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Show CKCRETAUY KNOX of the navj recently advocated a plan for tin training and development of ou youth along competitive lines, in f eluding a year's compulsory mill': tary service for those of 17 or 1! years. This Is an essential plar that can't be overlooked. I While military training can't b started before 17 or 18, we still believe be-lieve that there ' , '-'A i 1 ' ' J should be a big advance along the lines of body building and competitive com-petitive sports at younger ages, Including In-cluding those 14 and 15 years old, who In too many cases today are overlooked. These young boys deserve a far better program pro-gram through I Secretary Knox ! I their schools or from their commu-! nities than they have ever received. "The time to start with these boys," Hurry-Up Yost once told me after thirty years' experience, "is in the high schools not in the colleges. col-leges. We need boys coming on with stronger legs and stronger bodies, bod-ies, boys much better physically equipped in the mass." One thing is sure there will be a big demand for high-school talent in our colleges next fall, so far as football is concerned. High School Stars "Football will be almost entirely the development of high-school players," play-ers," Frank Leahy of Notre Dame told me. "I think it would surprise many millions if they know how many kids of 17, just out of school, carried on so brilliantly this last season. Tulsa's 147-pound Ford was just one of them. They were at Indiana, In-diana, Ohio State, Pittsburgh all over our football map tearing into veterans who outweighed them 20 or 30 pounds and holding their own. Passers, runners, kickers, blockers all steaming with spirit. And just out of high school. "These are the kids we must depend de-pend on next season for our college football. And we'll all get our share. It may not be the greatest football season ever known, but it will be full of fire and action and excitement, excite-ment, played by boys on Jheir way to war." Frank Leahy might have mentioned men-tioned a kid named Kelly on his own squad, a 17-year-old Chicago high-school high-school entry who was one of the best backs of the year. He might have mentioned Glenn Davis of West Point who came to the Army with only high-school experience ex-perience or Bill Paschal from Georgia Tech, the best running back of the pro year with the New York Giants five minutes freshman experience. ex-perience. There is one weakness in this setup. set-up. This is the pressure that is sure to be put upon high-school talent, tal-ent, the 17-year-old entries, all over the United States. I have already watched the beginning of this operation opera-tion get its start. As a guess I'd say the best school football state in the country is Texas. Tex-as. They are thicker than quail in that state. The next entry is Ohio. Pennsylvania, Minnesota and California Cali-fornia are close up. New England isn't so bad, either. In fact New England has given the game more than her share of high-school high-school stars. What about the South? They are more scattered down around cotton-land. cotton-land. Too many southern schools lack the coaching and the money that other sections have. The material ma-terial is there,- but a lot of it is still in the raw. Ask southern college coaches. The same is true in New York city, where the high-school kids get only half a chance. Don't ever believe be-lieve these New York kids couldn't hold their own if they ever had an equal break. The idea is to get back of high-school high-school or school football and give it a much bigger play and a much better bet-ter chance than it has known so far. As the Army doesn't seem to be interested, this is another spot where Navy Secretary Frank Knox can do a world of good. How It Looks for Baseball On a recent trip through the South and Southeast, one of the first queries offered was this ' What will happen to pro baseball in 1944?" There was only one answer to this: "It all depends on the progress of the war and the size of the casualty list." The coming invasion of Hitler's Europe will supply most of the story. sto-ry. A German collapse would make a terrific difference, more to the lives of our fighters, but also in a minor way to all sport. But Germany Ger-many hasn't collapsed yet. Admitting that all professional sport is a pin point in importance against the needs of war, only a I German collapse at the rim of spring would help baseball. By April or early May there will be too many taken if tlie war is still setting the same furious pace. And none of Ihcse could be turned h"k in time. j |