Give It Back

In what are beginning to be known as the good old days of football, a coach frequently left his place on the bench to join in the game as a substitute for an injured or absent player. Robert F. MacLeod '39, former AllAmerican halfback, in an article entitled "Give the Ball Back to the Boys" appearing in the October issue of Townand Country, advocates a new place for the coach: in the stands with the spectators.

During games strategy-making and substitutions would be entirely taken over by the players, with the coach acting as a sort of professor who does not coach during games any more than a teacher teaches during examinations. Thus the growing professionalism of football would be curbed without the sport's being reduced to "intramural pat-a-cake." Writes MacLeod, "The overpowering incentive to win must remain the backbone of football. But in football as we know it today, it is the coach, not the player who has the greatest stake in the success or failure of a campaign. The game started and was healthy in the hands of the boys themselves. Let's get back there as fast as possible."

Besides having made a brilliant record on the Dartmouth varsity, MacLeod played professional football with the Chicago Bears and is well qualified to write on his views of the game. He expressed them also in 1948 in an article protesting free substitution which tends to make football a game for specialists. At present he is Eastern Advertising Manager for Town and Country.