How to Pick a Coach

The men in the examination room looked too rugged for a class of Ph.D. candidates. As they rumpled their hair and scribbled, some of them kept referring to textbooks. (A favorite: How to Play Football.) This was the College of the City of New York's unique way of selecting a new football coach.

C.C.N.Y. is the seventh largest U.S. college, but it has never had the seventh best football team. Its subway-riding students and alumni are much more interested in basketball. Last fall, having lost all its football games since 1943, C.C.N.Y celebrated its 100th anniversary by beating Wagner Memorial Lutheran College (Staten Island, N.Y.), 27-6. Then it returned to normal. At season's end, Coach Louis ("Red") Gebhard resigned.

A faculty committee, appointed to "investigate football conditions," went to work in good academic fashion. Hearing of the open job, some 50 brave coaches showed up to apply, some from campuses as far away as Arizona. Each applicant, after being interviewed, was given a written examination. Sample questions:

P: Describe your system of defensive play for green players (worth 5 points).

P: Describe a system of forward-pass defense for green players (5 points).

P: Your best player breaks training the night before the game. How would you handle the situation? (3 1/2 points).

The coaches handed in their blue books and stole back to their home campuses, hoping that they had not been missed. C.C.N.Y. promised not to tell on them. At week's end, the professor was busy grading the papers. Who he was, C.C.N.Y. would not say--only that he was "a very eminent football technician."

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