Football is a game that requires of the player not merely good, but exceptional condition. The man who has done a deal of fairly severe physical work daily, whose muscles are hard, and whose wind appears to be sound, is far from being in fit shape to stand the ordeal of a big game as it is played to-day. Thereby hangs the story of the advent of Harry Tuthill, trainer, at West Point. Because of the strict discipline, the amount of drill and the abstemious life lived by the West Point cadets the young men in gray were expected to tackle a stiff schedule annually, to go through game after game, not necessarily without injury, but at least without suffering from exhaustion on the field. For years the eleven struggled along without the services of a professional trainer, even though those who were in charge of the coaching realized that the cadets were as much in need of special attention, if for different reasons, as the collegians. Year after year the eleven met such teams as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, and stood up famously in the first half, only to yield in the second.

Anyone who had been in the cadet dressing room between the halves in the course of this trainerless period was able to realize on the spot that the services of an experienced man were needed, since the team was generally utterly exhausted after a hard half against older, stronger and better conditioned men. At length the change came. One head coach had been watching for some time the work of 95

Harry Tuthill as trainer of the Detroit baseball team of the American League. Tuthill was making a record in reducing sprains in a hurry and this alone would have made him extremely valuable to any football team. But the baseball trainer had other qualities, and the West Point head coach at last made arrangements to engage him for the football season.

He arrived at a time when there was a deal of heavy drill work and the daily dress parade winding up with the review in which the cadet corps did a quarter of a mile or so in full uniform and in double time. After the review, so the story goes, the superintendent sent for Tuthill and asked the baseball man just why he was needed at an institution whose young men were already in such superb physical condition.

"Well, I dunno," replied Tuthill, twirling his hat on his thumb, " but if you'll ask these young fellows to run around the block just once more and then ask them to whistle I think you'll find out."

Thereafter the veteran baseball trainer became a fixture, and he turned out better conditioned elevens than had been seen at West Point in years, whether in victory or defeat. What Tuthill did for army teams had been done for years at other institutions: by Jack McMasters at Princeton, and more recently by Keene Fitzpatrick, who had a splendid record at Michigan; by Pooch Donovan at Harvard; by Mike Murphy at Yale, and subsequently at Pennsylvania; by Johnny Mack at Yale, and by Jack Moakley at Cornell. It is true that all these men, save Tuthill, were primarily track and field coaches and trainers, but they soon applied their store of wisdom successfully to football, with the result that to-day, on the eve of a big game, no prognostication of the outcome that does not include a consideration of condition is worth the paper on which it is printed.

To those who do not delve very deeply into football, however, the trainer has always seemed to be of no very great importance. They see him on the field at many a halt in the course of the big game, swabbing off his charges with a huge sponge, bandaging broken heads, patching up hands, arms and ankles, especially ankles. But of all the hard work of the early season there is little evidence save to the tutored eye.

Yet the trainer is to-day one of the most important cogs in the football machine. The outsider would be surprised to learn the extent to which he is consulted on the most important details of the game. It has been said of Mike Murphy, for instance, that he knew as much about the game as the best of the coaches. He had ideas of his own, too, and they were generally good ones. While at Yale he was a better prophet of the result of the Harvard-Yale game than any one else at New Haven, and picked the score with frequency and surprising approach to absolute accuracy. Murphy's reputation, so far as the general public was concerned, rested largely on his work with the track and field teams, but men who followed football closely esteemed him quite as much for his efforts in the football season. Keene Fitzpatrick made a similar football reputation at Michigan, and Pooch Donovan has long been thoroughly appreciated at Harvard. The men mentioned stand at the top of the heap, but the country is full of good men who are gaining in experience every day and will reach the top when the Veterans settle back to enjoy their laurels.

Now aside from his regular duties in conditioning the team, in apportioning the time each man or set of men ought to be allowed to work in practice, and in bandaging, devising defensive armor and the like, the trainer is of the utmost value to the coach in that he is in touch with the team after it has passed from under the eye of the coach. Both coach and trainer are presumably experts in judging men and their moods, but the trainer sees his charges at their worst as well as their best. They are turned over to him after a hard day's practice, frequently tired and worn, and perhaps discouraged to the last degree. Once back in the gymnasium they are apt to relax mentally as well as physically, sometimes almost to the point of breakdown. It is in such circumstances that the "yellow streak" is often apt to show, that flinch that is often so well concealed on the field up to the day of the big game. Under the same conditions pluck,too, comes to the surface, and the trainer has a chance to find out why a certain candidate had an off day. It may have been that the young fellow concealed his hurt from the coach fearing that it would spoil his chance of making the eleven. He cannot, however, conceal it from the trainer, who promptly orders him on the hospital list and tells the coach what the trouble has been. A report also goes in concerning the over-tender apparent star who whines about his bruises and demands all the trainer's time while men more sorely in need of attention never raise a whimper.