Judge, 1928-12-22 · page 13 of 36
Judge — December 22, 1928 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "High Hat: If We Must Have an All American Team" This 1928 Judge satire mocks the International Correspondence Schools (I.C.S.), a popular mail-order education company, by proposing an absurd all-American football team composed entirely of I.C.S. students and postal workers. The joke imagines football plays executed through the mail system: footballs stamped and posted between cities, postmen serving as coaches and referees, mailboxes as goal posts, and a quarterback broadcasting plays via radio from Iowa. The author ridicules both I.C.S.'s grandiose claims about training talent nationwide and the impracticality of distant education. References include the 1928 Army football team and player Cagle. The cartoon illustrates an I.C.S. student in Belleville, Kansas waiting to be "called into the game"—a visual pun on mail-order participation. The satire targets corporate overreach and the dubious promise that correspondence schools could develop genuine athletic or professional expertise without hands-on training.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
——. JUDGE \AIG IH If We Must Have an All American Team The edit pointed me football expert the season of 1928. Why he waited until the end of the sea- son, I don't know. If you really want to know why he waited until the end of the season—but maybe you don’t want to know. Do you want to know? Even if you asked him, I don’t think he'd tell you. Winter's coming on. you know, and it’s pretty windy out- side anyway. My instruction in the matter is to select an All American Foot- ball Team, He felt that I was fitted because of my experience on the gridiron. I played at Nebraska University in) 1896-7 —I played saxophone on the Varsity Band. After working practically al- most completely incessantly for one whole evening I concluded there was only one big, clean, honest method of sel an All American Tes That method is to pl the entire matter in the hands of The International Correspondence Schools. of Jepce has a I have waited your lat atiently for I am seri- n't you sce the far-reach- ing prospects of such a team? ‘There are many hundreds of thou- sands of students, perhaps. to select from. Every nook and cranny of this great country of ours is a potential training camp. Here are my arguments for such a team: ous. Every postman in the United States would be a football coach. Every mail-box could be a goal post. Just picture an I. C. 8. substi- tute, wrapped in his big blanket, headgear taut, warming up in front of a little bench—running up and down—waiting patiently beside a little green mail-box out in Belleville, Kansas, to be called into the game. Suppose old I. C. S. were play- ing Army at the Polo Grounds. Only the Army team and a couple of postmen would be on the ficld. Cagle would kick off at the mail man’s whistle. The ball would be picked up on the twenty-yard line, loaded into an plane and dropped at 227 West Hoop Cincinnati, Ohio. where Huntyfimmy, star I. C. 8 safety man, would put a new air-mail stamp on it, toss it into another mail plane and return it to the twenty-nine-yard line at the Polo Grounds. One of the postmen would play center for old 1. C. S. Quarterback Fuddygillstein, 1. C. S., playing in the Boo Center, Iowa, postotiice, would call sig- nals over the radio to an ampli- fier at the Polo Grounds. (An Amny player would anticipate the play and bark—"Watch out, fel- las!) [ think it’s an end run through Albany and Cleveland !") N | gnal, the postman- center passes the ball into a mail box and it is sent to Boo Center, Towa, where Quarterback Fud dygillstein receives it, places a forward pass stamp on it and ad dresses it to Butch Bing, I. € end tearing through the Christ- mas rush in the Tittletunk, Okla- homa, postoffice. It is intercepted | there by a little man who thir it's just another one of his w bundles. The little man fails to hold it, however, and the pass is incompleted. It is returned to the Polo Grounds and given to the referee, who is the Postmaster General. He discovers that Quarterback Fuddygillstein used a canceled forward pass stamp. Old I. C. S. is penalized fifteen yards and Quarterback Fuddy- gillstein is sent to Atlanta for two years. Whoa—Army man hurt! It's Cagle!!! He's fallen—oh-h-h!! he’s fallen ASLEEP! Time out. Cagle is on his feet again The crowd cheers. Cagle even gets a few postcards from sporty I. CS. cheering sections over the country. Game resumes. Signals from the amplifier. The I, C. S. (Continued on page 26) International Correspondence School student out in Belleville, Kan., waiting to be called into the game. comicbooks.com