No coaching system can endure that is not founded upon truth-telling among the men who have the team in their hands. When one man of the staff stands alone in his opinion about certain measures or certain plays, there should be nothing in the attitude of his associates that would lead him to think that it might have been better after all had he fallen in promptly with the consensus of opinion, relieving himself of all responsibility and retaining that connection with a team that is so highly prized by many a graduate. Nor should a man who is personally unpopular be deprived of his right to speak, which, presumably, is guarded by his connection with the university or college and the broad democracy that should be the keynote of college sport. Many a man who is persona non grata to the main body of the coaches may have the remedy for something that has afflicted the team, and his advice on technique may be the very thing that is needed in the darkest hour before the big game.

Unfortunately older men are quite as apt to be moved by friendships or antagonisms as less experienced undergraduates. Their influence after graduation is to them quite as great a treasure as their influence in the class in undergraduate days, and I venture to say that it is harder to harmonize a lot of graduates of varied interests than it is to get together a lot of boys over whom still hangs the glamour of the great university. A large coaching staff is too often apt to break 62 up into cliques. Almost every big Eastern university has had experiences of this sort, and they are apt to recur at what are very close to stated periods. When disorganization of this kind occurs it generally means the loss of the big game, although rescue may come at the eleventh hour, and in a general falling off in the system from which it may require two or three years to recover.

The absolutely ideal coaching system has yet to be discovered. Dean Briggs of Harvard has made a plea for the "practical idealist," and it is indeed such a man that every university is seeking, consciously or unconsciously. He is, however, as rare as the white rhinoceros, and until he appears, and in numbers, coaching systems, like most other university activities, will be no more than human.

The nearest that any university seems to have been able to come to an ideal is the institution and support of graduate coaching, and when such coaching turns out successful teams there seems to be no quarrel with it. But let it plunge into a year or two of disaster, and there is at once a wail from all quarters, graduate and undergraduate alike. Certain of the larger institutions are able to weather these storms and maintain their systems, but those institutions that have not years of football behind them are forced to look elsewhere for their technique. It is said of them in such circumstances that they have "lost the dope," and that means they must get it back through outside aid. The larger universities with years of tradition behind them know that they will only have to shuffle the graduate combination and deal out new sets until the right one is found.

Presumably - this from the viewpoint of the idealist who believes there should be pleasure in coaching as well as in the game - any former 'varsity man should have the right of contact with the team, or at least with the coaches handling it. The particular squad has been chosen, of course, but the idea is that any old player who returns in the course of the fall should be called upon for his advice. It sometimes happens, however, that someone of these old-timers has played on a badly coached and badly beaten eleven, in which case his advice will not be worth much on the face of it. The coaches who are in contact with the team should be, as a rule, men who have made something of a success of their own football careers. It has been said that nothing succeeds like success, but it might well be added that nothing impresses like success, and this impression goes a long way with the men who are trying for the team.

One of the greatest problems of the graduate system, therefore, has been to make use of men who on the surface are useless and at the same time maintain their interest in their university and its teams by carefully avoiding driving them away. The problem has been solved to some extent by turning them into "bleacher" coaches and scouts, of whom I shall have more to say farther on.

There is one more problem of the graduate system that has made a deal of trouble from time to time and that is the question whether the head field coach should be selected from the ranks of the younger men or from among the old-timers. Yale has recently abandoned the system of making the captain of one season the field coach the following year, and other universities gave it up long ago. The system survived at Yale as long as it did probably because the young head coach received such solid and capable support and usually proved tractable. Any football man will tell you that no man who has played football four years at college, and has had no further experience is fit to put in charge of a great coaching system. He makes a good coach for another and smaller college with great frequency, but it is certain that he has not mastered the sum of the football knowledge of his own university's system and is therefore not able to make the best of the advice he gets from the oldtimers, or distinguish always between good advice and bad. Furthermore it is quite natural for him to turn to the younger body of coaches for this advice, and overlook the ripe wisdom of the men of years ago.

Let us suppose that Smith, having been captain the year before, has been chosen field coach. In selecting his staff what more natural than that he should turn to Jones, a team mate of the year before, whom he knew intimately off the gridiron as well as on. At this stage Brown, an old-timer, steps in and offers help. If Jones and Brown disagree on some vital point it is safe to say that Smith will accept the decision of Jones as final. Brown means less to him than Jones. Brown may be right, but Jones is younger, presumably more up to date, and already has won Smith's confidence. But should Smith in his dilemma refuse to accept the opinion of either man as final he probably will turn to the oldest graduate who has had the steadiest connection with the team, whether as an active coach or a theorist. Both of the other men are apt to resent it, and in the case of the old-timer he may feel that the man turned to has had quite enough to do with the game at his university in the past. Promptly there is trouble, the older men split up into rival camps, and the last stage of that young field coach is worse than the first.