It not infrequently happens that a big university eleven does well under a head coach who has very little assistance anywhere near his own caliber, as Wisconsin under Juneau, Michigan under Yost, and Minnesota under Dr. H. L. Williams, but as a rule I believe that the fairly balanced staff, working smoothly with head coach and captain, is the better plan. For an eleven of the first rank ten men are none too many, as follows: one man each for the center, guards, tackles and ends; one general line coach, useful both on attack and defense; one man for the general defense and one for the secondary, who would also be useful as a coach for the backs on the offense; one man for punters and drop-kickers; the head coach, who should be himself a strategist and general offensive coach of the first rank; and a man for the quarterbacks, the last-named one of the most important in the group. Splendid results have been obtained by a staff of this size, assigned as I have indicated, and the great university elevens can hardly be expected to get along with fewer men, partly because so much of the early season has to be used up in the sifting out of the masses of material, and partly because the team will be pounded hard as the big games approach, and will be expected to come along with a rush in the first week in November.

The absolute organization of such a staff at the earliest possible moment is a necessity. There must be an exchange of opinion on every department of the game between the chief and his aides before the men get down to work. The head coach will lay out for the free and frank criticism of his assistants his general theories of attack and defense while the captain is rounding up the material and looking it over on the field. From the general discussion of the strategy and tactics of the game the conference will get down to details, and one by one the head coach will take up with his assistants the particular work laid out for each.

The session will begin with what amounts practically to an examination, and end in a conversational clinch. And the captain must know every move. Each of the assistants will be held absolutely responsible for the work in his charge, and there will be a general gathering at least twice a week. As the season advances one of these meetings is usually held right after the game, when the chart of the gridiron fracas is gone over, notes are compared, and the coaches later discuss the game in detail with their pupils, using the blackboard. This is the time to correct faults, when the game is fresh in the minds of the players, and not infrequently fresh in their flesh and bones and skin. The other meeting of the week is usually a Wednesday affair when the work is again gone over and plans for the coming game are discussed. Blackboard talks usually are handled chiefly by the head coach, but it is a good plan, and one followed at most universities, to let the other coaches and the players have a chance, with a view to correcting individual faults. This is a matter that comes more properly under the head of a later chapter, but I mention it here as an indication of how little time it takes to get the members of a coaching staff thoroughly acquainted with one another and the captain.

Apart from their conferences with the head coach it is the custom for his aides to talk things over among themselves, to exchange observations of the temperamental and other peculiarities of the material they are handling, to ask and give advice in technique - especially is this important for the line coaches, since it is one of the foundations of team work - and to discuss the progress of the eleven as a whole.

The coach of the quarterback spends perhaps more of his time with the head coach than with any of the others, for it is some one of his pupils who will be held responsible for the generalship with which the team is run on the day of days, and although the strategy to be employed should be the common property of all the coaches and with rare exceptions of all the players, it must become second nature to this particular coach and his men. The defensive coaches should be inseparable, never failing, however, to keep always in touch with the chief, for, as has been said, he is the presumable master of defense as he is of attack, and the specialists need constantly to refresh their point of view through the medium of frequent conferences with their leader.

In a later chapter the detail work of the coaching staff will be discussed at greater length. I have sought to show here the importance of harmony among the men who are to teach the team, and harmony with the captain, who is the all-important connecting link. If the undergraduate leader and the head coach find it necessary to be in absolute accord it follows easily enough that the lesser coaches should spend some of their time with the captain. It must be remembered that the latter is of necessity in closer sympathy with the players than older men could possibly be, and while he is not perhaps so apt to judge their character accurately, he is at least certain to know enough about his class and his team mates to set the older and wiser coaches on the right track.

In the strictest sense the captain is the man who leads the eleven, the head coach the man who is expected to push it. The captain is in the forefront of the gridiron battle from the beginning of the season, while the head coach is the man behind the team. The one is a rallying point, the other a constant urge, a "thrusting" force that should be both feared and respected. It is a mistake, however, to expect that either shall be a superman. Much in the way of individual fault can be forgiven a captain so long as he is a cool, rapid-fire thinker and an inspiration where the battle is thickest. No captain can hope to conceal from the best of his associates such faults as may be rooted in his own play, and he should be as frank in criticism of his own errors as of those of any other member of the team. He is, after all, only human. The one unforgivable fault is a mistake of the head. He should know his game better than any other man on the team, whether or not he can play up to the standard he has set for himself.

But if the captain is to be a leader in word and deed, none the less is he to be a leader in self-sacrifice. More than one captain has failed miserably in his crowded hour because he undertook to make the touchdown that should have been left to some other member of the team. It requires a high type of courage for the captain of a great university eleven to put aside the temptation to shine personally at the expense of his fellows, or when badly shaken up to leave the game in favor of a substitute, who, if not nearly so good a player, is at least in far better shape to be of real value to his team.

It takes courage, too, to weigh the situation in just the tick of a second and decide upon the psychological moment for going into action personally in the hope of starting a rally that may turn defeat into victory. It is easy to criticize, and the captain is out in the white light that beats upon a leader under fire. His position is peculiarly difficult in that he is expected to show not alone superior brain work, but too often also superior personal playing skill. He may be criticized for doing too little of the work, or for doing too much, and in either case his reputation is bound to suffer.

Happily, in recent years, the game has been blessed with any number of almost ideal captains, both on big and little teams, and they have done much to set an example for the men who will follow in their footsteps. Examples of almost heroic personal achievement and of almost heroic personal sacrifice have been so numerous that any schoolboy should know these days just what sort of person a captain ought to be.

There was one instance not so long ago of a captain who deemed himself in too poor shape to play in his big game. Sending a substitute into his position he watched the struggle from the side lines. His sacrifice went to the extent that he deemed it inadvisable to play for even so much as a single minute. It is seldom that a football leader is called upon to make so great a sacrifice as that, but the fact that Francis Burr, of Harvard, was able to do it, and do it cheerfully, has been an inspiration to Crimson captains who have come after him. It is seldom nowadays that one sees a badly injured captain led from the field, fighting all the way to the side lines. A captain in that condition is of no possible value to his team, and no one should be quicker to realize it than he.

Some one of the militarists has said that "a knowledge of human nature is half of the science of war," and General Sherman wrote:

"There is a soul to an army as well as to the individual man, and no general can accomplish the full work of his army unless he commands the souls of his men as well as their bodies and legs."

What General Sherman said of an army applies with marked force to a football team. There have been great elevens with "souls" and poor ones, too, quite as well equipped in that respect. Fred Daly's Yale team that snatched a victory from Princeton not so long ago and fought a far superior Harvard eleven to a scoreless tie in the same season had a "soul," and Captain Daly found it and understood it and made the most of it in its two big games. There was a "soul" - call it a personality if you prefer - in the Harvard eleven of 1912, and Captain Wendell made the most of it.

It is this "soul," this subtle response as an entity that makes certain elevens stand out so conspicuously, and it is the one thing that both the captain and the head coach must grasp and understand if they are to be ever-victorious or rally brilliantly when the real test comes.

Every now and then one reads, during the football season, that such and such a team has "found itself." This means nothing more nor less than that the team has found this "soul" of which General Sherman wrote, and that captain and head coach have found it, too.