Kelly of Princeton was another genius who knew more football than anyone could teach him, and who upon occasion proved that he could go it alone. One of the most remarkable exhibitions of consecutive ground-gaining with little or no assistance that I have ever seen was given by Kelly in the Yale-Princeton game of 1897 at New Haven, when a veteran Tiger eleven was defeated by an unheralded team in blue led by that splendid tackle and oarsman, James 0. Rodgers. The Tiger team, which had smothered Yale the year before at the Polo Grounds, boasted of such veterans as Cochran, Holt, Hillebrand, Baird, Bannard, Kelly and Reiter, and was a favorite in the betting at 3 to 1. It became apparent soon after the game opened, however, that it was a case of overtrained veterans against under-trained youngsters who were figuratively bursting with ambition, and the inevitable happened.

With almost certain defeat staring them in the face, the Tigers made one last desperate rally, and in doing so called repeatedly on Kelly, with the result that with this star carrying the ball in nearly every rush the Princeton eleven carried the ball fifty-five yards up the field only to lose it at last on a fumble. Time and again in the course of this heroic advance Kelly went into or slid outside of tackle practically unaided, bowling along more like a big ball than like a human being. It was one of the great exhibitions of a born runner, of a football genius, and much more to be lauded than his work the previous year, when he was aided by one of the greatest football machines ever sent into a big game.

Harold Weekes of Columbia was another backfield genius who stands near the top. I know of no other back in the history of the game who was able to put on a greater burst of speed at the instant of turning an end than Weekes, and although his hurdling the line was always spectacular when done with the special formation devised to carry him up into the air and over the forwards, his end running was the one thing in which he relied upon his own superb speed and judgment of pace. In this he was practically beyond coaching, a law unto himself.

C. R. Wyckoff, the Cornell captain of 1895, was one of the few Ithaca players who ever showed real football genius. A small man, he ran erect, like a sprinter, in a broken field, and developed himself into an excellent punter with practically no tuition in that branch of the game, learning how to get remarkable distance considering his light weight. No other runner that I have ever seen has been such a consistent performer in running back a kick-off unless perhaps it be T. L. Shevlin, the Yale end. Their methods were much the same, simple and direct, for both came straight up the field without swerving a yard, it seemed, from right to left, and both struck the first gathering of tacklers at such terrific speed, that many of them were spilled before the runner was brought down. Here Shevlin's weight stood him in good stead, but Wyckoff was small, and seemed to cut through the bunched tacklers like a knife. Both these men were masters of some mysterious football craft that it seems impossible to teach. There are endless examples of this individual football genius when carrying the ball alone is considered.

The geniuses of the defense have been fewer, it would seem, yet here too, individualism has had its day and is still having it. One of the greatest tackles ever seen on any field was that by J. W. Field of Yale, in the Harvard-Yale game of 1910 at New Haven. That tackle undoubtedly saved Yale from defeat. The powerful Wendell had been slipping out opposite tackle and then driving straight ahead clear through to the Yale secondary defense again and again, carrying the ball steadily into Yale territory. Time and again he drove his powerful shoulders into the Blue tacklers and kept on for yard after yard before he was brought down. The Yale defense could do nothing with him or with the play, it seemed, and a Harvard touchdown appeared certain, for the ball had been carried to within thirteen yards of Yale's goal and the play was still moving with all the precision and power it had shown further up the field.

Just at this point the Harvard quarterback thought it a good plan to relieve Wendell for the moment, saving him for the supreme effort that was to result in a touchdown. So he gave the ball to Corbett, another strong runner, and the latter, moving in the same type of play, drove through in approved Wendell fashion to the Yale secondary defense. But Field, who had borne the brunt of the defense, was in desperate mood, and came up just as fast as the Harvard runner. He struck the Crimson back with all the force at his command, and made a perfect tackle, so terrific that Corbett dropped the ball, a Yale man fell on it, and the game, as it turned out, was saved. Field had to leave the game, but he had taken the steam out of the Harvard attack, and many good judges agree that no player living could have held onto the ball had he been tackled as Field tackled Corbett. It may be considered a stretch of the imagination to call such a tackle a manifestation of football genius, but to my mind Field did a thing that no one but a born football player could have done, and in such a way that the moral effect of it was felt by both teams.

Genius in defense is based largely on able diagnosis of plays. Coaching will go far toward teaching a man how to diagnose the attack, but there have been men who were born to it, and who in this respect were practically beyond coaching. Of these I think Frank Hinkey of Yale was first. Here was a man who was slender and even almost weak in appearance, and who, especially against Princeton in 1893, faced some of the most powerful plays ever devised. Against him was thrown interference of an order seldom seen since, and yet Hinkey sifted through this interference with great regularity just as he had always sifted through interference ever since he had made his first appearance at Yale. He had a method all his own, and not even the best coaches could show him anything in the matter of diagnosing plays. To men who followed Hinkey's work while he was an undergraduate at New Haven the man always seemed less a body than a flame - an. indomitable and strange spirit in a none too rugged casing of flesh and bone. Nowadays, ends and others who disentangle interference keep their heads up until they have come to a decision as to how best to reach the runner, but Hinkey seemed to have the knack of going in with his head down and apparently looking only at the ground, and getting his man no matter how strong the interference against him.