Judge, 1922-10-21 · page 8 of 36
Judge — October 21, 1922 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis This page from *Judge* satirizes American college football in the early 20th century, particularly the intense training of Ivy League programs (Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell). **The cartoons mock:** 1. **Top sketch**: A pretentious Princeton student demonstrating to his parents how to sing "Old Nassau" (Princeton's fight song) with exaggerated "spirit"—skewering collegiate elitism and performative enthusiasm. 2. **Bottom left**: A father learning football cheers from his son, ridiculing how parents mimic collegiate traditions without understanding them. **The main article by sports columnist Heywood Broun** satirizes pre-season football rhetoric and "tackling dummy" practice drills. Broun mocks: - Predictable sports headlines ("Yale Fears Bates," "Gloom at New Haven") - Pointless practice against phantom opponents—tackling dummies and non-existent defenders while coaches shout generic encouragement ("Speed! Speed!") - Energy wasted on football training that could accomplish real work The satire suggests college football is ritualistic theater divorced from actual accomplishment—players practice intensely against nothing, mimicking real competition without genuine opposition.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Princeton undergraduate instructing his parents how to render “Old Nas- sau” with spirit Preliminary practice for moral victory Heywood Broun’s Sport Page On the Gridiron Sketches by Weed HE preliminary stages of the foot- season are passing. By this me the headline “Yale | Fears Bates,” has come and gone. In a week or so we shall have “Gloom at New Haven Over Crippled Stars” and pres- ly Dobie of Cornell will announce that : or his team is that it has fighting chance. Later we shall have the charts by which the designer and nobody else in the world can tell how the ball moved up and down the field. X will indicate the spot where the body was found. UT at present the tackling dummy still with us. He and obscure. As winter approaches boys in Cambridge will put a blue jersey on him and christen him O’Hearn, Now their fierceness is directed at nothing in general. An enormous amount of fighting spirit evaporates on the practice gridirons of America during the early autumn, Personally we always have a 6 “pra ain feeling of sadness in watching an run through signals. six-two-five hundred and ten—s . barks the quarterback defiantly and, taking the ball from the center, slaps it viciously into the stomach of the right half who proceeds to slip past a phantom tackle for a ghostly gain of fifteen yards. ‘The line men charge low and hard against the frail northern breeze which would oppose them. “Make it go!” shouts the head coach from the side lines and a couple of dozen assistant coaches yell “Speed! Speed! A volunteer old graduate helper shouts “Pep! Pep!” and the boys line up again for another assault on the atmosphere. WE HAVE no statistical report on the matter, but there ought to be one. We believe that investigation would show that the energy wasted by Yale, Harvard and Princeton in football signal ice during any given year would be sufficient, if harnessed, to shovel all the