Midwestern Front

(See Cover)

Thirty-five years ago last week the football team of West Virginia University met the Michigan team of Fielding H. ("Hurry Up") Yost at Ann Arbor. When the West Virginians returned home the Daily New Dominion of Morgantown interviewed them and reported:

"It was declared that every player on Yost's team weighed eight tons and had an average speed of 96 miles an hour. . . . One player said he was plucked up in the air and thrown over the head of a creature which was at least 100 feet high and had eight pairs of arms. ..."

The score of that game was Michigan 130, West Virginia 0.

Last week all that was left of Yost's famed point-a-minute football teams--the early-century Wolverines who during five years (1901-05) lost one game out of 57 and rolled up 2,821 points to their opponents' 42--were invited to Ann Arbor for a Grand Homecoming with grizzled 68-year-old Fielding Yost, still the grand mogul of Michigan football (although he stopped coaching twelve years ago to devote all his time to directing athletics).

From East & West they came, 55 of them, fattish and full of memories. They had read about this year's Wolverine Express. In three games it had scored 138 points, better than any other major college team in the U. S. And in the Big Ten (Western Conference)--where year in & year out there is more Grade A football played than in any other conference in the country--Michigan, in its second year under onetime Princeton Coach Fritz Crisler, was whizzing toward another championship after five chug-chugging years.

Fortnight ago, against Chicago, Coach Crisler's boys had chalked up a score of 85-to-0 (even with second and third string substitutes). It was the largest score recorded by a Michigan team since the canvas-jacket days of the point-a-minute monsters. Small wonder Yost wanted his old boys to see this modern machine and had selected its meeting with Yale in which to show it off.

Like most Big Ten teams, it had a line that averaged 200 Ibs., had reserves three deep. Among its backs were two streaks who could run 100 in 10 flat. And the prize Host Yost wanted most to show off was its 194-lb. halfback, Tom Harmon, who at 20 and only half way through his second year in a Varsity jersey, has been hailed as the No. 1 footballer of the year.

There have always been big boys in the Big Ten: Chicago's Walter Eckersall, Illinois' Red Grange, Minnesota's Bronko Nagurski and Herbert Joesting, Michigan's Willie Heston, Harry Kipke, Benny Friedman. But Tom Harmon can run like Grange, buck like Joesting--and pass and kick besides. Although he may not be a point-a-minute man he could almost qualify as a half-a-point-a-minute man. In the first three games of the season (in which he played a total of 124 minutes), he scored 52 points: seven touchdowns, seven points-after-touchdown and one field goal --the season's best record among U. S. college footballers.

To see Terrible Tommy and his teammates, Fielding Yost and his Homecoming guests--including fabulous Willie Heston (1901-04), whose spraddle legs once scored no touchdowns--wriggled in among the 54,000 football fans in Michigan's magnificent stadium. They saw the vaunted Michigan backs--(Harmon, Kromer, Westfall and Evashevski)--trot onto the field and in less time than it takes to say Evashevski make sausage meat of a not-so-bad Yale team that had beaten Army and Columbia earlier in the season.

One-two-three, running with the power of a wild buffalo and the cunning of a hounded fox, Harmon scored a touchdown. By half time he had scored another and his running mate, Paul Kromer, had crossed the goal line for a third. Then, in the first few minutes of the third quarter --by this time looking as monstrous to the Blue Boys as Willie Heston had looked to the West Virginia footballers of 1904--Terrible Tommy got loose and dashed 57 yards, with tacklers diving into thin air after him, for his third touchdown of the day.

When the final whistle blew, Harmon had scored 21 of Michigan's 27 points (he kicked three points-after-touchdown), had gained 203 of Michigan's total of 353 yards from scrimmage. At the end of the first half, Yale had made only one first down; just before the end of the third quarter, they crossed midfield for the first time; and, although they managed to sneak in an airway touchdown in the last few minutes of the game, their 27-to-7 drubbing was practically a knockout. All afternoon the husky Yales had gained only 35 yards from scrimmage.

Surging out of the stadium, a majority of the 54,000 football fans remarked: "Harmon is the greatest football player since Red Grange." But Grand Mogul Yost, who had seen many a star in his half century of football, went further back. Said he: "The greatest since Willie Heston."

Terrible Tommy. A hero role is nothing new to Thomas Dudley Harmon. Son of a Gary, Ind. real-estate man, he entered Michigan two years ago with the reputation of being the ablest allround high-school athlete in the U. S. At Gary's Horace Mann High, he twice was named All-State quarterback, was the country's leading interscholastic football scorer (150 points) in 1936, was captain of the basketball team, pitched three no-hit, no-run games one spring, was State champion at the 100-yd. dash (9.9 sec.) and still holds the Indiana record (22.6 sec.) for the 200-yd. low hurdles.

