Popular Science Monthly 



Vol. 89 

 No. J 



239 Fourth Ave., New York 



November, 1916 



$1.50 

 Annually 



Training the Football Tackier 



A tackling dummy which moves as if it 

 were a live player running around the end 



FOOTBALL as now played is a well- 

 balanced, interesting game, with 

 emphasis laid more than e\-er on 

 the physical development of the 

 players. During recent years the 

 game has undergone refining at the 

 hands of experienced sportsmen, 

 with the result that open placing is 

 encouraged in preference to the 

 rough and tumble close formation of 

 other seasons. The demand today 

 is for more speed and better general- 

 ship. 



Football is so strenuous a game 

 that it may not be played without 

 preliminary training. A thorough 

 mastery of the sport calls for the 

 proper coordination of brains and 

 brawn. 



A number of mechanical con- 

 trivances have been invented to 

 harden the football recruit during his 

 practicing season. Tackling ckim- 

 mies are perhaps the most numerous. 

 They require tactics which arc far 

 removed from the actual operation of 

 bringing a player to the ground when 

 he is running at full speed. 

 Throwing a lifeless figure pros- 

 trate is entirely different from 

 tackling a moving figure. 



Oliphant of the "Army," the 

 human battering ram, carried 

 from one to four tacklcrs down 

 the field with him when he was 

 running with the ball. No 

 amount of preliminary practice 

 enabled players to halt his ter- 

 rific rushes. It is just possible, 

 however, that if a tackling 



device such as that illustrated on the 

 opposite page had been used in teach- 

 ing the players the rudiments of scientific 

 STEEL CABLt tackling, Oliphant might 



I have met his Nemesis. 



John H. 

 A s h t o n , a 

 Brown Uni- 

 versity man, 

 has over- 

 come many of the most 

 serious defects in exist- 

 ing tackling devices. His 

 dummy moves exactly 

 as if it were a live player 

 on a quick run around 

 the end. When the 

 player tackles the dum- 

 my, it does not im- 

 mediately fall to the 

 ground, but furnishes a 

 positive resistance to a 

 downward drag, so that 

 the player must use the 

 same force that he would 

 employ to down an opponent. 

 The dumni}- hangs by a steel 

 cable from an arm mounted 

 upon a hollow mast. Attached 

 to the mast, at a point where a 

 bracket meets it, is a handle, 

 used to rotate the frame at any 

 desired speed to impart the 

 proper momentum to the dum- 

 my. As the player rushes 

 toward the dummy, the coach 

 pulls the handle, causing the 

 dummy to swerve away from 

 the attack. There is a counter- 

 weight in the hollow mast. 



The hollow mast and 

 its various parts 



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