generally on a play that would have been a first down. A BAD START. A Nebraska player, representing Polonius, then fakes a pass to King Claudius and runs over the goal line | for a touchdown. That puts Hamiet behind at the very start, 6 to 0,) and the world is out of joint from then on. Saturday’s presentation altered | the plot a little at this point, sub- Stituting a trick pass by Rohrig of Nebraska to Dodd, Rohrig then run- ning east without the ball, and Dodd cutting westward with the ball, with the Jayhawk team following Rohrig while Dodd romped to the touch- down. That the play fooled the Jay- hawks is not to their discredit—it fooled Ye Ed, too, and most of the | Other archaeologists in the stadium. ‘But the innovation was refreshing, and showed that although it was still “Hamlet,” somebody had been writing some snappy new lines into the script. A CHANGE IN SEQUENCE. Everybody then settled back to see what would happen next. In the old silent film, this would be the place where a Jayhawk back completed a flat pass into the arms of a rang- j ‘ing Nebraska lineman, who would 'then run for another touchdown. But nothing like that happened, at |, least not until almost the very end | of the picture; in fact, the epilogue. | We'll get to that later. On the contrary, the Jayhawks ‘began flinging passes to their own |. men, and every now and then Rep- logle or Bunsen would break loose and carry the ball nine or ten yards in the proper direction, and even the officials chipped in occasionally |.‘ and helped out with a penalty on an |- interference ruling on a pass, And | ' the Nebraska rooters began to look |- around in a sort of panic wondering if Orson Welles had been rewriting the dialogue. TWO ACTS WEAR ON. | That’s the way things went|: through the second and third «cts, |: stopping only for a few minutes when Nebraska’s center and one.of Kansas’s tackle began throwing fists at each other over some personal matter not revealed in the advance notices, and again at half time, when the two university bands got out and played to a scoreless tie. But early in the fourth quarter Kansas combined some _ inspired ball-carrying with some very decep- tive practices in razzle-dazzle back of the line, and went over for a ‘|touchdown. Whereupon young Mr‘ ‘| Gibbens, who makes a specialty of appearing on the stage for a brief moment to dropkick a goal when- ever Kansas makes a touchdown, ‘lappeared and performed his office ‘|in-a way that should be an inspira- tion to every other member on the team. He is a very business-like young person, whose simple pres- ence lends assurance that any time they make any touchdowns and CA ~VUsssvew —eo------- JAYHAWK A TRUE ACTOR (Continued from First Page.) ae need any extra points converted, he is ready and able to oblige. SHOULD BE AN INSPIRATION. With such a goal kicker on the team, we don’t see how the rest of the players can resist making a touchdown every few minutes, just to see him work. Well, for a few minutes, Hamlet was ahead, and the Nebraska folks were quite sure the raiders from Mars had landed and were blowing up the earth. But as it turned out, it was just a bit of fiction, and was simply another one of those things that can’t happen here. Kansas was fighting desperately to hold its lead, and doing a good job of it, too, when along came the fumble that ordi- narily comes in the first act? right after the overture. There were only eleven Nebraska men on the field, but we could have sworn there were fourteen of them recovering that fumble. Three plays failed to bring a\ touchdown, and then Nebraska kicked a field goal, going into the lead 9 to 7. A minute afterwards, came the long delayed intercepted pass which went for an- other Nebraska touchdown, and the crowd began tuning’ out almost as fast.as it used to when Eddie Cantor _ ‘started a sob story. THE SAME ENDING. So, as it turned out, no great artistic violence has been done to the old classic, even if it has veen jazzed up a bit here and there through the years. They still sell Uncle Tom down ‘the river, as you might say, and Othello strangles Desdemona in the last act, as he always did, and we guess always will. Every year Nebraska comes to Lawrence, Ye Ed reads the advance dope from the Jayhawk camp, all about the secret practice and the rallies and the old grads’ pep meet- ings, and figures well, this time they’re sure going to push those Cornhuskers around, and it wouldn’t do to miss it, having waited so long. But evidently it isn’t in the book for these old eyes to see. The Jayhawkers, seeing Ye Ed come in the gate to a Nebraska game, must feel about as Macbeth 7 did when he saw Birnam Wood mov- ing to Dunsinane. We should think they’d be ready to pay us to stay away. It sounds like an a ae What | are we offered? “HT; —_— — — es i : | — eine ee ee _ O Dal: LNWOAL wo ANALILIY AD