Less publicized than Chicago's Bill De Correvont (now at Northwestern) whose football exploits were headlined from coast to coast when he wound up his career at Austin High with a total of 210 points in 1937, Tom Harmon nevertheless was not unnoticed by U. S. college football scouts. In his senior year he received offers from 16 colleges. But he chose Michigan because his high-school coach, Doug Kerr, was an old Wolverine.

On the Ann Arbor campus, Tom Harmon, a gregarious, lantern-jawed six-footer with a Tarzan physique and a yen for swing music, was promptly nicknamed Terrible Tommy, or The Hoosier Hammer. As a freshman he got a D in English (he is studying for a radio career--probably sportcasting) but won the University trophy as the best allround athlete in intramural sports. Sophomore year he was tapped by Sphinx (junior honor society) and elected Pharaoh. Last week diverse sports enthusiasts named a baby and a racehorse after him.

So afraid is he of being considered high-hat that he waves to everyone he meets on campus, never misses football practice, belittles his own talents, bends over backward to praise his teammates. After he scored all 27 points in the Iowa game three weeks ago, he said: "Anybody could have done it with that Evashevski [200-pounder who once said he didn't want to-play football if he couldn't "crack 'em"] and those others in there blocking like that. They don't make them any better than that Evashevski."

Evashevski or no Evashevski, most football fans agreed last week that Tom Harmon will probably be named on every All-America this year and that Michigan not only should win its 15th Conference championship but might lay claim to the mythical championship of the U. S. Scanning the Midwestern Front, football experts saw no grave obstacle* in its march to the Big Ten title.

Ohio State, with a 215-lb. quarter back named Don Scott and two Brobdingnagian tackles -- 225-lb. Jim Daniell and 260-lb. Jim Piccinnini -- looked like the No. 1 threat. Considered only fair-to-middling at the start of the season, the Buckeyes sprang the surprise of the Big Ten when they conquered touted North western three weeks ago and followed it by beating Minnesota. In downtown Columbus' Broad & High quarterbacks stopped heckling Coach Francis Schmidt even after the Bucks were defeated 23-to-14 by Ivy Leaguer Cornell last week, began to count the days until November 25 when Ohio State is scheduled to meet Michigan -- with an outside chance of winning the Big Ten title, if, in the meantime, it hurdles Indiana, Chicago, Illinois.

Minnesota, last year's champion, has its usual big boys in the backfield, but its line is weak. Therefore brilliant Bernie Bierman, winner of four Big Ten titles and three mythical U. S. championships in the seven years he has been coach at Minnesota, must be content to sit this one out. Already, perennially mighty Minne sota has lost two, tied one.

Northwestern, pre-season favorite (along with Michigan), has been a dis appointment, not only to alumni but to its coach, jovial 250-lb. Lynn Waldorf.

Last fortnight, after the Wildcats lost their first two games (to Oklahoma and Ohio State), an editorial in the student newssheet, Daily Northwestern, charged that the linemen were refusing to block for their ballyhooed star, Sophomore Bill De Correvont. Angered, the Wildcats promptly beat Wisconsin 13-to-7, and last week swamped Illinois 13-to-0, even though De Correvont failed to get going.

Purdue's greatest feat of the season was holding mighty Notre Dame to one field goal (3-to-0) in its opening game.

Since then the Boilermakers -- despite their famed runnings backs, Lou Brock and Jack Brown (rated second to Michigan's Harmon and Kromer)-- have been defeated by Santa Clara and tied by Minnesota. They still have a chance for the Big Ten championship should Michigan or Ohio State fumble-- provided they beat Iowa, Northwestern, Wisconsin and Indiana in the next four weeks.

Also Rons. Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin and Chicago looked last week like the Little Five of the Big Ten. Feeblest is Chicago. Once -- in the star-spangled days of Amos Alonzo Stagg -- the Maroons shared honors with Michigan as the top team in the Midwest. But in the last decade, under the regime of President Robert M. Hutchins, football has been de-emphasized, its teams play like scrubs (154 points have been scored against them in four games this season) and its alumni bow their heads on Saturday nights. "We are a big joke in the eyes of the American public," wailed the student Daily Maroon last week.

*Teams are not required to play all nine Conference rivals in one season. Michigan has yet to play Big Tenners Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio State.

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