In Waltz Time

God Bless Clark Shaughnessy, Frankie Albert, too, Stand beside them and guide them And they'll bring victories dear to you, . . .

To the tune of God Bless America, Stanford students so sang last week. In their mammoth yellow stadium, 65,000 football fans had gathered to see their Indians play Washington in the No. 1 game of the week.

Taking over a feeble Stanford team that had won only one of its games under Tiny Thornhill last year, shaggy, shy Coach Shaughnessy had miraculously led the Indians to six victories in a row (over San Francisco, Oregon, Santa Clara, Washing ton State, Southern California, U.C.L.A.). Last week, when they met Washington, only other undefeated, untied team in Pacific Coast Conference play, it was do or die for the Rose Bowl. With only two more games to go, victory would probably mean a trip to Pasadena.

At half time, it looked bad for the Indians. Jim Phelan's Huskies, using power after power play, had ground through to a touchdown in the second quarter. In the third quarter, things got still worse. Washington, capitalizing on a bobbled pass from Stanford's centre on fourth down, got the ball on the 19-yard line, chalked up three more points with a magnificent field goal. Then, near the end of the third period, the Indians took the ball on their own 29-yard line, gained 15 yards through the line. Frankie Albert, their southpaw passer, flipped a beautiful pitch to little Pete Kmetovic, who scampered into the clear, ran 14 yards, crossed the goal line standing up. A few minutes later, the Indians were back on Washington's 20-yard line. A little hocus-pocus--and they scored another touchdown. Just for good measure, in the last few minutes of play Stanford's little Kmetovic intercepted a pass, trotted over the line again. Final score: 20-to-10.

Stanford has hailed several great coaches in its half-century of football: Walter Camp, Fielding Yost, Jim Lanagan, Pop Warner. But rare is the magic touch that has been Clark Shaughnessy's this year. A year ago, in his seventh season at the University of Chicago, Coach Shaughnessy's Maroons were the joke of the football world. At the end of the season, when President Robert M. Hutchins abolished intercollegiate football at Chicago, 48-year-old Clark Shaughnessy, a full professor of physical education at $9,000 a year, had to choose between teaching calisthenics or taking whatever football coaching job he was offered.

The choice was easy. Football has been Shaughnessy's lodestar since the day he went out for the Minnesota team in 1911. For 18 years before he succeeded Amos Alonzo Stagg at Chicago, he coached football at Tulane and Loyola of the South, put both colleges on the football map. Last winter, when Stanford asked him to come coach, Clark Shaughnessy said "You bet."

A genius at offensive strategies. Coach Shaughnessy promptly put the old fight into last year's wooden Indians. Stanford's marveling alumni wondered if they had hired a magician. But it was not magic but music that turned Stanford into a winning team. An accomplished pianist once headed for the concert stage, Coach Shaughnessy works out his plays to music. Basis for his system is a waltz rhythm: e.g., on an off-tackle play, the back getting the ball counts one-two-three steps, turns on his outside foot for balance, hits the line of scrimmage at the point where the linesmen (likewise counting one-two-three) have opened a hole. The whole team nod their heads in waltz time.

At Tulane, Coach Shaughnessy used to make slow-charging linemen jump by firing a peashooter at the seat of their pants. At Stanford, he has needed no peashooter. The Indians, delighted with waltz-time football, have carried out his strategies with metronomic precision, have turned out to be the Cinderella team of the year.

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