 Hello there. This is Jimmy Powers coming your way with another story from The Tumult and the Shouting. Hi 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. Did you know that for every large university in this country, there are scores of small institutions which feel football teams and take a lively interest in the game. Little schools get few headlines, yet far from the tumult of ticket hustlers, pool sheet scrambling, and well-paid publicists, they have an impressive impact on the game. There are, I guess, about 150 large schools with a total of about 5,200 football players, which get most of the attention. But keep in mind that there are also 700 small colleges and junior colleges with more than 28,000 youths who play the game each autumn. And where do these small college athletes come from? From the coal mines or the cornfields or the road gang? Are they kidnapped off some other campus and carried under cover of night? Thousands of high school football players are wising up to percentages and flocking to schools like Western Maryland, Williamette, Colorado Mines, Haskell Institute, and Western Reserve. I think the modern kid has become aware of the fact that out of 75 backfield candidates and 30 tackle aspirants at Mammoth U, 8 or 10 backs and 4 or 5 tackles are going to play virtually 100% of the football. Boys, a Southern scout bluntly told a bunch of graduating high school seniors one time, if we don't invite you, don't bother to come. There's little of that stuff at the smaller colleges. Sure, the welcome mat is always out, but you can come on your own accord. Fathers and high school coaches digging the stardust out of their eyes are realizing that plenty of action for a boy in a lesser league is preferable to four years as a goof or meathead on the Mammoth bench. There are two ways to get players, a small college coach once told me. Some little schools back up a bus to the big schools practice lot and load in the cast-offs when the squad cut comes, or you can keep your eyes peeled for a particular type of prospect. The one I want is finishing high school a year ahead of his class and who if he stayed another year would become such a hit in football that he'd be snapped up by one of the big schools. He's smart, he's just developing as a player and usually he's available. The small college coach must constantly be alert for raids by big-time football's brash burglars. Otherwise they'll grab away every good half-back the little school has got. A few years ago, a famous Texas school was caught sending telegrams to the ace of a tiny college eleven. What are you going to do? The star was asked. The young man deliberated. I'll tell you, he finally said, the way those fellas deal, if ever I have a boy of my own, I'm going to darn well make sure he plays football at a small school like his old man. Professional team scouts combing the back country for hidden talent agree that the carefree rustic game is the most spectacular of all. Big schools must play it close to the vest, always figuring percentages, one scout said. You have to get out in the bush leagues where there's no pressure to see those what the heck triple reverses and lateral forwards. Williamette University, a grid-conscious little Methodist school in Oregon where they patch the pigskins and have never been known for dismissing a coach for losing, comes about as close as any school I know to the definition of a model small college, an institution with long tradition and history, usually dating to the Civil War, whose moderate endowment yields an income equal to one-half its annual budget and whose selected student body numbers in the neighborhood of 1,200 or so. The pioneer Jason Lee founded Williamette, one of the oldest universities in the West. One student applicant in every two fails to meet entrance requirements, a deliberate device to keep enrollment down and boneheads out. Williamette has faced all the problems afflicting the little school which maintains a football team without benefit of Ballyhoo, slush funds, and other modern conveniences. For years, it's Bearcats held title to the worst playing surface for football in 11 Western states. A few years ago, a former Western conference official who worked at Williamette Game told Al Stump, the magazine writer, that he was never so shocked in his life. It was only drizzling, the official said, but when I walked down to the field, I bogged down in thick green mud. The man from the big time was in for another surprise. After clearing the swamp of a mired down dog and several splattered children, he prepared to blow his whistle. Just then, the head linesman yelled, if they kick it in the creek, I'll get the ball. What creek? asked the newcomer. The creek running alongside the field and through the grandstand, the linesman said, it's a kind of mill stream. The official from the Midwest shuddered, blew his whistle, grabbed his nose tightly and sloshed bravely down under the kickoff. Small college coaches are jacks of all jobs who generally serve as combined junior varsity and head coach, athletic director, equipment manager, purchasing agent, trainer, rubber, ticket manager, promotion man and employment bureau. They grow wistful when they read newspaper items telling how major college scouts travel 15,000 miles on scouting missions each season. Their own scouting mileage is usually zero, although they yearn each autumn to have an advanced look at their conference opponents. Spying takes time and money. The small college has neither to spare. The small school's chief headache is financial. Football is usually a losing proposition. In 1941, however, Williamette made one of its rare grabs for bigger stakes and has never ceased to regret it. When the Honolulu Shriners guaranteed the Little Oregon School $5,500 for two games in the islands, the university reversed its policy on long trips and accepted. It was a pleasant outing for the team even after losing the opener to the University of Hawaii. On Saturday, December 6th, the Bearcats bought postcards and trinkets in the souvenir shops and turned in early preparatory to a morning workout. Before noon, the next morning, they were feverishly digging trenches and stringing barbed wire for the army on Waikiki Beach. Those water spouts they'd seen offshore at breakfast hadn't been target practice bombs after all. Wow, cried one player, I never thought they'd call off the game on account of war. Everything considered, Bush Football has remarkably few apologies to make. It has been the backbone of the game since a small college, Rutgers, started the whole thing against Princeton on November 6th, 1869. Rutgers won that first game of intercollegiate football In 1905, it was a photo of a bloody-faced Swarthmore, Pennsylvania lineman which caused Teddy Roosevelt almost to blow the roof off the White House. Little Swarthmore's man had been hammered to a pulp by the behemoths of Penn. The president was incensed at such carnage and demanded a rules shake-up to get away from massive charging formations. The result in 1906 was legalization of the forward pass, today the game's most exciting weapon. I wonder what would have happened to the forward pass if the Harvard Stadium had never been built. When the crusade against injury swept the country after that Swarthmore incident, Walter Camp decided to modify the rules to resemble English rugby, this call for widening the playing field so as to make laterals more effective. Camp bumped into a snag right there, the immovable Harvard Stadium. This huge concrete structure built in 1903 was designed to hug the boundary of the field as tightly as a woman's skirt. The Harvard crowd had obviously sunk too much cash into the stadium to permit the field to be widened. Camp had no alternative. He had to forget his rugby ideas in favor of the forward pass. The small college teams, if well coached, often play a first-class brand of football. Their games aren't accompanied by the hoopla of the big games in the big stadiums, but they are a very real part of the American football scene. Football is everybody's game. Without the hundreds of smaller colleges participating, interest would fade gradually as interest in major league baseball would fade without minor league ball and sandlot ball. Center College under coach Charlie Moran in the early 20s even crashed the big time momentarily. Uncle Charlie, who started half-back on my prep school team in Nashville in 1895, was one of those all-around fellows who doubled in brass as coach, trainer, equipment man, and father-confessor to his players. He was also a talent scout, extraordinary, and on vacation imported a tough-fibered band of Texans to represent the Golden White. One of them was Beau McMillan. Uncle Charlie was also a clever publicity man. He pinned the name Prane Kernels upon his Kentucky pupils. All I did was circulate the nickname. Little Center made headlines in 1921 by upending Harvard six to nothing. On their trip to Cambridge, the Southerners were lavishly entertained by the Crimson Reception Committee. All this partying disturbed Uncle Charlie. He feared his men might lose their fighting edge. He called the players aside in the locker room just before the game. Listen, he said, I know you guys have been nicely entertained by these Harvard chaps, but just remember one thing when you go onto the field this afternoon. Every one of those guys voted the straight Republican ticket. Now this is Jimmy Powers transcribed saying so long until next time.