Epilogue

Last week while Coach Jim Crowley of Fordham exhibited a troupe of postgraduate U. S. college football players to 25,000 Frenchmen* in the first stand of a two-week barnstorming tour, the stars of the U. S. Football Show of 1938 were taking their bows before the curtain.

Most applause was for little Davey O'Brien, 150-lb. quarterback of undefeated Texas Christian, who was handed the Heisman Trophy, annual award for the No. 1 player of the year. The award for No. 1 coach of the year went to Bill Kern of Carnegie Tech, after 200 rival coaches and athletic directors had chosen him--because in two years he took his team from nowhere to rank among the top ten. Defeated only once (by mighty Notre Dame). Coach Kern's Skibos (named after the late Andrew Carnegie's Skibo Castle) skyrocketed into the football sky after they licked powerful Pitt and Holy Cross, were rewarded with an invitation to play Texas Christian in the Sugar Bowl at New Orleans.

While U. S. fans were applauding their heroes, the owners and coaches of the ten teams in the National (professional) Football League met to decide whom they would have selected had they been asked (to pick the outstanding college players of the year. Center Ki Aldrich, teammate of Davey O'Brien at Texas Christian, was the No. 1 choice, Columbia's Sid Luckman No. 2. Parker Hall, Mississippi halfback, was third choice, Davey O'Brien fourth.

No idle kibitzing was last week's selection by the professional football clubs. It was their ''preferred negotiation list." the draft system whereby they annually select their "freshmen" (20 each) for the following year./- Having earmarked their 1939 freshmen, The National League club owners adjourned, joined the 50,000 customers who packed Manhattan's Polo Grounds for the season's epilogue: the play-off for the U. S. professional championship.

Both contestants were evenly matched. The Green Bay Packers, champions of the Western Division, had won eight games, lost three. The New York Giants, Eastern champions, had won eight, lost two, tied one. Those who expected a titanic tug-of-war were not disappointed. In perhaps the most brilliant football show ever staged, each Giant and each Packer played in a way that made Dink Stover look like a cheap sissy. Nip & tuck until the very last second, victory finally went to the Giants, 23-10-17. For their performance each Giant got $504. and the team, receiving the Ed Thorp Trophy, took a bow as the No. 1 professional footballers of the year.

*A Parisian sportswriter called the performance a combination of rugby, soccer, basketball, wrestling and bullfighting.

/-Each club in rotation (the last-place club first) is given one choice, has exclusive right to negotiate for the services of that player after he (or his class) has graduated. Of the 274 professional footballers in the league this year only one, Dick Schweidler of the Chicago Bears, did not go to college.

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