Gambling Industry, Lardner Say A. Notre Dame Alumnus Offers to Bet the Writer 1 to 3 the Irish Go Through the Remainder of Season Un- | - defeated and Untied—Layden’s Men Are Good “Upsetters.” By JoHN LARDNER. Copyright, 1938, by the North American ‘Newspaper Alliance (The Kansas City Star and other newspapers). EW YORK, Nov. 7—A flam- ing Notre Dame alumnus— born in Montana, educated at Gonzaga, earning his pay | echeck in New York, and never any closer to Notre Dame in his life than the dining car of the Twentieth Cen- tury as she lopes through Niles, Mich—in other words, a_ typical Notre Dame alumnus—offers to bet me ten bucks to thirty the Hoosier Hibernians will go through the re- mainder of their season undefeated and untied. : This is not a very good bet, tech- nically, from the point of view of the spurious South Bender. Say, for in- stance, that his ball club is an even money shot against each of its three remaining opponents. Allowing this to be true, he should net $70 for his parlay, instead of $30. : It’s fair to call each of those three games an even thing. Minnesota, Northwestern and Southern Cali- fornia come up in a row. If the Irish might be said to have an edge over any one of the three in a game to be played tomorrow, the same edge will be against them at the end of the string, because of injury, physical deterioration and mental pressure. Breaks Unlikely 3 Games in Row. They took a hammering from Navy last week, while winning. They meet another hammering team this Sat- urday in Minnesota, and another in Northwestern the week after. Over end ‘above all which, the greatest football outfit in the world does not figure to get the winning breaks for three games in succession. Notre Dame has had them in two games already, against Carnegie Tech and Army. : Therefore, I would: seem to be rob-" bing the earnest absentee alumnus of Notre Dame by taking his bet. I will take it anyway, and the chances are he is robbing me. There is something about those ‘Irish, the S®avic Irish, the Dutch Irish, and the Irish Irish alike, that raises cain with form and precedent. A real good football team, such as Cousin Elmer Layden has formed this year, is not enough to take a terrible schedule in stride, without defeat or tie. But the Notre Dames are screwy enough to do it.anyway. A man who bets a nickel against them is a sucker, which is the best description I can think of for yoyr correspondent at this juncture. ~ What I started out to say was that, in most football parlays, ex- cluding Notre Dame, the fellow who bets the short end has the worst of it. He seldom gets odds as long as he should get, Dr. John Tecumseh Doyle and other practitioners of. man-to-man football betting, involving single games, have asked me to point out what terrible rookery is committed ‘lin the name of college sport by the ‘seven winners. operators of the so-called “parlay card” or pool system, Percentage Always Works for the House. Dr. Doyle and the other man-to- man bettors enjoy all the best of it themselves, with their professional percentage. For the Ohio State- Purdue game last week, for instance, if you bet with a professional, you were asked to lay 3 to 1 if you liked | Ohio State, and you get only 2 to 1: if you liked Purdue. That’s the per- | centage, It always works for the ' house. ne But this is petty larceny compared with the grandiose operations of the “card” men. We will take, for black- board drill, a typical card, issued last week by one of the East’s most notable gamblers; These are the games he listed: ' Tulane vs. Alabama; Auburn VS. Villanova; Colgate vs, Syracuse; Wash- ington vs. Stanford; U.S. ©. vs. Cali- fornia; Arkansas vs. Rice; Boston col- lege vs. Indiana. You could pick four, five, six or All your choices had to win, naturally, or the bet was lost. Ties counted against you. The card offered 10 to 1 for four winners, 16 to 1 for five, 25: to 1 for six and 50 to 1 for seven. Assume all games to be even. This is a fair assumption, when you con- Sider last: Saturday’s results. probably know parlay mathematics. You bet $1, say, on the first game. Winning, the $2 rides on the second game. Winning, the $4 rides on the third game. Winning, the $8 rides op the fourth game, Winning, you - ADDITIONAL SPORT ON FOLLOWING PAGE. have $16. Deduct your original in- vestment, and your net profit is $15. In other words, the odds against ge four winners should be 15 Ond: By the same reasoning, the true odds against five winners are 31 to 1, against six winners 63 to 1, against seven winners 127 to 1. And look what the card operators give you. I hope I have done my duty by Dr. Doyle and the man to man bet- tors. To tell the truth, I bet on the cards myself. And anyone who re- ‘fuses to believe that college football is the biggest gambling industry in the country next to the horses has probably