 It's time for yours truly, Jimmy Powers, with another Grantland Rice story. Hey there, this is Jimmy Powers transcribed with another chapter from Grantland Rice's memorable life story, The Tumult and the Shouting, and so with a warm salute to the every young spirit of Granny Rice, I take up the narrative in first person. Being a football coach's wife is like being married to a doctor, Red Blake's wife, Merle once said. The woman must realize that her husband is wedded to his profession. Next to the Army football team, Red likes me best. To meet Earl Red Blake is not to know him, and only a few people know the great West Point coach well. One of them is General Douglas MacArthur, who in the midst of his campaign for the liberation of the Philippines found time to write Blake letters during the football season and to send inspiring messages by cable on the eve of the Notre Dame Army Games. Another of the few who know Blake well is Lieutenant General Robert L. Eichelberger, who when he was head of the academy summoned Red to West Point from Hanover, New Hampshire in 1941 after Blake's Dartmouth teams had scaled the Ivy League Heights. Your alma mater needs you, Eichelberger wired Red. Army football has reached an all-time low. Come at once. This is a military order. Duty called and Blake responded. Blake takes his football with a pain that's almost pleasure. He is not a professional pessimist, but he is inclined to anticipate the worst every autumn Saturday or at any rate convinces himself that every game is a potential upset. What manner of man is Red Blake? Well, he's lean of jaw and hard of muscle, and despite his nickname, he's not a red head at all. His hair is brown with auburn undertones. A glint of red gleams when the sun strikes at a certain angle. His expressive brown eyes look at you with a frank level appraising gaze. He has thin lips and a firm jaw. His sharply chiseled nose suggests the doer rather than the talker, a man born to command. Blake never disparages his own players. Instead, he plays up the other team and points out to his men the job confronting them. And no team coached by Red is likely to be either overconfident or lacking in self-assurance. Given a team solidly grounded in fundamentals and school and strategy, he will tell you the issue often hinges on emotional response. A team must be up to win. Blake will be remembered best at Dartmouth as the man who smashed the Yale Bowl Jinx. Believe it or not, Dartmouth had never beaten Yale in a series that started in 1886 and continued spasmodically down to 1934 when Red took charge of the Big Green. Time and again, Dartmouth teams, which seemed certain winners, had been the victims of last quarter Yale rallies. But his 1935 edition scotched the Bowl Jinx for keeps 14 to 6. Blake has never gone in for locker room oratory before games. There are no fiery harangues, no blood and thunder pep talks. He may inject a sentimental note if he senses that it won't strike a false chord. The modern youngster is a sophisticated realist, Blake has always said. You don't dare work on his emotions with that die for dear old Rutger stuff. He might laugh in your face. Locker room pep talks went out of style years ago. Before the Pennsylvania and Navy games, cadet players need to be calmed down rather than keyed up. Those games are so hopped up that no fight talk is necessary. Instead, I try to make the boys relax. Football is a game of the mind as well as the emotions. I want my men mentally keen and emotionally relaxed. Otherwise, they will tighten up under pressure. You've got to lick over confidence. I doubt if Blake will ever forget the 1940 game between his Dartmouth lads and Cornell. That was the one you'll recall in which Spunky Red Frizzle, one of the most efficient referees of modern times, pulled a horrible boner. With Dartmouth leading three to nothing, Cornell advanced inside the big green ten yard line in the last few seconds of the game. Somehow, Frizzle failed to count the second down in a quick Cornell sequence. Even the players on both teams were apparently unaware of this oversight, though motion pictures subsequently showed it plainly. Thus it came about that Cornell had a fifth down when actually the ball should have gone over to Dartmouth. In the Cornell backfield was an Irishman named Bill Murphy. A devout Catholic, he murmured a prayer while the big red team huddled. Dear Lord, he said, looking heavenward, if you let me score a touchdown on this next play, I promise to attend mass every day for a year. Murphy's play was granted. At any rate, he grabbed a Cornell pass in the end zone for what apparently was the winning touchdown. After Cornell had kicked the extra point, the game ended. The electric scoreboard flashed the numerals Cornell 7, Dartmouth 3. Cornell men went to bed that night thinking they had won, only to tumble out the next morning to hear that they had lost. Blake had spotted that extra