There are still those who contend that a team will be no better and no worse than its captain, but the conviction has been steadily growing that the coaching and the work of the quarterback in these days of complicated generalship must share the burden with the team leader.

While, generally speaking, the captain is not the factor that once he was, in that he is able to shift a deal of his burden to other shoulders, and that much of the credit for the games as actually handled must go to the quarterback, the fact remains that he is still a power off the field, has plenty of opportunity to show the faculty of leadership on it, and that upon his harmonious relations with the coaching staff depends in large measure the success of the team. Many a big university team has gone through a disastrous season simply because the captain and the head coach were at odds, or because there were dissensions in the coaching' staff, the captain arraying himself on one side, the head coach on the other. Only a few years ago the captain and the head coach of one of the largest of the Eastern university elevens were hardly on speaking terms, with the result that the team was split into irreconcilable factions. Disaster under these conditions was inevitable, as indeed it always will be.

Under football conditions as they are to-day it is pretty well understood that there is plenty of room for both captain and coach, each in his sphere, so long as they can work in harmony. Of the former example in the matter of individual earnestness and headwork and a high quality of leadership are expected both on and off the field, while of the latter wide football knowledge, ready judgment of men, and the ability to get the utmost ounce out of his subordinate coaches are demanded. The head coach must have even beyond this something that for lack of a better term I shall call "thrust." This is a quality not readily to be defined.

It is not too much to say that there are hundreds of men who know football as thoroughly as some of the leading coaches, and yet who are not by nature constructive; who represent only passive ability, valuable often in an advisory capacity, but useless when in a position of authority. These men are not necessarily lacking in heft of jaw, in tenacity or imposing physique, but they are not born to command, are not born to teach, are not born to "get it across," as your true football enthusiast calls that happy faculty of "lifting" a team up to its top plane of efficiency through sheer, indomitable personality.

The number and quality of the coaches increases, of course, from the small preparatory school up through the smaller colleges to the great universities. At Yale there is annually a cloud of coaches, sometimes two men for every position as the day of the big game approaches, while Harvard and Princeton work with a smaller number. As a rule no more men stay through the season at New Haven than at Cambridge and Princeton, but it is in the closing days that the Elis make their supreme effort. At such a time not one man, but twenty men are "getting it across," even if the process means no more than going down the field with the players and yelling "You got him." When the Yale system is working at its best the sense of personal ' responsibility is insisted upon to almost a morbid extent, each man on the team feeling that he is personally responsible for the failure or success of the play, and he alone. It is impossible for the smaller colleges and the schools to carry the system to that extent, and at these institutions the burden of the head, and perhaps the only coach, is heavy indeed.

But it is specifically with the functions of the captain, the head coach and his regular assistants, rather than with the army of eleventh hour "whips" that we are dealing here. As a general rule the importance of the captaincy is even greater in the school than it is in the university, and among the larger schools Andover has gone farther in the inculcation of self-reliance in team leadership than any other institution of equal rank.

In the smaller schools the captain is apt to be the oldest boy on the team, and so something of an idol to his fellows. He can do no wrong, nine times out of ten he is almost a class above his team mates as a player, and he is followed with a blind obedience and an enthusiasm not always found in institutions of a higher rank. Him the coach must bind to him with hoops of steel, for the team will be to a large extent built around him, and a certain amount of outward and plainly visible deference on the part of the coach enhances his value as a leader.

There are exceptions, of course, notably cases in which a young instructor with a college reputation as a player does the coaching. This sort of man is usually extremely popular, and he finds it far less necessary to deal with the candidates through the medium of the captain. Even he must remember, however, that once on the field the team passes from his hands to a very great extent, and if he be of the conscientious type, more and more in evidence these days, he will see to it that the boys-get into the habit of self-reliance, playing their own game, on the foundation laid by him of course, but meeting contingencies as they arise without so much as a thought of looking over to the side lines.

On these school teams the coach and captain should be inseparable on and off the playing field, and much is often to be gained if the two will journey together early in the fall to witness one of the fairly important college games, even when the school team itself is scheduled to play. On their return the captain has much to tell the eleven about what he has seen in the way of large caliber football, his enthusiasm is fired, the team has had the experience of playing without a leader, and the prestige of the coach is heightened by the lecture he will be able to give on the lessons to be drawn from the contest he has just witnessed. A small matter, this, if we trust to surface indications, but an important one, as every man who has handled a team of boys knows.