Big Green Teams
Question Marks Abound in Dartmouth Camp As Gridiron Squad Launches New Season
THE COLLEGE year 1937-38 has been boldly inscribed into the record books as the greatest all-around season in sports Dartmouth has ever known. And in the same breath we add, Dartmouth may pay for this unprecedented record of team champions all during the year 1938-39. For no matter how bright, fair or dismal prospects may be on any of the Green teams that will be defending titles this year, the champion is always the favorite in sports and is not allowed, and can not attempt if it were possible to ask for mercy in the pre-campaign writeups made by the experts.
Strangely enough we have come to the conclusion that it doesn't really matter in the long run what the experts predict, for contests will still be won or lost regardless of the tone taken by the writers.
All of which is by way of introducing the 1938 football season, God Bless It, for it is with us and needs be heralded with proper respect.
How many games will Dartmouth win this fall? Maybe all of them. Maybe half of them. Maybe not a major game. And to prove the point we could, if we wanted to be a bore, make out good cases for each of these contentions with equal ease.
To be very, very frank, we have never been quite as confused about a Dartmouth football eleven as we have been in the last month or so on the present Indian unit.
For one thing we have been reading too many papers and can't seem to recognize the Dartmouth eleven out on Memorial Field after discovering in print that the whole thing is wonderful, nothing to worry about, ete.
On the other hand, when we stop to pause for a moment and consider that the 1938 eleven is not the veteran team most outsiders consider it to be, then you can readily understand the cause for our bewilderment. To be specific, Lou Highmark and Lou Young at left guard are not veterans or lettermen. How can anyone predict how either Lou is going to shape up? Jim Feeley earned his letter at left guard last year, but this year he is a right tackle; and who, pray tell, is the man who can say beyond doubt that Feeley will be able to master the difficult tackle assignments just like that?
Jim Parks and Ed Wakelin are veterans, but who is to say that whichever of these two men wins the job, he will be able to stand up under the added strain of being a regular end? Sophomore Sandy Courter is yet another question mark, and a bigger one than some of the others we have mentioned. It was impossible to tell up to the date of September 7, that the veteran Harrington Gates was not going to be back for his old duties, and now the situation has changed overnight. Dartmouth can not have a good offense without a good blocking No. 2 back, and neither can the Dartmouth defense hold up without a strong defensive fullback along the lines of Gates. Courter is a promising sophomore, but it is not fair to Courter to compare his ability with Gates', for Harry had experience, and Courter has little or none. Perhaps Courter will do a wonderful job. Perhaps not. To be very honest I don't know, and yet I hear and read otherwise, and wonder if I may not be slipping as a judge of football players.
And finally at left halfback another newcomer to the position, Bill Hutchinson, is trying to make the eleven. Bill has speed, passing arid punting ability, but he is a question mark, and make no mistake about it, or else I am mistaken myself.
Therefore with five out of eleven men newcomers, how can Dartmouth be called a veteran team? We merely ask the question, and wait for the answer.
Is this pessimism? Not by a damn sight! Just facts that we would like to skip blindly over in the undertow of enthusiasm that prevails regarding the Dartmouth eleven.
TALES AROUND THE TEEPEF.Coach Earl Blaik tells a story to his squad of 50 candidates and the Indian folklore gets asmile from the gridsters. It was the tale of the Chief who thought he was so strong hecouldn't be licked, and, of course, the moral was he licked himself!
