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Show SPORTLIGHT Charlie Was Versatile Fellow By GRANTLAND RICE fpAKING HIS CENTRE college team to Boston to beat Harvard wasn't the high spot of Uncle Charlie Char-lie Moran's amazing career. It was just another episode in the life of the all-around star from Horse Cave, Ky., who died a few weeki ago. I happened to play In the same backfleld with Moran and on the same baseball jf"" team back at Nash- ' viUe Military and I Tennessee Military ff'OC'v-', 1 institutes in the l' mist-ridden days T' Oi ? of "far away and s long ago." I can't i recall another ath- - lete who turned out I more nigh class jobs in as many Grantland Rice fields. In those far off and long ago days, Charlie weighed 180 pounds and he could turn the 100 In slightly better than 10 flat. Here are just a few of the details de-tails he contributed to sporting history: his-tory: A great half and quarterback from Tennessee and Bethel on to the Masillon Tigers in its championship champion-ship days. A star football coach and trainer, who also mowed his football field and made the bandages and other protective equipment for his teams he was a master at this. A star baseball pitcher and catcher. Also an outfielder and in-fielder in-fielder when needed. He got as far up as the St. Louis Cardinals. His father played short on the old St. Louis Browns of Chris Von Der Ahe's reign. An excellent baseball coach. Whether football or baseball, his teams were always physically fit. For many years one of the best umpires that big league baseball has ever known. This is a pretty fair roundup. Charlie had coached at Tennessee, Ten-nessee, Bethel, University of Nashville, Nashville, A.C. and Texas A. and M. for five years before he came to little Centre college with a student enrollment enroll-ment of 110 plus Bo McMillin, Red Roberts and James (Red) Weaver, three all-Americans. It was this unknown team that beat the great West Virginia team that a week before, with Ira Rod-gers Rod-gers at fullback, had beaten a good Princeton team, 25 to 0. Moran stopped 200-pound Rodgers by sending send-ing 220 pound Roberts at him full tilt on every play. In Bo McMillin, Uncle Charlie also had one of the best football players and one of the smartest quarterbacks football has ever sent to any field. His "Praying Colonels" were sensations as long as McMillin, Mc-Millin, Roberts and Weaver were around and not so bad a few years later on. His Big Day I doubt that the Harvard game was Moran's big day. This came when he was coaching BucknelL In those days, regulations were loose and every coach did the best he could. Charlie told me the story later. He had swept the prairies and the hills for all the talent he could get together, and no coach could do a better job along these lines. "How did Lafayette beat you?" I asked. "They protested pro-tested 10 of my men, leaving me only one regular," Moran said. This went on from game to game. Each opponent would protest 10 men, leaving Charlie with a lone regular. The next to the last game on Bucknell's schedule happened to be with Foster Sanford's powerful Rutgers Rut-gers team, one of the best in the country. Among its stars, as I recall from a long ago day, was Homer Hazel, an AI1-American AI1-American end in 1923 and an ail-American fullback In 1924. Rutgers hadn't lost a game that year, beating a good Lafayette team, 43 to 7. Bucknell's one man team had lost to Lafayette, Lafay-ette, 21 to 3, so Moran wrote Rutgers, asking that he be allowed to play his regular squad. "Play anybody you want to," the Rutgers coach wrote back. "Play yourself." Moran didn't play, but his regular reg-ular Bucknell team, playing for the first time together, beat Rutgers, Rut-gers, 12 to 7. That's how good it was. "I had three sets of brothers on that team: the Wilsbachs, Blais-dells Blais-dells and Goodwins," Charlie said. "They all played in the backfleld. At one time I had young Wakefield. He was a brother of Vanderbilt's Hek Wakefield. The one I had was the greatest football player I ever saw, barring nobody. He killed himself." |