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Show vCIfflSiyFFi LOflGEUIG ASSET Brains Replace Brawn in Football ; Teams More Evenly Balanced. By Tribune Special Sport Service. ! NEW YORK. Dec, 15. Football used to be a game in which brute strength ! reigned supreme. i Beef was the prime requisite a few i years .ago, and the little fellows were passed up by the coaches because they did not have the avoirdupois th-it j was necessary to the upbuilding of a winning team. But the old-ttme cave-man stuff has had to take a back seat, for the game i of football as it Is played today by all j of the larger schools of the country nas j become a game where brains count as j much as brute force. I Football has really ben elevated to j a. scientific level, and for this reason the I little fellows and the little schools have j tome into their own at last. The intricate plays that are used by big university elevens today require strength, foot-sureness and speed, but j0 they require quick-thinking players with sure memories as much as anything else. The introduction of the forward pass was ' a big step in building up football as a scientific game, and since it has been universally adopted and approved the coaching fraternity has found a wide latitude for the use of Its brains. In any season but one like the present autumn, with war interfering, the euaches have no trouble finding plenty of material. The new style game has extended ex-tended the field and players of all sizes and weights can be used to advantage now. The slow-footed, beefy team of old would be a joke in this day and age, for, with the exception of a fairly heavy line, the makeup of modern football elevens leans toward the lighter and faster men. Players like Elmer Oliphant, who is heavy and stockily built, may increase the poundage of a football team, but they never get by unless, like Ollie, they have lots of speed and natural football ability. Another new phase of modern football is the amount of attention now being given to second-string men. Coaches do not pay so much attention to individual stars as they used to. They have learned that a football team without a strong array of substitutes is often a failure, and for this reason the individual stars ave getting less attention from a rra-jonty rra-jonty of grid mentors. In the old days the defensive strength of a football team was more important than its offense. Today the offense of a team is what counts most heavily. It is not that the defensive side of football foot-ball is being neglected, but with the open game in vogue, and the opportunities opportu-nities for scoring much greater, the offense of-fense must be developed first. The brightest stars of football in other days were kickers, terrific line plungers, or players of great strength who possessed pos-sessed speed and who could throw off a half dozen tacklers after breaking through the line. They were individual stars and they depended more upon their own resources to cross the enemy's goal lines than upon the aid their team cculd give them. Today every player on a football team If important. A modern eleven is built like a machine, with every man a cog and every cog dependent upon every other cog in the perfect running off of plays. This is why every player, be he a lineman, a backfield man or a player on either wing position, gets an equal amount of attention from the coaches. . The new Idea of "football for the many" rather than, football for the few Is making Itself felt strongly this year, where a lack of playing material in many schools has made it imperative. And some of the .biggest men in football foot-ball now are predicting today that the game has drifted into a new era; that there will be more football and better all-around players within tw6 more years than ever before. |