Red, Cav, Tuss, and The Ferocious Cherub
In The Golden Age of Football, the 1920's and the 1930's, Dartmouth College produced "The Earl of Hanover" (Red Blaik), "The Iron Major" (Frank Cavanaugh), "Tuss and the Iron Men" (Tuss McLaughry), and the "Ferocious Cherub" (Fat Spears).
These four Dartmouth coaches loom large among the 43 described by Tim Cohane in his breezy and anecdotal book, Great College Football Coaches of theTwenties and Thirties, published by Arlington House this fall.
For Dartmouth sports fans, the book makes fascinating reading.
Anecdotes abound: the bedroom of President and Mrs. Ernest Martin Hopkins; "The Torture Chamber" in Alumni Gymnasium; Mutt Ray '37 subsisting on lettuce; Gitsis' Restaurant, Tanzi's Fruit Store, and Ma Smalley's Eating Club; Bob MacLeod '39 suffering from dysentery caused by rancid spinach before the Yale game of 1937; Harry (Heavenly) Gates '39, before whom no man dared swear and to whom God spoke directly about his physical and spiritual well-being; the Dartmouth-Cornell game won by Cornell on a fifth down, following which Cornell honorably and sportingly gave the victory to Dartmouth with congratulations; Jack Kenny '36 barging into a Yale huddle and kidding, "Let's have a lot of fun today, boys," and being told to get the hell out or he would be punched in the nose; the "twelfth man," never identified, who staggered into the line of scrimmage between Dave Camerer '37 and Joe Handrahan '36 and bellowed, "Kill them Princeton bastards."
"The Iron Major," Frank Cavanaugh (1911-1916), devised his "grass drill," which was sheer torture. The coach forced his men to fling themselves down prone, scramble erect, down, up, down, up. The results: no team ever beat Cav's by being in better physical condition during the last quarter.
Cav never swore, but his sarcasm could knock any tough man down. His attitude that football should be played to the uttermost limits of respectability caused Harvard to denounce him and his players as dirty and to drop Dartmouth from its schedule.
Cav's reputation rests firmly on his building three major teams: Dartmouth, Boston College and Fordham. His Dartmouth record was 42-9-3 and his 1913, 1914 and 1915 teams lost only one game.
Tuss McLaughry, who coached Dartmouth from 1941 to 1954 except for 1943 and 1944 when he served as a Marine officer, got his training as a guard, tackle and end for two years and as a fullback at Westminster.
His 1948 and 1949 teams were the first at Dartmouth to win six major games. According to Cohane, Tuss suffered from a lack of personnel afterwards.
Following the 1954 season, Tuss was named professor of physical education at Dartmouth and associate director of athletics. He retired in 1960.
Cohane characterizes McLaughry as a "quiet, reserved, friendly, handsome man who avoided controversy and was soft spoken" and was an "articulate" and "interesting conversationalist when he opened up." According to Cohane, "No coach was more respected and admired." He was elected to the National Football Hall of Fame in 1962.
Fat Spears '17 (1917-1920), the "Ferocious Cherub," had the face of an angel and the body of a gorilla. Also known as "Cupid" and "Doc," he stood at only 5 feet 7. When in fighting trim he weighed 236, but the fastest Dartmouth back could edge him by only three feet in the 50-yard dash.
Judge Amos Blandin '18 recalls that he "walked with a springing stride, the way I've seen bulls walk - he was as powerful as one."
And Dr. Norman Crisp '21, a teammate of Spears, said, "Football's gain was medicine's loss, because he could have been a hell of a doctor."
Perhaps also a good minister, for he taped up the sprained ankle of a player who, though still in pain, wanted to play. "Stauber," said Doc, "The Good Lord will take you by the hand and see you through."
No college is less like West Point than Dartmouth, but Earl Blaik (1934-1940) so disciplined his players that he himself remarked that Dartmouth students differed little from Army cadets.
When the Blaik coaches arrived in Hanover, they settled in at the Hopkins presidential home just above the Hopkins bedroom.
Perfecting football techniques late at night, they plunged into details of the single-wing offense Blaik had determined on, basically an amalgam of Army's inside tackle thrust, short reverse, and running pass, and Pittsburgh's sweep, off-tackle cutback, and deep reverse.
To demonstrate techniques for one another over the Presidential bedroom, the coaches leaped up from the chairs, scraped, shuffled, and banged until 3 a.m. "Do you plan to have all of the season's major games played upstairs?" Mrs. Hopkins asked her husband.
After that, Blaik moved his coaches to Memorial Field. With the major help of Bob MacLeod, the results were spectacular. For three seasons: 7-1-1, 7-0-2, and 7-2-0, for a total 21-3-3. This included a string of 19 victories and three ties.
The 1936 and 1937 Indians, as they were then called with affection and respect, were champions of the then informal Ivy League and were rated number seven nationally in 1937. In those years, Dartmouth never lost to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, a record unmatched even in the great years of Bob Blackman.
It's a good book that Cohane has written, one that abounds with Dartmouth football lore scattered through more than 300 pages that recount the great names of the golden era of college football.
