OCR Text |
Show years ago "Bullet" Bill Dudley e Twenty-fiv- University of Virginia was leading collegiate gridiron scorers with 1 34 points; Frank Sinkwich was on his way to roll- ing up a total 1,872 yards gained for the University of Georgia; Bruce Smith was leading the University of Minnesota to the 1941 College Football Cham- pionship; and mum Tlease Stand Up? by Arthur Lenahan if a fleet-foote- d Chinese halfback named Johnny Chung was gaining considerable press coverage sparking Plainfield Teachers to football immortality. Harold Rosenthal, sports editor of the old New York Herald Tribune, recalled the beginning of the Chung story not long ago. As he tells it, he was sitting at his desk in the sports department on Saturday evening, Oct. 25, 1941, waiting for the first edition of the paper to come out, when the phone rang. The conversation, according to an account that later appeared in The Football News, went like this: "Sports department?" asked an amiable voice. "I'd like to report a football score. Plainfield Teachers, 27; Winona, 3." "Plainfield Teachers, that a New Jersey school?" queried Rosenthal. "Yes." "Okay, thanks very much." Rosenthal scribbled down the score, to be printed in the Sunday paper in the sports-resulcolumn headed EAST, and thus became an unwitting accomplice in the instigation of one of the greatest football hoaxes of all time. What Rosenthal did not know was that the amiable voice on the other end of the wire belonged to Morris Newburger, a sports fan and partner in Newburger and Locb, the Wall Street brokerage firm. Newburger subscribed wholeheartedly to the belief that football players are made, not bom. He e had decided to create one, along with a team for him to star on. Newburger knew the football scene. He knew that reporters did not attend small games, and the parties at the papers relied upon public-spirite- d schools to phone in the results of the games on Saturday night. He knew of the chaotic conditions caused by the fact that there was a war, and a draft, on; colleges were starting up with a football schedule one Saturday and dropping it the next. These factors, coupled with Newburger's continuing fascination with the inclusion in the Sunday columns of such institutions as Slippery Rock Teachers College, gave him all he needed to go ahead and plant his imaginary football team. success with The Trib, Riding on his one-shhe proceeded to map out weekly schedules for the "Jersey Dons." They were .to play against such fearful foes and traditional rivals as Scott, Chesterton, Randolph Tech, Ingersoll. St. Joseph's, Appalachian Tech and Harmony Teachers, an imposing schedule for any team, and particularly for nonexistent Plainfield. But Plainfield had Johnny Chung. Known as the "Celestial Comet," he ran riot over his foes. And his success was rot to be attributed to talent alone. It was now made known that his prowess habit stemmed directly from his of devouring a bowl of rice at half-timThus it was that after trouncing Winona one week, Plainfield made it into The Trib and The Times the following week by beating Randolph Who was the star? That charging, Tech 35-Chinese back. Johnny Chung. (Funny, but all teams looked alike to Chung.) It must be reported that on one newspaper to which Newburger phoned in the result of the big game, a rewrite man asked about the location of Randolph Tech. "What do you mean?" asked Newburger, caught ts full-siz- mi ot I I IJ fri f',1 JlICEBOWl ; oirrsrANniNc'i?! J Vi f l' LAYER. MNNY " iw trw- CHUNG - 1 '1 "time-honore- e. 0. 10 205-pou- nd short for a ready and pat answer. "I mean, is it in the East, or the South, or where? Sounds like a school in Wilmington." "In Wilmington?" parried Newburger. "No, it's . , just outside." Of course, every period has its hoaxes, not necessarily in the field of sports. In the late 1700's an boy "discovered" two "lost" plays' written by Shakespeare. He managed to have them produced at the famed Drury Lane Theatre before finally admitting that he had written them himself. In the late 1830's, a reporter, striving to build circulation for his struggling newspaper, announced that "The Edinburgh Journal of Science" had found life on the moon and had his readers believing it But later he admitted to inventing the story himself. Even Edgar Allan Poe had a hand in a hoax when, in the 1840's. he deceived the leading intellects balloon flight. with an account of a But the biggest fraud of the 1940's belongs singularly to Morris Newburger. Newburger now enjoyed the sweetest taste of success. Having duped both The Times and The Tribune, he accelerated into high gear. He "hired" a mythical public relations man to publicize Plain-fiel- d and Johnny Chung. He had stationery printed with "Plainfield Teachers Athletic Association" emblazoned at the top to add a touch of authenticity. And he invented a head coach named Ralph Hoblitzel to guide the fortunes of the "Hurry-Up- " Dons. "Hurry-Up- " pioneered, and was widely heralded for, the unorthodox an offensive weapon shaped for the particular talents of the swivel-hippe- d "Celestial Comet." bowls of rice, Chung, fortified by his half-tim- e had by this time been credited with scoring 57 of the 98 points scored by his team and had chalked yards up an average gain of nine and three-tentevery time he carried the ball. (Apparently the "W" Formation was his "Cup of T") He had captured the imagination of the press and was being hailed as an easy bet for the "Little team. Wrote one football "expert": "Johnny Chung, Plainfield Teachers' Chinese sophomore halfback, has lead his unbeaten and untied If the Jersey Dons don't team in four starts 's watch out. he may crop up in Chiang . offensive department one of these days." By now Newburger had let all his Wall Street friends in on the gag and they were roaring with laughter. A prank pfayed on the staid old Times and The Trib! And then The Trib unmasked the fraud, when they attempted to assign a reporter to cover the nonexistent school's next game. Faced with the bad news, Newburger pleaded to be allowed to finish out his schedule. He would have Chung hurt while dragging five tacklcrs across the goal line in a close win over Appalachian Tech, then come back the next week to personally cripple the Harmony Teachers team. No dice. The luck of Newburger and of Johnny Chung had run out. trans-Atlant- ic ... Kai-shek- The Times never saw fit to publicly acknowledge their mistake. The Trib. on the other hand, grandly and permanently immortalized Plainfield Teachers by printing a "school song" composed to the tune of Cornell's famous "Far Above Cayuga's Waters," that went like this: Far above New Jersey's swamplands, Plainfield Teachers' spires, Mark a phantom, phony college Thai got on the wires. Perfect record made on paper. Imaginary team! Hail to thee, our ghostly college, Product of a dream! Dimensions in Living |