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Show NEW RULES I mejEis Upet in the Dope on Eastern Football Fields Is Due to the Changes. HARVARD LOOKS STRONGEST OF THE COLLEGE ELEVENS West Point Has a Magnificent Start, Which Portends a Victorious Season. The unexpected closeness of several of the Important football games recently was the leading phase of football developments. devel-opments. Yale had her hands full to win from Holy Cross, as did Princeton from New York university; Cornell was tied by Oberlhi In a scoreless game; Rutgers held tho Navy to a no score lie, and Brown wan tied by Colgate In a game In which ther was no scoring. Thero was an unusual and striking output of ,close games whore there was no reason to expect ex-pect closo games. Another 0 to 0 gamo was between Lehigh Le-high nnd Sevens, wherean a Lehigh victory vic-tory was regarded as next to a foregone conclusion, by the Lehigh sympathizer, at least. There were four 0 to 0 games among prominent teams In the eastern section, but the 0 to 0 aspect of the day's encounters lo of no special significance. Aid Weaker -Teams. When the rules were changed before, scoreless games were frequent at first, but became less so as inoro exporienco was had with tho rules. Yet theso score-iless score-iless games perhaps serve to ahow the dlfflcultv of getting the ball ovor the last few yards of an opponent's territory. As the defending team can concentrate Us defense and tho attacking side cannot push and pull the runner, gaining distance dis-tance inside the ten-yard line is a rushing rush-ing feat, which Is giving all teams great trouble this year- The showing made by Holy Cross and Tufts against Yale, by Rutgers against tho Navy, and the other games in which the favorite had the tlmo of Its life skinning through, supports the prediction that the new rules would be fine for the smaller teams. It did not look that way particularly from the very first games this fall, but slnco then tho reputed weaker teams have been making their presence folt to better effect. But. the only way to judge fairly of this point Is to wait until the season Is over. The elevents of the greater inherent strength, which are now feeling their way and ate In a somewhat crude state, will bo much stronger before the season ends and may be just as far ahead of the lossor lights under these rules as any rules of the past. Football Is emphatically em-phatically a game In which the first part of the season is notoriously unreadable unread-able as presaging the results of tho last part. Speaking of the difficulty of gaining ground by rushing nyj,r an opponent's goal line, thero . has been no lack of ground gaining In otlior parts of tho field' Indeed, long runs botween the twenty-flve-yard lines have been a distinct feature fea-ture of the season. There has been comparatively com-paratively little running back of punts. Pendleton of Princeton seems to be the best In the east in that regard, but there have beon many lengthy end runs and journeys through the line- In tha.t way the new rules have worked an Improvement. Improve-ment. Camp's Suggestion? Good. This only goes to show what would have beon possible had the forward pass been done away with entirely and open field running and a wide fiungr attack been made more of a requisite. Walter Camp's contention was' that If you put It up to a team that It has got to open out Its attack to gain ground, must develop de-velop plays of a wider strategical nature, na-ture, such plays would be bound to come. The developments to date bear him out. Camp alone probably could make better football rules than the other men engaged en-gaged In the task. A feature of the forward pass has been the shortness of tho gains. As the pass must not go more than twenty yards teams are so intent on not making the paps too long that they ofton don't got ll long enough to be of any avail. Therp are more passes less than ten yards than more than that distance. Frequently the pass docs not gain a first down, putting It up to the attacking attack-ing side to kick on the third down. Not often this season has n forward pass been risked on a third down when failure of tho pass would mean loss of 'the ball. One thing about the passes this year is that they go through oftener than they used to. A reason for this is that the passes can be mado over the center as well as five yards out. Thera has beon a scarcity of runs for additional gain by the man making the catoh. The defense when not able to Intercept the pass has buen able to get I hold , of the catcher quickly. Few SeriouD Injuries. In the matter of injuries, the season sfl far has been all that the rules committee com-mittee hoped for Dr. Nichols of Boston, who look? after the physical welfaro of tho Harvard squad, Bald the other day that ho had so little to do that it felt absurd to take the money. "There has been a great falling off In the number of injuries," he added, "and I think It will continue so. "Wouldn't be surprised If there were a few' serious Injuries before the season is over, but don't think there will "be anything like the number of Injuries under the new rules. "Why. you can see the difference on tho flald. Last