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Show WW 4 L JS fiCEjir$k THIS is supposed to be the season, when baseballs are thudding into 1 gloves atid bats are thudding against baseballs. But, apparently, football now covers the entire 12 months. 1 It might surprise you to know how manv fnnthnli roanhpfi. scouts and players are seeking the sun, or holding spring - training south of the Mason and Dixon line, as well as above. And they already have started talking about next fall, including in-cluding the 12 or 15 bowl games that will open the campaign cam-paign of 1948. Grantland Rice ,ere .U e 7 of the wildest shifts of coaches this season that football has ever known. There are new men at California, Alabama, Northwestern, North-western, Cornell, Mississippi, San Francisco university, Ohio State, Pittsburgh, Maryland too many to mention. But a big part of the old guard is still standing pat. We have been taking a vote of these sun-seeking wanderers, here in Florida, to get an early line on what might happen from September to November. We first ran into a well-known eastern coach, one of the best, who had this prophecy to offer: Navy vs. Pennsylvania "The college battle in the East should be between Navy and Pennsylvania. Penn-sylvania. They have the two strongest strong-est squads coming up. Columbia and Yale can be close. Yale espe cially so, if Howie Odell can dig up another line. Both Yale and Columbia Colum-bia will have fine backs. Cornell can be strong and probably will be. The eastern race will be a good one, one of the best in many years. Army? A guess. No team can lose nine of its best starting team, especially espe-cially such men as Blanchard, Davis, Da-vis, Tucker, Foldberg and Poole, and have too much left. This should be Navy's year, as far as West Point and Annapolis go. Army won't be bad, but none too good. It may lose four games. "South Georgia loses Trippl and others. Look out for Alabama, Tu-lane Tu-lane and Tennessee. Tulane can be extra good. So can LSU. And don't overlook North Carolina with Charlie Justice. Duke is still a guess." "Just a minute," another scout cut in. "If you leave out Georgia Tech you are crazy. This will be the team to beat in the South." On the early evidence, it seems that the South again will face one of its big seasons, with at least 8 or 10 strong teams. Moving to the Midwest, the vote went to Michigan in the Big Nine roundup, with Notre Dame heading the country's list, East, West, North or South. "Frank Leahy's Notre Dame squad should be even stronger than it was last season,' one traveling scout reported. "Notre Dame has most of her veterans back, most of her stars, plus some young backs who will be brilliant. The squad again will be two or three deep. As Leahy happens to be one of the game's ablest coaches, you can see what this means. A South Bend gallop all. fall." Michigan is rated highly In the Big Nine, without an early Army-game Army-game pressure to set her back this time. Ohio State and Minnesota both will be dangerous. Illinois loses several of her best men, including Agase and Buddy Young. Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma are rated well. In the ever-hustling Southwestern conference, Jess Neeley's team at Rice is given a good chance to repeat. re-peat. The battle for conference leadership is so fiercely fought in this section that early predictions are useless. UCLA Leads in West "What about the West coast?" I asked a wayfarer from California. "UCLA should still be the strongest strong-est squad," he said. "I know how terrible they looked against Illinois, but they are a far better team than that game showed. When the Army game was called off, the spirit of the squad took a heavy drop. UCLA still has a strong nucleus nu-cleus left, a bunch that will be keen to wipe out that Rose Bowl showing. "Stanford will be improved. So will California and Southern Califor-! Califor-! nia. 1 don't know so much about the Northwest." I I have a feeling that the pressure ! will be lightened, this next fall, In 1 the way of salaries and recruiting, j This doesn't mean perfection. It means that the effort, on the side of amateur play, will begin showing ! early effects. The game was un-; un-; doubtedly getting out of hand. I Tiger Pitching Best J The Tigers may miss lank Hank Greenberg's busy bat, but they still expect to beat out the Yankees for second place. They also expect to crowd in much closer on the favored fa-vored Red Sox, and perhaps move Into the front spot. The answer to this Is pitching. The Tigers have the best pitching staff In both leagues. The one team that might argue this point is the Cardinals. |