...the boy talking earnestly to the man who could not see. The Play That Won By J. R. Allred Visions of the perfect pass, the perfect play . . . The noises that are football music: padded bodies in sharp collision, sounds of speech . . . the rhythmic cry of the quarterbacks against the rustle and roar and sudden silence of the crowd .... Aroma: stench of hairy sweat and tape and red hot ointment and rubbing alcohol, of crisp autumn air .... Taste: dryness, caked in the mouth and throat, the salt of sweat, blood and tears, and maybe a mouthful of sand and lime .... Contacts: the external feel of pebbled leather, of jolting blocks and tackles, smashes to earth with head and body numbed, sleeting snow, mud .... These are the ugliness and sinew of football. Out of them somehow comes the glory of the great game. Out of defeat and mud can come the taste, sight, smell and feel of victory heralded only hy years of unhonored struggle, and that is the spirit of football. The slim lad at end had not played college ball before. He had been an obscure member of an obscure high school team, playing an obscure spot on the line. But now he was surprising everyone, particularly himself, with his fast developing prowess at his new position at end. Page Six All day he had played a magnificient game, and it was the waning moments when the fullback spiked a pass into his arms and he found himself in the end zone, holding the ball as cheers split the fall air. His was the touchdown that kept his team undeafeated when it seemed that the game was lost. In the dressing room he looked even more a boy than usual as he struggled with the unaccustomed joy. "I had always dreamed of making a touchdown," he said silently to himself. Size, speed, cleverness, quick thinking, these elements make a good football player. But sometimes something else enters into the picture of a gridiron great an unconquerable spirit and a mighty heart. This 20-year-old, so the legend goes, was not too good at the game. In fact, the alumni faithful who always plague the dressing rooms of the big teams said he was not college caliber at all, and they wondered why the coach kept him on the squad. But coaches sometimes keep players on the squad for reasons that no one else knows, and perhaps not even the coach himself is sure of. There was only one game that the boy did not dress for. For that one game the youngster did not sit on the bench because his father had died his father, the man whom his teammates had seen hold his son's arm as they walked around the campus, the boy talking earnestly to the man who could not see. For the next game the youth was back in his suit, but this time he was not content to occupy his spot on the bench. The coach could not refuse those earnest eyes, and the kid was in the game. The team won that day. They won because he made them win. The kid who was not college football caliber starred in the college game. The kid had to play well that day, he said the father who had never seen him play before was watching him that day. Sometimes, too, whole teams are inspired. Usually the coach gives the inspiration, and different coaches can inspire a team in different ways. Once there was a coach who could inspire his team into changing from the mediocre team they were to the great team they could and should have been .... "You don't remember George Gipp," Rock said. "He was before your time." It was Gipp the Great, lazy, careless when the going was easy, possessing a greatness that made him immortal when the going was tough, who had planned on going out for baseball, but who shocked even the Rock when he "consented" to carry the ball. Sixty-five yards from the goal, the attack bogging down, the quarterback told Gipp to punt, but Gipp drop-kicked the 65 yards for a field goal. That was the way George Gipp was. "You don't remember George Gipp," the Rock said. "He was before your time, but he was the greatest football player Notre Dame ever had. And once, when the was in the hospital, dying from pneumonia, he took my hand. 'Rock,' he said, 'sometime when the going gets tough, tell them to go in there and win . . . just one . . . for the Gip-per.' " That team, mediocre in the first half, came out of the dressing room inspired to greatness, and they won that one . . . for the Gipper. Football has its glory. But it requires brains and stamina and heart and guts. It takes originality, too. The first team that threw passes created a sensation in the football world. But the first young warrior who picked up a ball and ran with it created more of one, for rugby was a kicking game. The first lad to run with a football was publicly disgraced and expelled from school, but today there stands a monument in his honor, for he was the one who started football to be the great game that it is. A football man must think quickly and correctly, and he must make his body do what he thinks, and he must feel the right emotion at the right time. And these things make of him a man. For football is also a way of life, and football is a glory .... Page Seven