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Show Many Trends On Gridiron In '37 Race By BILL BOM NEW YORK. Dec 10 11 Just as 18 Jo was ths sesson of ens major trend In college football, so 1937 was the season of many trends. The annual Aasociatsd Press survey, sur-vey, which hss as Its object the discovery dis-covery of which wsy the football winds are blowing, shows they were blowing every which way. There is so littls svidence of a na- al - m Lsaanasav -j-JW naaSaV aMBHW'4fe Irvfnnw? J lly ssv wxT w Increased use of the forward pass, thst it seems advisable to list ths various trends snd the ssctions in which they wer most pronounced. West Passe Lea 1 Less forward passing: observed at Pittsburgh, Carnegls Tech. Wt Virginia. Cornell, Syracuse, Princeton Prince-ton and Rutgers in the east; notably Ohio Stat in the midwest; Alabama, Ala-bama, Louisiana Stats, Tukuie, Auburn, Au-burn, Florida and Sewanee In the South; California, Washington, Washington Slate, Southern California Cali-fornia and Oregon State in the far west g More forward passing; ob-obeerved ob-obeerved at Vlllanova, Georgetown. George Washington and Maryland colleges in tha east; Marquette, Iowa, the Big Six, Detroit St Louis and smaller colleges in Nebraska and Indiana, In the midwest; Duke. Ksntucky and the Virginia colleges in ths south; Arkansas in ths southwest: south-west: ths entire Rocky Mountain conference. I Less lateral passing; observed virtually everywhere. 4 Stranger defenses, with emphasis em-phasis en the eptdemle-llke spread of th five-man line and other freak, or. In the words of Wesley Fry f Kansas Mate, "may defenses; de-fenses; abaerved in the east, th Big Six, the Pacifle northwest, the Southeastern eonferenos and the Rockies. 6 Increased power and deception decep-tion in running attacks, observed, among others, at Yale, Harvard, West Virginia, Carnegie Tech, Cornell, Cor-nell, Rutgers, Maine, Ohio State, Vanderbilt Southern Methodist, Rice, Texas Christian, California, Washington. Wsshington State, Southern California and Idaho. Wider use of the field goal, instead in-stead of a fourth down gamble on an "all-or-nothing" play; observed principally in New England, Pennsylvania Penn-sylvania and the Southeastern conference. con-ference. The use of the forwsrd pass appeared ap-peared to hinge pretty much on the material at hand. The larger schools, well-equipped with manpower, man-power, chose to turn to power and deception plsys, with California, Harvard, Cornell and Ohio State as notsble exsmplea. Ths Buckeyes' Buck-eyes' employment of theee tactics was particularly outstanding, since, in the past they had been lesding exponents of the raule-daszl type of offense. Wide-open Play Ths smaller colleges, finding It impossible to gain ground on power, turned to the wide-open type of play. This was particularly trus in Indiana, In-diana, where there has been a marked drop in material in recent years; such a drop that the aise of most football squads ranged from IT to 30 men. The lateral continued to lose favor. Even those teams which continued con-tinued to employ it found it to be. as often as not, a boomerang. One outstanding out-standing exception to this rule wss undefrsted Fordham. which made extenaive use of the down-field let-era let-era I. The five-men line wss th principal princi-pal new development of the year. Yale was its chief sponsor in the early weeks of ths season, but before be-fore the campaign's end it had sprsad throughout the country, and was invaluable to Alabama on its all-winning march to a Roe Bowl bid, and to Washington in its scoreless score-less tie with the California coast conference champions. Alabama, too, was on of the most publicised revivers of ths field goal, using it twice to gain winning win-ning points, and supplying a strong srgument to those coaches who favor fa-vor leaving the goal poats alone. |