One day at West Point it was my duty to take a prominent visitor, an
Englishman, to a football game. We sat through three periods with
little conversation. Knowing that British Rugby corresponds in its
continuous motion to our basketball, I finally got up courage to ask
him what he thought of the game he was witnessing. “Well,” he said, “I
think it’s all very jolly, but I can’t understand why they get down and
pray so much.”
That brings up the very first serious game we played with the British
in this country. It was a contest we had for freedom between 1775 and
1783. Incidentally we lost the game, but we gained our independence. If
the actual score could have been displayed in the headlines of a great
news sheet, it would have read something like this: “The British rout
the Colonials, 31-6.”
In the first period of that game, after the kick-off at Lexington and
Concord, the English General Howe shoved the Colonial Team right out of
Long Island, and sent many of them to the sidelines. When he appeared
before Manhattan, they ran away at the first sight of the British
Team--ran pell-mell right through New York’s East Side, until our head
coach jumped in and actually had to beat them over the back to get them
onto the playing field again. But they melted away despite entreaties
and prodding. Of course, it wasn’t a team that George Washington had at
that time. It was a collection of fellows who hadn’t been taught the
rules and principles of the game, did not understand team-work, who had
few togs, were poorly conditioned and scarcely knew how to line up.
All this was very humiliating since our country was abundantly rich to
support a good coaching staff and to make an outlay for training and
equipment. Besides the game had been advertised for over ten years.
Yet nothing had been done to present even a good defensive line and
back field. In fact, most of the men who turned out had never even
tackled the dummy--let alone being assembled. It is not surprising then
that when the Colonists were chased by General Howe down through New
Jersey, that over half of Washington’s squad just picked up and went
home, refused to play any longer, said they’d played as long as they’d
agreed to, and left him with a few to carry on against a quantity of
well drilled and trained opponents. They were discontented not only at
the poor showing but because they didn’t have a chance. But Washington,
instead of quitting, showed how much determined stuff was in him.
When, with the handful remaining, the game looked hopelessly lost, he
called for two brilliant forward passes down on his one-foot line at
Trenton and Princeton, which were successful. It was a daring play, but
besides throwing a tiny scare into the British, the Colonists netted
only eight yards and were forced to kick. They did a lot of justified
kicking at this time in many other ways, but these desperate plays
put back a lot of spirit into the team, in spite of the discouraging
situation, and the desertion from Washington’s ranks of players.
It was in the second period of the game that the Colonists made
their first real touchdown at Saratoga. Of course, they outweighed
the British about thirty pounds to the man, and that helped. Then,
too, they had a fine captain of the team by the name of Arnold, who
afterwards because of ill-treatment on his own squad at the hands of
some disgruntled alumni, went over and played on the British team.
But meanwhile General Howe added to his lead by scoring with wide end
sweeps and perfect interference two more touchdowns at the Brandywine
and Germantown--and there the half ended. During the intermission
both teams rested. The British went into luxurious training quarters
in Philadelphia, where they built themselves up with good food and
generally had a sprightly fine time, whereas the Colonists’ squad
sat out in the open and shivered and starved through a freezing
winter, and the hardships took a further toll of Washington’s line
and backfield men. But a great thing happened at Valley Forge for
Washington’s remnants of a squad. The pupil of the master strategist
abroad, Frederick the Great, arrived. It was Baron Von Steuben. At once
Washington made him principal assistant coach. There was no department
of the game in which he was not skilled. He was an untiring worker and
had a kind, attractive personality as an instructor. He picked out
the best material and made a sort of varsity squad. He emphasized the
fundamentals of blocking and tackling in which the colonists were sadly
lacking. As he drilled them in diversified plays and got them clicking
as a team, the rest of the players watched them and then attempted
to imitate them on separate fields. He did much as they do in those
schools where everyone has to take part in sports, where intra-mural
athletics are treated seriously. The effect of such coaching was
immediately felt at Monmouth in the beginning of the third period,
where the Colonists played the British to a standstill; and could have
made another touchdown, had not Charles Lee, a good half-back when he
wanted to play, run with the ball full-tilt toward the enemy’s goal.
He would actually have made a touchdown for the other side, if one of
his own team-mates had not tackled him a little past midfield. But
shortly afterward, this good showing of the Colonists was overcome
by two touchdowns made by the British at Newport and Camden, where
undrilled players faced veterans. Later Nathaniel Greene, a fine team
captain, played well with a green squad riddled with injuries. Although
he could not threaten the goal line, he stood the British on even terms
at Guilford Court House. His defensive work with his inferior line was
praiseworthy, but it didn’t thrill the spectators or advance the ball.
