THE FOOTBALL SEASON IN THE EAST 
BY: W.N, 
T the time of writing this article, the 
aX last of October, it is just beginning 
to be possible to get a good line on 
the relative strength of the Eastern elev- 
ens. The preliminary games ended a 
week or ten days ago and the contests of 
the last two Saturdays have been hard 
enough to give a severe trying out to the 
“big’ teams. From now on the public 
will be interested in the final games of 
the season and the intervening contests 
will give the basis for comparison. 
Unfortunately, the failure of Pennsy]l- 
vania to place a team in the field of equal 
ability to those of the past two seasons 
has robbed the intersectional game with 
Michigan on November 17 of much of its 
interest. It will probably be very generally 
admitted that this game would have been 
the most important of the whole season 
had it not been for Pennsylvania’s defeats 
at the hands of Swarthmore and the In- 
dians. The reason for this far-reaching 
interest is not far to seek. For years 
-Michigan has been at the top in Western 
football, even though defeated by Chicago 
in 1905 in a game in which the only score 
was a safety. Naturally the people of the 
West have thought that their football was 
at least on an equally high plane with that 
of the East. The reputation of Yost and 
his “Hurry-up” teams has gone far and 
wide over the country. For several years 
it has been hoped that Michigan could 
schedule a game with one of the strong 
Eastern teams and thus: settle the mooted 
point as to whether Western football was 
really first class—at least as represented 
by Michigan—or whether Yost’s success 
was due to the fact that his opponents 
were really very weak. 
Until this year it has been impossible 
to schedule such a game, because the 
schedules in the East were already hard 
enough and in some instances too hard. 
Possibly the fact that Michigan did not 
want to enter into an agreement for one 
year only, but wanted the promise of a 
return game the following year, in the 
West, was a factor. Very possibly, also, 
the fact that the Eastern eleven would 
have had very little to gain in reputation 
MORICE 
by a victory and a very great deal to lose 
by a defeat, entered in. Be these things 
as they may, the break between Pennsyl- 
vania and Harvard offered the opportunity 
and the Michigan game was scheduled. 
Pennsylvania’s position with Yale at the 
top of the football ladder in 1904 and 
1905 well qualified them to represent the 
East in a match against Michigan as the 
representative of the West. The football 
public all over the country has looked 
forward to this contest for months and it 
is a question if even now, when a Michi- 
gan victory seems an assured fact, there 
will not be a tremendous and wide-spread 
interest when the seventeenth of Novem- 
ber comes around. Unfortunately -the 
Yale-Princeton game is on the same day. 
Before referring to the work of the 
various teams, it may be well to consider 
how the new rules have worked out. First 
of all it will have been noticed that there © 
have been very few big scores run up. If 
the memory of the writer is not incorrect 
there have been only four scores of over 
forty points by the big teams, made one 
each by Yale, Harvard, Princeton and 
Cornell. The reason for this is easily 
found in the 10-yard gain rule. Even 
with the help of the forward pass and on- 
side kick rules, it has been very much 
harder to gain first downs, even against 
weak opponents. Another point brought 
out is that much of the time taken out in 
past years was done unnecessarily. The 
new rule about taking out time by a side 
only three times in each half, without 
penalty, has worked wonderfully well. 
Games are over in certainly not more than 
three-quarters of the time required in the 
past. It cannot be possible that the 
changes made in the rules have reduced 
the liability to injury to such an extent 
as one would naturally suppose, judging 
from the few occasions when time is 
called, and it can only be taken for 
granted that there was a great deal of 
“killing time” in order to recover wind in 
the past. 
The on-side kick rule has put a decided 
premium on sure catching of punts and 
alertness by the backfield on defense. 