down as he reviewed the movies at a staff conference Saturday night. The pictorial evidence was submitted to Cornell athletic officials, who magnanimously refused to accept a none earned victory. They insisted the score revert to the three to nothing edge which Dartmouth held before the final play. And if you will check the records, you will note that this is the way it stands in the books. This is the only football game that has ever been reversed as far as anybody knows, and the score reversal could only have been made possible by the fact that this was the last play of the game. Young Murphy didn't know what to do. He went to his Catholic chaplain at Ithaca and confessed the vow he had silently made in the huddle. Father, he asked, am I obligated to keep the promise? The priest weighed the matter. My son, he said, I feel you are not required to fulfill that pledge. But this is the first time I ever heard of a football referee double crossing the Lord. Blake will testify that no intercollegiate squad is so pressed for time as his cadets. The army is restricted to 90 minute practice sessions. This doesn't leave much time to cram in chalk talks, individual instruction, dummy and live scrimmage, and reviewing past games via movies. But during the platoon days, he uncovered a way to lick the time element for pictures. He simply erected a tent on the practice field with a built in projector and screen. Then red employed the shuttle system. While the offensive platoon was on the field, the defense studied the films and vice versa. In 1927, Biff Jones headed West Point's football corps and brought Blake in as his assistant. Playing for the Black Knights that year was a redheaded terror from the Bayous of Louisiana named Chris Cagle, a regular one man army. Until Glenn Davis came along later, Cagle ranked in a class all by himself as far as great army backs were concerned. There are those who think that had he played under Blake's more advanced play patterns, Chris would have exceeded them all. Cagle's most grandiose play was a wide end run from the tailback spot, terminating in a tremendous diagonal pass to the opposite side of the field. This razzle-dazzle stunt won many games for the army, but it cost the cadets the one they most wanted, the 1929 duel with no today at Yankee Stadium in sub-freezing weather. Army was the favorite and right off drove to the Irish 13 yard line. On the next play, John Morrell was stopped on an off tackle slant. This was Cagle's cue to spring army's secret weapon, a fake end run and an oblique pass to his favorite receiver, Carl Messenger. This was a risky play. It opened up the other side of the field to the enemy where Jack Elder, the Notre Dame track star, manned the secondary defense. Elder could run the 100 yard dash under 10 seconds. Racing for the right side boundary, Cagle skidded to a stop and let go that all or nothing heave. For a moment it seemed that Messenger would grab the ball on the goal line, but a puff of wind slowed the ball just enough for Elder to snatch it out of the army end's grasp. The sideline was open to the sprint champion. He went 96 yards to score the winning touchdown. Frank Graham once said, the next time you hear anybody speaking of great athletes he has seen, ask him if he ever saw Elmer Olyphant. If he says no, you can speak freely. And if he says yes, you'll both have something to talk about, provided of course, you know about Olly. It's hard to think of anyone not knowing or at least not hearing of Olyphant. He was one of those super all around athletes who comes along only once in a blue moon. Elmer showed up at West Point in 1914 by way of Purdue, where he had already enjoyed three years of varsity competition. Some of his feats at Purdue had been incredible. Although he had suffered a broken ankle in a football game with Illinois, he kicked a field goal to defeat the Illini, three to nothing. Knocked down or having fallen in the closing minutes of a basketball game with Wisconsin, when Purdue was trailing 20 to 21, he shot the winning basket while seated on the floor. Those were the days of a freewheeling athletic policy at West Point. And army football teams were loaded with Huskies who had played well and in some cases four years on major college teams. And so in 1914, no one so much as raised an eyebrow when Olyphant bobbed up at the point. There he became a legend. Plebes being eligible for the varsity teams. Elmer won four letters each in football, baseball, track and basketball, and was heavyweight boxing champion of the core. He was of course on Walder Camp's 1916 All-America team, and Newt Rockney placed him on his All-Time America, linking him with Jim Thorpe and Charlie Brickley as the greatest drop kickers. Well, that closes the book on another chapter from the Grantland Rice story, The Tumult and the Shouting. And so until next we meet, this is Jimmy Powers transcribe saying, so long until next time.