got a slight case of total blindness. You |. ah ARES i As Seen Rage a Fae eee wee te f ee n ie oJ New York Times=Sept. 11, 1938 IN THIS CORNER with ~ JACK CUDDY United Press Staff Correspondent Copyright, 1938, by the United Prdss PAY COLLEGE PLAYERS Dr. John K. Bralliecr of Latrobe, Pa., is the guy who started peel- ing frogskins off the pigskin=- who started demanding bucks for bucking. He was our first professional football pleyer. And now at 61, Dentist Brallier is still yelling for football dough; not for himself but for the lads who play it. He is cam= paigning for pay checks every month for college performers, as well as the proSe "7 was the first man ever paid outright for playing football" the robust old molar mauler said. “But 1 certainly wasn't the first to be subsidized for joining a college team. Colleges were taking care of the football boys long before my time. They're still doing it under covere That sub-rosa business is wronge They should pay the boys openly." ? Brallier, father of three childrenend a grandfather through one of his offspring, says he became America's first pro gridster back in 1895. He was attending Washington and Jefferson at the time and just beginning his gallop to glory as a quarterback. The nearby steel town of Latrobe had its own football team. This outfit was slated for an important game when its quarterback, Deacon Blair suffered an attack of colic, spavin the heaves or some- thing. So the Latrobe manager, in desperation, got in touch with Brallier at We and Je and asked if he could fill in for Blair. Brallier replied, "I don't see how I could do it." "But we've just got to have a good quarterback for this game," insisted the frantic manager. "“Woubd $10 and expenses interest you?" "T!11 say it will!" exclaimed Bralliere I'll be your quarterback." IN BIG DOUGH In those days 10 bucks and expenses was big dough for the sturdy but struggling son of Widow Brallier of Indiana, Pa. Accordingly Brallier participated in several Latrobe games while still playing with We and J. And he was paid for every Latrobe game. Latrobe's team was composed of young steel workers, miners and one of two former college players. They were competing for fun and fame alone«-as were the lads on all other town and city teams--until Brallier came alonge When the word got out that our dentist friend was getting paid, other stellar performers started demanding cash for their efforts. Such was the birth of the commercial gridstare I met Dr. Brallier at the Hotel New Yorker. He came here to make a broadcast. He's a semi~bald, husky chap of medium height. He played 17 years of football, including seven in college. His face bears witness to the wear and tear of early grid warfare. His nose=-=-broken nine times-- is bumpy and somewhat askew. His lips are a bit battered and his brows are somewhat shopworn like those of a pug. However, he's smart as a whip PHANTOM TACKLE? OF 199 TELLS - OF | ‘DISAPPEARANCE CHARLESTON? We VAs + (AP)== The "phantom tackle’ of Kanses University who helped defend the Midwest title against Missouri in 1899 told today why he "disappeared" after the game instead of going back te the Lawrence gampus to the hero's welcome that awaited hime George Re Krebs, 60 nOWs end a mining engineer, sat behind his drawe ing boerd and chuckled. os "You see," he said, "I wasn't the green farm boy from Colorado that I was supposed to bes “hey said I didn't kon anything about football until that season in Kansase Well, maybe not, but I had played for five years at West Virginia University and on & professional team in Latrobe, Pas Krebs was a sensation in that Kansas-Missouri geme and his dis- appearence gaused a furor that has built about him a tradition of mystery. Reams have been written about the “Colorado farm boy" who made foot= ball history that dey as Yost's eloven beat Missouri 34 to 6, for the Mid= West title. ~ : "At Kansas I matr ioula: pad I don't remember exactly where somewhere, didn't I? “Well it was October and the season was already well under wey, so at first I just ambled around over the campus, stumbling over my own feet, and. it was easy to pass for a farm boy. I looked like one. "then I went out for the team and Yost put me on the serubs. I just stumbled around and when the ball came to me, I'd be awkward, let it hit my chest end bounce off." , "But I caught on pretty quick," he continued, the grim breaden= inge Quickly there followed the Nebraske and Washburn games, whigh © Kansas won by big margins. Then the big game--Missouri, for the title. Kansas won, 34 to Ge "two of those Missouri men who played against me were carriod_ off on stretchers," Krebs said, “But the third one was pretty goods finished the game. “then I just caught ao train and came home." asa farm boy from somewhere in Golorado=- but some hick place. I had to be from eat cise ha