In studying their own eleven the "bleacher" coaches will pick up many a little point that needs correction, and that is not so readily discovered by the active coaches who are standing on the field on the level with the team. Natural tendencies of the players are accentuated when seen from this high position, as explained in the chapter dealing with football for the spectator, and mistakes in judgment, especially in the positions assumed by the secondary defense, stand out clearly.

These scouts and "bleacher" coaches when carefully handled by the field coach, are valuable assets to any team, but at least once a year there should be a general exodus of the active coaches to the field where the principal rival is to play a really hard game. The rival will of course confine itself to the simplest brand of football, and will show nothing new, but by the time a really hard game is reached, the team should be well enough together so that it will reflect in a general way the type of the coaching. Some inkling of the plan adopted to cover certain parts of the field have to be shown, and if the eleven is to make much of the run from kick formation, for instance, it will be apt to be foreshadowed. I do not recall many instances in which one eleven profited in the final game through advance knowledge of any "trick" plays planned by its rival, but a general idea of the opponent's methods has frequently come in handy. Special defensive formations may be devised against especially dangerous men on the opposing eleven, and if there is a drop-kicker to be faced a study is made of the protection afforded him in the hope of planning some way in which to block his kicks. In 1901, for instance, both Princeton and Harvard went to extremes when menaced by drop-kickers in their game, putting the secondary defense right up on the line in the hope of blocking the kick. Two kicks were blocked by this risky method, and one of them was turned into a touchdown when Sanford B. White of Princeton picked up the ball and ran eighty yards or so.

One of the greatest assets of a big coaching system is the number of graduates who are coaching smaller college teams both East and West. These men do a great deal of experimenting, and their elevens also frequently play against teams that will eventually meet their own alma mater. They send in full reports on the work of these outside' teams, and get from the eleven they are coaching pointers on the strength and weakness of teams that are to be opponents of their own university, which can be gained in no other way. It may be, too, that some one of these men has struck out for himself in building an attack and has made a success of plays that have not been tried or understood at his own university. In such a case he can teach the plays to some emissary from his own university, and thus help the team, even in the eleventh hour, Dr. H. L. Williams, for instance, who has been coaching for some years at Minnesota, has been one of Yale's great assets. Active coaches are sent from New Haven to study his methods and his plays, and it was his shift play brought East by T. L. Shevlin, the famous Yale end, that not so long ago enabled a disorganized Blue eleven to get together and defeat Princeton and fight Harvard to a drawn and scoreless battle. The shift as applied to the Yale team was not made exactly as it was at Minnesota, but it employed the "jump" principle that is the foundation of many of the later shifts.

Yale and Pennsylvania have led in recent years in the number of men who are coaching other teams, and these men have been of considerable assistance to the active coaches at New Haven and Philadelphia, while Princeton's outside coaching has not been so noticeable. In W. W. Roper and "Phil" King the Tigers have two men who have had a great deal of outside experience, handling teams in the middle West, and these men have a broad view of the game. Dartmouth is also well to the front in supplying coaches for other colleges, and this has proved a help at Hanover, for because of the geographical isolation of the Green at Dartmouth coaches have not had many opportunities to see the work of other elevens.

There has been in recent years an interchange of opinion among coaches both East and West that has been one of the delightful features of the game. Fielding H. Yost of Michigan is a frequent visitor in the East, where he picks up pointers on the latest methods as applied in that section, while at the same time talking freely about his own ideas of open play. The Yale game at West Point has always brought together more coaches than any other early season contest in the East, and these men have talked more frankly and freely than was the case many years ago.

There is probably no one man who knows all the football there is to know, and the interchange of opinion has made for better football all over the country. It is safe to say that the average coach, even of the smaller colleges, knows more football than was the case ten years ago, and it may be added that his mind is more open than it used to be. The first year the forward pass came into the game the coaches at Dartmouth clung to the old-fashioned line-breaking style of football and paid little or no attention to the new open method, while the Princeton coaches experimented with the new plays and made much of them. The result was that when the two teams came together Dartmouth was badly beaten even though the material, considered individually, was quite as good as Princeton's. The Dartmouth coaches of to-day do not make that sort of mistake, for they are keen to learn what the other elevens are doing and what the other coaches think about the more advanced style of football.

It is the duty of a capable field coach to keep in touch with men of his own university who have gone out to coach other colleges and to seek their aid and the benefit of their observations. These men should be and in most cases are made welcome when they return to their alma mater, for they have been learning since their graduation, and being obliged to coach without much if any assistance, usually have attained to a broad knowledge of the game.