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Show OCTOBER 29, 1926. Mrafw" GRIDIRON PLAY Uncertainty of Results Adds Interest to Football; Like Home Run I BY BILLY EA'AXS Sport fans like a team with a punch. The remarkable growth in popularity that baseball has enjoyed enjoy-ed in the past five years can he traced directly to the additional power that has been shown at the ; bar. Babe Buth and his home runs showed the way. Immediately everybody every-body else followed suit or tried to. Football during the same period j has shown as rapid growth as base-;ball. base-;ball. It is now not only a college sport but the game of the masses as well. The forward pass has done for I football what the home run did for baseball supplied a new and powerful pow-erful scoring punch. The pass is a dangerous weapon that can be used to advantage by the small college as well as the leaders. A good passer on just an ordinary team can prove most troublesome. Keen Competition Going back 3 0 years in football, certain of the larger institutions of learning stood out as the class of the field. That condition no longer exists, at least not in nearly so definite a degree. Ten years ago it was the exception excep-tion for a smaller college to score on one of the big elevens. Today it is the exception if the smaller college fails to score. Such a situation makes for uncertainty, un-certainty, adds a zest to the sport that didn't exist when the big colleges col-leges outclassed the field, and has made for the great increase in popularity popu-larity that football has enjoyed in recent years. You certainly can't take anything any-thing for granted in football these days . t Hani On Experts A perusal of. the football scores of I the season from all sections of the i country reveals that condition to ! be true. In some instances, heavy favorites were beaten. AA'hile there were only a few such upsets, many of the underdogs managed to score on their more famous rivals. Unquestionably the forward pass has created the wider scope for scoring that now exists. ; The pass no longer is a mere threat, but a dangerous weapon. , Incidentally, the fear of it makes conditions better for a running attack. at-tack. No sport can thrive that lacks uncertainty. un-certainty. The pass has made football foot-ball a tough game to figure. No longer can the experts dope out the winners and show a good percentage. |