year the sound of men coming together, whon a group of powerful pow-erful young follows aro engaged in slamming slam-ming a man into a group of equally powerful young fellows bent on stopping them, was a crashing, jarring bound heard all' over the place. This year the 'sound la much less, merely that produced pro-duced by tho contact of canvas ns one man slpn by another." Harvard haa the best material In the cast this year. Yet this Is a condition which might result in improvement im-provement up to a. certain point, and then not tho improvement needed in the November' part of the campaign. Yale, Princeton and Pennsylvania at this writing havo further to go to develop de-velop a successful eleven than Harvard. Har-vard. Yale, Princeton and Pennsylvania know they have to Improvo. with the accent on the know, and this may prove an advantage. They are cruder now that Harvard, with small scores made by them due to slow but possibly jurc progress Yale Is engaged in feeling out a. deal of green material. Tho Blue appears to nave done less In getting along toward a. definite selection of first string material ma-terial than the others. Also In several of the games and In part of all the games the Ells have begun the battle without the services of some of their best mon. In several of the games Captain Cap-tain Daly, Kllpatrlck. Howe, Brooks. Savage and Bemelslcr cither have not played or haven't started the game. Howe la the best quarterback In the. cast, and his absence makes some difference. dif-ference. It wouldn't he hard right now to guess at the Princeton backflcld for the final games; of tho whole Harvard team with the possible exception of left end and center. Still Harvard has some excellent quarterback material in addition ad-dition to Wlgglesworth. There's Gardner, for instance. He's about as deft a manipulator ma-nipulator of tho forward pass as has been seen along the Atlantic seaboard thl season. West Point Strong. No team made a more encouraging start than Went Point. In their first game the soldiers put away by a score of 24 to 0 a team which three dayG before held Yale to 17 to 0. It wasn't anv particular Princeton weakness that enabled New York University Uni-versity to hold 'the Tigers to 12 points, but Now York University strength. New York University was alert and-up to date. The New Yorkers aro not the football marks they once "were. They made the most of the possibilities afforded to -a sunposedly weakor team by the now rules. Princeton did not make use of much of a repertoire of plays, and Just here is another an-other point. In connection with tho bis teams. They aro showing as little as possible Just now, while their opponents as a rulo cut loose with alb they Know. Pennsylvania since her poor beginning has gone ahead with a bravery characteristic character-istic of that Institution to make the most of the none too encouraging conditions and has shown some Improvement in each successive game. True, West Virginia was absurdly easy and not much of a test of actual strength, but irrespective of this the Quakers exhibited somo aptitude apti-tude In technical details and a good frame or mind. Another team . that appears to have come along considerably within a week Is Dartmouth. Cornell and the Navy, ran into one of those snags which generally come to them all in the course of a season. sea-son. Thev should derive much good from the experience, even If they discovered that they weren't as good as they thought thoy were. Such glowing accounts had been heard of tho Navy material that the team's failure to score on Rutgers was the nearest near-est thing to an upset of the day. Chicago Chi-cago with' a defeat and Michigan with a slim three points against Case are western west-ern teams that emerge from battle in a chastened frame of mind. Brown Is traveling a pretty thorny path and 1s showing little scoring ability. The playing play-ing of the Brunonians has not been In keeping, apparently, with the material, A play In the Harvard-Williams gamo showed lack of knowledge of the rules. A Williams man was tho offondor. One of his mates muffed a forward pass. Tho first named man waited for tho muffer to recover, when under the. new rules he had a right to fall on it himself.. Last year this wasn't th6 rule and the Williams man seemed to have last year's rules Jn his hoad. Dr. Newton, tho Williams coach, says, by the way, that he has no quarterback, lie has a right and left, halfback and a right and left fullback. Either of tho halfbacks may take tlic ball from the snapper back. On tho offense the four backs take a seml-clrcular formation, the two halfbacks at the extremities of the semi-circlo and the two fullbacks a foot or two further back and Insido the wo halfbacks. Only in having a man to call the siftnals Is there a quarterback. F. H. Burr of the Harvard coaching staff Is III with ivDhold fever at hla ""ir in Brookllne, Mass. His Illness may Interfere with the Ooachlng plans. New York Sun. Lohigh Easy for Army, By Associated Prcts. WEST POINT. N. Y.. Oct. 22. Tho army snowed Lehigh undor today. 2B to 0. Tho visitors never had a. chance. Because Be-cause of i wpt field and a drizzling rain there were many fumblos. |