Football

For no better reason than that they were invited to do so by the Chicago Tribune, New York Herald Tribune and i So other newspapers throughout the U. S., a total of 8,348,797 football addicts this summer voted for a coaching staff and squad to meet two professional teams in September for charity. Bernie Bierman of Minnesota was chosen head coach by 3,872,251 votes, a plurality of more than a million over Notre Dame's Elmer Layden who ran second. Among players graduated from college last June, Flalfback Jay Berwanger of Chicago had the strongest hold on football's electorate--784,573 votes.

In Chicago's Soldier Field last week, the first big football crowd of the year--76,000--watched Coach Bierman's All-Stars open the season against the Detroit Lions, National Football League champions. The All-Stars gained 184 yd. to the Lions 128, made 9 first downs to 5. Outplayed throughout most of the game, the Lions, vying for the honor of professional football and their owner, Radioman George A. Richards, rallied heroically in the last quarter, tied the score, 7-10-7. In New York, bookmakers made the All-Star team, about one-third of whom will themselves be playing professional football when the season opens next week, ;t05 favorites for their second game, against the New York Giants.

Conspicuously absent from the list of college stars from which Coach Bierman's team was drafted last week was one Chief William Loane West, half-breed Indian from Anniston, Ala., who last fortnight got into the news by registering at the University of California, admitting that he was 46 years old and stating that he would try to make the Varsity football team. True to his boast. Chief West last week trotted out for conditioning practice. He got a mild "Charley horse" when another squad member, carrying the Chief's 216 Ib. hulk down the field on his shoulders for exercise, dropped it on the ground.

That he was omitted from last week's All-Star lineup was no indication that Chief Loane West would not appear on it in the future nor that he had not deserved a similar honor in the past. He was a star end on the California football team of 1917. Then 27, he left college to join the Army. After the War, he became a Hollywood cinemactor, had a bit part as recently as 1934 as head jailer in Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra. Since 1932 Chief Loane West has built up a profitable sideline of giving lectures at $25 apiece on "Indian health methods," consisting of simple living, daily exercises, rough foods. He recommends one cigar in three months, Mojave tea with red honey, raw eggs in grape juice. When he took five reels of photographs of Indian tribal ceremonies in the Hollywood Bowl, William Loane West, whose two grandfathers were full blooded Indians, became an "honorary" chief. From his platform profits he has not only earned enough to re-enter California as a junior, but also to buy a Lincoln sedan which he hopes to use for short lecture trips to help pay his tuition. His purpose in trying to make the football team is to back up his claims for the Loane West health regimen. Said he last week: "The chances are 1,000-to-1 against me but I hope to make it. If I don't, I'll go out for track."

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