DARTMOUTH 41, YALE 14
Before a capacity crowd of almost 70,000 clients, the Dartmouth powerhouse swept over and around a bewildered and completely out-classed Yale team to run up the highest score ever recorded by the Green against the boys in Blue and plaster perhaps the worst defeat the Yales have ever suffered at the hands of Dartmouth. For those of my readers who have suffered in person or by proxy through many previous afternoons in the Bowl and have seen victory snatched time and again from the hands of the Green, this was a truly heart-warming experience. Touchdowns have come hard in the Bowl in the past to harassed Dartmouth elevens, but this time they came in clusters of three and it all seemed ridiculously easy. The first three came in the first quarter and Dartmouth led at the end of that stanza by the unbelievable score of 20-0. Seldom has any Dartmouth team piled up such a commanding lead over a major opponent in the first quarter. In the second half, they did it all over again, scoring three touchdowns while Yale was (1) intercepting a Dartmouth pass and running 81 yards to score, and (2) getting another TD by more orthodox methods. By that time, it didn't make much difference.
This game confirmed the realization, growing less dim every week, that Dartmouth has one of the three or four outstanding T formation quarter backs in the country in sophomore John Clayton. All this 195-pound speedster did that afternoon was pass for three touchdowns, pitch out for another, .hand off for a fifth, and in between so befuddle the Yales that they seldom knew where the ball was, let alone where it was shortly going to be. Clayton made the amazing total of 10 completions out of 15 attempts, averages which Sid Luckman and Sammy Baugh would envy. His favorite receiver was end Red Rowe, who caught five Clayton passes, of which three went for touchdowns. This is really throwing.
The Green juggernaut began to roll before the customers were well settled in their seats. The first time they had the ball, Dartmouth went 86 yards in half a dozen plays, with Sullivan, Carey, and Fitkin ripping off 10 and 15 yards at a crack. The first TD came on the first of the Clayton-Rowe passes and was good for 16 yards, with the big redhead cantering over the line without a hand being laid on him. Almost immediately thereafter, Dartmouth started from its own 30-yard line and this time covered 70 yards in only three plays. This march was climaxed by a pass from Sullivan to Armstrong which covered in all approximately 60 yards, with the big end running 45 yards for a score. The third touchdown play came after another 70-yard advance, which this time took five plays, and which reached its appropriate climax with the second Clayton-Rowe TD pass, this one covering 34 yards. Score at the end of the first period: Dartmouth 20-Yale o.
Coach McLaughry's charges sat the second quarter out offensively, with Clayton spending most of that period on the bench resting his throwing arm. The hard-charging Dartmouth line had their big moment in this period, when they stopped the vaunted Yale backs on the Dartmouth 5-yard line, after the first sustained march of the day for the Elis. Incidentally, this is as good a place as any for a large kudo for Coach dell Isola's talented and aggressive linemen, who rushed their Yale counterparts almost out of the Bowl. It is a truism that football games are won up front, and this one was no exception. The reason that the backs were able to frolic through the foe for 10, 15, 20, or more yards at a clip was that the linemen were up there opening great gaping holes for them. Coach Hickman of Yale must have yearned for some of his massive Army lines of the past, when he saw his "Seven Dwarfs" in blue rudely deposited on their posteriors time and again.
In the third period, Dartmouth struck again through the air, with the final Clayton-Rowe aerial connecting for 44 yards and the fourth touchdown for the Green. Yale then scored its first touchdown on an interception of the only one of Clayton's passes that went astray, an event that merely roused the Green to new fury. The latter swept 80 yards in ten plays for their next score, which was negotiated by Jerry Sarno, one of the able right halfbacks who has perforce warmed the bench behind Fitkin and Perry. On his 28-yard scoring sortie, Sarno burst through the Yale right tackle, found himself in the clear, and went the rest of the way. In case you have lost count, the score is now 34-7. Yale then scored for the second and last time, principally on several long passes that found their marks and that represented the second (and last) sustained march of the day for the Elis. Just to show that the game wasn't over, Dartmouth went for its final touchdown with a 70-yard march in just four plays, with Bill Dey going over from the 17 on a pitchout.
The tremendpus striking power of this Dartmouth team is seen by the offensive statistics. Dartmouth made 17 first downs (to 14 by Yale) and ran up 317 yards on the ground and 215 in the air for the tremendous total of 533 net yards from scrimmage. Yale was held to 89 yards by rushing and 221 by passing, most of which latter was engineered in the second half when the pressure was somewhat relaxed. Dartmouth completed 12 out of 18 passes with results enumerated above, and even managed to intercept a couple of Yale efforts, one of them on the Dartmouth 2-yard line. Even in penalties we were ahead, with 95 yards lost by Dartmouth and 36 by Yale.
This was really Dartmouth's day. The only other occasion on which a Yale team was outclassed to anything like this extent was in 1939, when the Green won 33-0. The other time we ran up a score of such epic proportions was the famous encounter of 1931, when Dartmouth scored 33 points, only to have Yale come back and do the same. So the work done by Coach McLaughry's dashing men truly made football history on this bright October afternoon. We trust that history will repeat itself.
PULLING THE BULLDOG'S TAIL: Left, Red Rowe (82) streaks past the 10-yard stripe on his way to Dartmouth's first touchdown against Yale after catching a pass from Johnny Clayton in the opening quarter. Right, Bill Dey steps across the last white line near the coffin corner in the final period to complete the Green's 41-14 rout of the Eli. To avoid confusion, the Indians changed from green to white jerseys at the half.
ROUTING THE RAIDERS: Halfback Joe Sullivan, senior from Webster, Mass., tears off a first down near the end of the first half of the Colgate game played on Memorial Field. Dartmouth won, 41-16.
