Judge, 1922-11-04 · page 8 of 36
Judge — November 4, 1922 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Heywood Broun's "Philosophies of Football" This is a sports column by Heywood Broun critiquing Harvard's football approach versus romantic football tradition. The sketches show two captains: Captain Buell of Harvard and Captain Jordan of Yale. Broun satirizes Harvard's "system" as overly intellectual and practical—stripping football of its glamour and narrative drama. Traditional college football stories featured quarterbacks as heroes: the undersized underdog, the romantic lead catching his sweetheart's eye in the stands, the player who faints dramatically after scoring. Harvard's system, Broun argues, eliminates this romance. Their quarterback isn't allowed to look at girls or indulge in emotion; he must "think" and prepare cerebrally like an academic rather than perform as a romantic hero. The joke targets Harvard's reputation for intellectualism taken to absurd extremes—even replacing the athletic "H" award with an academic "Phi Beta Kappa key." The contrast with Yale's more traditionally glamorous approach is implicit through the paired illustrations.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Heywood Broun’s Sport Page Philosophies of Football Tx Harvard system has extracted some of the glamour from the quarterback. And_ this, according to every tradition of fiction, should be by all odds the most romantic réle. The substitute in the short story who comes in with only three seconds to play for the purpose of making a touchdown is always a quarterback. The man who looks up into the stadium and, catching the eye of the girl he loves, runs ninety-ni yards, a quarterback, too. then there’s the undersized little chap all the college made fun of and called issy until the big game when he scored nning drop-kick and fainted on the fullback’s shoulder. Yes, he is also among the quarterbacks. But the Harvard system is distinctly Sketches by Weed practical. It does not provide for the terback to look up into the stands for Millie’s smiling face or faint on any fullback’s shoulder. The coaches would much rather he wouldn't. Indeed at Cambridge the job has been intellec- tualized. In years to come it may be that the Crimson quarterback will be rewarded with a Phi Beta K. instead of the usual H. He i: to get his recreation out of his lecture courses and come to the gridiron pre- pared to think, Some little assistance is furnished him by the details of the Harvard sy: The coaches realize that a cert tion is required for the more intense and profound sort of cerebration, and so the quarterback is not required to run with Captain Jordan of Yale comichooks.