Last College Try?

> Football has been abandoned by 60 U.S. colleges.

> Nearly every eleven has lost to the armed forces at least one regular it had counted on.

> To plug gaps, 76% of U.S. football-playing colleges have waived the old rule barring freshmen from varsity teams.

> The cream of campus coaches has been skimmed by the armed forces.

> Night games have been dimmed out on East & West coasts.

> ODT has banned football special excursions.

> Busses cannot be chartered for team transportation.

With these war scars, college football begins this week what may be its last season for the duration. Among some 700 teams, the 60 absentees will scarcely be missed (most famed: New York University). But most top-notch colleges, because of their Enlisted Reserve units, will not feel the war's pinch this year. There are two scars, however, that may disfigure the 1942 season: 1) pock-marked coaching staffs; 2) shriveled transportation.

The Headache. Perhaps the luckiest college, football-wise, is California's College of the Pacific. Its head coach, Grand Old Amos Alonzo Stagg, is a firm and vigorous 80 (see cut) and not likely to quit as long as he can hear the thump of foot on football. Among the first-rate coaches who have flocked to the Navy's Preflight Training Schools are: Minnesota's Bernie Bierman (Iowa Preflight), Fordham's Jim Crowley (North Carolina Preflight), Southern Methodist's Matty Bell (Georgia Preflight), Southern California's Sam Barry (St. Mary's Preflight).

Other famed coaches missing this year:

Duke's Wallace Wade, Tennessee's Bob Neyland, Nebraska's Biff Jones--now in the Army.

Where head coaches have quit, assistants have often been shoved up. But who will take the assistants' places? As more & more able-bodied forty-folk are drafted, this will be a thumping headache to most athletic directors.

Shooting Pains. Worse problem, even, will be transportation. Threatened with empty stadiums, many small-town colleges figured: if crowds can't get to the games, move the games to the crowds. One out of every five colleges has shifted at least one game to a nearby city.

Ivy-proud Princeton will stage both its Army and Navy games in New York City's huge Yankee Stadium. The Big Nine's Illinois-Ohio State game has been moved from Champaign to Cleveland; Stanford's games with Santa Clara and Washington from Palo Alto to San Francisco. Texas A. & M. will tackle Rice at Houston instead of its own College Station.

For those who do get to football games this fall, there should be good wartime diversion. In the East, Fordham, Penn and Boston College should produce spine-tinglers. In the West, the University of California is favored to win the Pacific Coast Conference title for the first time in five years. In the South, all eyes are on the Georgia Bulldogs and Frank Sinkwich, speedy bonecrusher who made 15 All-Americas last year despite a broken jaw. In the Southwest, any one of a half-dozen teams might come out on top, but preseason dope favors Texas University and Texas A. & M.

Spots Before the Eyes. But the Midwest will be the football circus. With the Great Lakes Naval Training Station and Preflight's Iowa Seahawks unofficially swelling the Big Nine to the Big Eleven, and independent Notre Dame still functioning as the Big One, Midwesterners should see the hottest football in the land. Minnesota, mythical U.S. champion for the past two years, is again the team to beat. The Gophers will miss Coach Bierman, but successor George Hauser has inherited most of last year's firepower.

Most formidable challengers for Minnesota's title are the Great Lakes Bluejackets and Iowa's Seahawks. The Bluejackets boast ten of last year's pros and brilliant ex-Minnesota Halfback Bruce Smith. The Seahawks have Minnesota's coach, several of its fracture-making linesmen, and Michigan's Forrest Evashevski, Ohio State's Jim Langhurst, Wisconsin's Eddie Jankowski.

Notre Dame has another fearsome team this year. In addition to the old Rockne stuff, Coach Frank Leahy is using the T formation, sparked by Quarterback Angelo Bortolo Bertelli, the sharpshooter who set a new sophomore forward-pass record (70 completed of 124 tries) last year. But Notre Dame, as usual, has a schedule as dazzling as a case of spots before the eyes: Wisconsin, Georgia Tech, Stanford, Iowa's Seahawks, Illinois, Navy, Army, Michigan, Northwestern, Southern California, Great Lakes.

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