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Show Pfi SOME short while back, one of the leaders in college football asked your correspondent to name the 15 leading coaches in the country. The only answer we could think of in a given time limit was this: "The 15 coaches who have the best material." ma-terial." There is little questioning the fact that for the season of 1946, Red Blaik of Army deserved his award, due largely to the fact that Red and his staff carried Army three years without a defeat. Time and again we have been asked to rank the coaches in order. i w This is an impossi- 1 ble job. Look over just a few from the f list Neyland of i Tennessee, Blaik of Army, Harlow of Harvard, Little of Columbia, Crisler of Michigan, Thomas Thom-as of Alabama, Leahy of Notre Dame, McMillin of inuiana-, ieeiy 01 i Bierman Rice, Butts of Georgia, Geor-gia, McKeever of Cornell, Wade of Duke, Snavely of North Carolina, Odell of Yale, Le-Brucherie Le-Brucherie of U.C.L.A., Bierman of Minnesota but why keep on? This Is only a partial list, where, If given the same material and the same schedules, luck would have to write the story. I can say this. There is no bunch connected with sport that gives as ! much time, thought, worry and com- plete concentration as football coaches give. They brood by day : and night. An ankle, a shoulder, a knee or a back can make all the difference in the world. Those in front figure they must stay there. The . losers must win a game or two. There is a big difference in material from time to time but the old grads and the public at large never consider consid-er this. They look only to the final scores. Such coaches as Red Drew of Mississippi, Red Sanders of Van-derbilt Van-derbilt and Paul Bryant of Kentucky may be unknown nationally, but they are as good as the best with what they have. A Coaches9 Coach9 There may be a better coach than , Dick Harlow of Harvard but who is he? Neyland of Tennessee can keep pace with anyone. Jock 'Sutherland 'Suth-erland was the coaches' coach in college col-lege until he came over to pro ranks. Spend a few days with Steve Owen I . and Greasy Neale, in or out of season, sea-son, and you get part of the answer fall, winter, spring and summer they're always talking and thinking football, still playing over games they lost. Lonnie Stagg at 84 was still , in harness this last season, reluctant reluc-tant to retire. Lonnie was a star at Yale, 60 years ago. With all the tears they shed and all the moaning they give the world, it is almost impossible to shake them loose without with-out using a grenade. . Yonr correspondent more than once has ducked the opportunity of picking or trying to pick the 10 best coaches of all time. - Looking back to something over 40 years we'd say that four of the best were Pop Warner, Knute Rockne, Hurry-up Yost and Percy Haughton. Pop Warner gave football more on the technical side than anyone else, including the single and double wing, a system still just as effective as the T. Colorful Yost Yost gave football its first flare of coaching color and Michigan its first great college football record 56 victories in five years, blemished only by a tie with Minnesota, before Chicago broke the string in 1905. Knute Rockne brought to football its greatest combination of coaching ability, human Interest and personality. person-ality. Rock, in addition to being a great coach, was also the game's star personal contribution when it came to human contact. Bob Zuppke of Illinois brought to football coaching the added gifts of philosophy and humor. Zup had more color than two rainbows. One of his best friends was the late Howard How-ard Jones of Yale and Southern California. Cal-ifornia. No two men were ever further fur-ther apart as human beings. But they were fine coaches and close pals. Haughton of Harvard today is a greatly underrated coach. Cold, hard, austere, he was one of the greatest. A star tactician and technician, tech-nician, Haughton was probably the best of all in discipline. As Tack Hardwick told me once, "If Haughton Haugh-ton told Harvard to jump off a 100 foot cliff and he would catch us we'd all jump. And Percy would catch us." Character Builders The thousand, at least a thousand, football coaches we've mi t and known in the last 40 odd yeavs, have made an almost unbelievable contribution, con-tribution, not only to sport, but also to the good of the nation at large. Not all of them, of course. But the big majority have turned out a great job in the way of training, instruction, instruc-tion, discipline and, if yju'll pardon the phrase, "character building." Did you ever know Pan McGugir, or Lonnie Stagg? Ask their piay-ers, piay-ers, many of them now gray or bald. i |