Then came Washington’s strategy as a great coach. He fooled the British
into the belief that he was playing a 6-2-2-1 defense and suddenly with
a fake kick attack, swooped down on Cornwallis at Yorktown. Even though
the team was penalized for holding, he hung on. But the touchdown he
was responsible for in his excellent head-work was offset by the fact
that there had been imported more men from France to block the British
than he had players from his own institution. The officials took the
view that players brought in from another institution were ringers,
and therefore the score as applying to the Colonists would have to be
thrown out. And besides this touchdown didn’t end the game, as so many
people think it did. It was just the end of the third period. In the
last and fourth quarter, the British quarter-back realized his lead
of 31 to 6, and just held on, since he had a squad of three times as
many hardy and well-drilled players as had been lost at Yorktown and
altogether a better and bigger one than the Colonists had. Of course,
the British were just content to stall around in midfield, occupying
our principal cities. The game ended just as the entire British squad
was called back to England, because the schedule makers in Europe had
more important games for them to play over there. And that left the
gridiron empty. If the game was not won by the Colonists, at least the
field was. So irrespective of score, the Americans surged all over the
gridiron and carried off both sets of goal-posts with a great hurrahing
over the victory. And we’ve been hurrahing ever since.
Now the story of our Revolution as a game may appear to some to sound
flippant, to poke fun at our troops and belittle them. No one reveres
more the courage and fortitude of the men of ’76 than the soldier. But
so many of their sufferings and defeats were unnecessary, and so much
of their efforts wasted because of lack of timely coaching, that the
story as a game can briefly picture the play as the action took place.
In principle, that was exactly what happened in our fight for freedom.
We really never won the Revolution by either our power or our skill.
And what’s the use of fooling ourselves now? Are we not ready to look
at this contest frankly in the face and learn its lessons? Because of
our failure to coach or equip our squad properly, we dragged on eight
years of death by exposure, disease and the bullet. And this procedure
is all the sadder and more tragic when we recognize that the material
available in the colonies was as fine in raw ruggedness, character
and marksmanship as anywhere in the world. Men who joined the ranks
became discouraged by the wholesale when they saw themselves too often
officered by persons as unskilled and unlettered as they, when they
realized that they had little chance against soldiers well-trained and
equipped. They keenly felt the disgrace and uselessness of it all. It
was natural that they deserted in shoals or left at the expiration of
short-time enlistments. The Continental Line, which Steuben coached
and who stuck all through the war, were able and heroic, but were few
by comparison. The great majority stayed only as long a time as would
correspond to a few days on a football squad. Washington and Steuben
couldn’t count on what material they could coach or could have for any
one game. Green Americans against expert British, were the rule. If
you can picture a coach on any gridiron receiving from the farm or the
store a new set of men every two days, with most of the old set leaving
at the same time, and attempting to produce a team for a game each
Saturday, you have in a mild way Washington’s situation. We know that
when we put untrained and unconditioned men into a football game, we
reap more serious injuries than if the men are hardened and trained.
If those casualties exist where the human body is the only weapon, how
_much more_ unspeakable are the added injuries where bad weather, poor
shelter, loss of food and sleep, bullets and cannon balls were the
weapons. So in the Revolution we put men in a more terrible plight than
we’d think of allowing even in modern football.
But a more surprising thing is what we did after the war was over.
We dismissed our entire coaching staff and all of the squad except
80 men, who just worked around the training quarters and received no
practice or instruction in the game. Our people had the idea that
there would never be another game. They contended that any attempt at
a continuous coaching system with a paid staff was getting back to
professionalism--to despotism and tyranny. Since armies in Europe were
playthings of Kings, then all armies would be that way. They took the
same line of reasoning as the man who says, “Since some church members
are hypocrites, then all churches are wrong.” Washington tried his
best with all his pleading and logic, to show how false was such a
view. He begged and advised in so many of his letters and testaments
that it seems nothing could be more important to him. He wrote of the
Revolution: “Had we formed a permanent army in the beginning--we should
not have been the greatest part of the war inferior to the enemy,
indebted for our safety to their inactivity, enduring frequently the
mortification of seeing opportunities to ruin them pass unimproved for
the want of a force, which the country was completely able to afford;
and of seeing the country ravaged, our towns burnt, the inhabitants
plundered, abused, murdered with impunity from the same cause.” He also
wrote, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of
preserving peace.” Henry Lee, Governor of Virginia about the same time
went further. “Convinced as I am that a government is the murderer of
its citizens which sends them to the field uninformed and untaught,
where they are to meet men of the same age and strength, mechanized by
education and discipline for battle, I cannot withhold my denunciation
of its wickedness and folly.”
Thus the people were warned against their slump--and we shall soon see
how they paid for it.
_V_