West is Best

In a contest between two men, one event may be decisive. In a contest of teams, the teams must play each other many times before it is possible to decide which one is better. Thus it is impossible to decide which football team is the U. S. champion and even sectional championships are usually disputed. If one victory is taken as proof of superiority, it might be shown that a grammar school eleven in Eastern Iowa has the most powerful football team in the U. S. If not, it is only possible to single out individuals and rate them as solitary heroes. This thankless task is attended to by sports writers on whose hands time hangs heavy when the football season is over. What is remarkable about this performance is this: the pickers of Ail-American teams not infrequently agree with each other to some slight extent.

The two first important All-American selections--those submitted last week by the New York Evening Sun and Post--were agreed that Otto Pommerening of Michigan should be left tackle, Henry R. Fund of Georgia Tech, center, Seraphim Post, of Stanford, right guard, Howard Harpster, of Carnegie Tech, quarterback, Kenneth Strong of N. Y. U. and Christian Cagle of Army, halfbacks. For fullback, Scull of Penn and Carroll of Washington were leading.

Before other news-sheets had inscribed their scroll, the Oregon Aggies (School of, Agriculture) came east last week to play N. Y. U. and Stanford came east, like a troupe of gay and warlike hoboes, to play the Army.

Neither engagement was a game; both were routs of such a nature as to make the Eastern teams look foolish. The boys from beyond the Rockies did not seem to take the game as seriously as their rivals; nor did it appear necessary for them to do so. It was like watching the Princeton Varsity play against St. Mark's. A great horde filled the Yankee Stadium to watch the Oregon Aggies stop Ken Strong, push over the supposedly indestructible N. Y, U. line and score 25 points to 13.

Another huge horde filled the stadium hoping to watch the Army repel the western invasion. Biff Hoffman, the Stanford fullback, came out with his stockings down; other Stanford players were without headguards. Opposite them, but not much in the way, stood the neat, trim, speedy Army eleven with Cagle at its back. The Stanford team, which is not the best in the far West, was ludicrously superior to the Army, which has been considered the best team in-the East. One play, an antique variation of a fake "statue of liberty" never failed to gain ten yards. The members of the Army team, like children who have been playing with toughies, were discovered to be in a condition of total dilapidation, most of them crying, when the game was over. The score was 26--o but it might have been bigger without exaggerating Stanford's superiority.

There was another East-West game played last week in Los Angeles, by Southern California the best of the Western teams, against Notre Dame the only Eastern team which, by virtue of the inspiration which football players share with soldiers, beat the Army. Don Williams, the Californian quarterback, and Jess Hibbs, who cut a swathe ahead of him, were vastly superior to any Notre Dame players. The game was not lopsided like the others, but the score was 27--14. and Southern California won it.

There is one more intersectional game, when Georgia Tech, unbeaten in the South,, goes to Los Angeles on New Year's Day and plays Southern California at the famed Tournament of Roses. But the three above are sufficiently significant to show that,' following the strange sunwise progression of nations, football has moved westward. All All-America teams, to be anywhere near accurate, should be composed almost entirely of West Coast players. Of Eastern stars, only Cagle. who waggles well in broken fields, and Strong, who has gained more yards than any other player this year, appear to be in the same category.

Onward Christian Cagle, so named by able sports writer Frank Wallace of the New York Daily News, received another honor last week more tangible than the position of halfback on the All-America team. The bruised, unhappy members of the Army team elected him captain for next year, which will be his fourth on the West Point varsity.