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This being football season and the height thereof, let us devote this space to football talk. And let us turn the talking over to the man who talked football better than any other man the game has known-Knute Rockne. Football, as Rockne talked it, covered the general and specific business of living and thinking, for he was as fine a philosopher as he was a coach.

But first t.t ,rr. ,.U yl,," ,O*0", story, one I heard Jimmy Phelan, famous coach of St. Mary's, tell about the dumbest football player. This dumb guy would have been a triple-threat man if he had had any sense; but he lacked it. So he sat on the bench most of the time, while his teammates did the playing. One day he was on the sidelines as usual, when his team played Illinois. And that was in the day of Red Grange. And on this day Grange was having one of his very best days. As spectacular as a comet, he swept up and down that field, and none could stop him. IIe wore white while the others wore moleskins, and with his long flaming hair, he was something to see as he steamrollered that football game. The opposing coach in desperation decided to send in the dumb player. He told him-"If it's the last thing you ever do in your lifeeven ifit kills you-YOU STOP RED GRANGE! YOU HEAR ME? YOU STOP RED GRANGE!" The boy put on his headgear, warmed up for half a minute, and then came tearing up to the coach and said: "All right coach, I'm ready! Now show me-WHICH ONE IS RED GRANGE?"

Knute Rockne, the greatest coach of them all, had an abiding belief that football is more mental than physical, more psychology than muscle, and treated his squad accordingly. The first time he lined up a new squad in the fall, he started his first work on their minds, rather than their bodies. And the things he told those boys were things that men in all walks of life can well take home with them. For what applies to football, applies to business; applies to living wherever you find it.

The first thing he t"ff..l"0"* a. a new squad, was ambition, and where their ambitions should attempt to take them. He told them that most of the things read about ambition were pure bunk. There is NOT plenty of room at the top, as is so often remarked. In fact there is mighty LITTLE room at the top, only enough for those who have the ability, and daring, and imagination, and energy, and personality to stick there, and they are few. "So far as I have been able to observe" Rock would say to the boys in the first speech, "the greatest satisfaction I can get on this earth is doing the particular job I am working on,ijust as well as it can possibly be done. There may be easier ways to get by, but they generally leave either a headache or a heartache the next day." Pretty good philosophy for all men as well as for football players, eh?

Then Rock would ,.il;"; "iort tr,, five kinds of boys he did not approve of, and did not want on his team. That gave them a fine opportunity to catalogue themselves and appraise their weaknesses from HIS viewpoint. First, he did not want boys with swell heads. That sort of boy makes an early success and is content to rest on his laurels, and wants to play on his reputation. Dry rot sets in and he ceases to play the sort of game he did at first. Then someone gets his suit and locker. Second, he did not want gripers, kickers, complainers. No organization can afford a chronic kicker, because that germ is infectious. And some day he comes to the training quarters and finds someone else wearing his suit.* * *

The third boy Rock did not like was the quitter. The quitter is the fellow who wants to play, wants to be a football hero, but is not willing to pay the high price demanded. Rock used to tell the first squad that that was the time for the quitter to quit, and not wait until he had worried the coaches and team for a while. Fourth, he would not stand for dissipation, either physically or emotionally. Boys who waste a lot of their time, eat and drink things they should not, stay up late at night, and drive cars rvith one arm, do not belong on football teams, and haven't a chance against adversaries who do NOT so indulge themselves. Such men destroy an organization, and must be weeded out quickly in order that the team may not suffer. Jealousy, hatred, etc., are emotional dissipations that make weak football players. Look for the good in one another, forget the other fellow's faults, and thus build for strength in organization. The fifth and last is the fellow with an inferiority complex. Get rid of it, said Rock, and get a superiority complex, instead. Make up your mind to show the coach you are the best of the 350 men on the squad, and get busy to prove it.* * *

And then he would tell them about the time he got a squad out on the field early one fall, divided it into groups according to the ambitions of the boys, ends, guards, tackles, centers, backs, etc. Then he went down the line looking them over individually. In the group who wanted to be guards there were fifteen big, stalwart boys. And there was one runt. Rock asked him his name. He said "Metzger." "You want to play guard?" asked Rock. "Yes, (Continued on Page i0)

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Vagabond Editorials

(Continued from Page 8) sir." "Aren't you. a little small to be playing guard?" asked Rock. "Yes, sir," said the runt, "BIJT I'MA LITTLE ROUGH, TOO." He became one of the greatest guards in Notre Dame history. Two hundred pound opponents were just meat for his chopping block. No inferiority complex there. And no swell head. Just a guy who knew his stuff'

"Ambition," Rock told the boys, "that is, the right sort of ambition and the kind that counts most on football squads, means that you must have the ability to co-operate with the men around you, the men working with you. It is my observation that the ability to co-operate is rnore essential than personal prowess. In this day and age, no individual stands alone any more, and that is particularly true in football teams." And Rock would warn the boys about getting the swell head-"elephantiasis of the occipital lobe," he called it-and told them that it is a very dangerous malady, rendering the victim practically useless as a football player until he recovers. For this disease Rock used to apply the serum treatment, which consisted of the ridicule of his teammates, the student body, and his best girl. This serum usually reduced the fever and the swelling.

Rockne enforced the rule that no organization is safe where one or two men got all the spotlight, and the rest of the team did the chores. He wanted every player to take his part with the chores. When he found a player looking too often at the grandstand, he would secretly hang up a sign in the boy's locker, that read: "Success is based on what you do, not how you look." He found that a most potentmedicine.

And let's close with the famous football story that you may have heard long ago but forgotten, about the guy rvho was not a football fan, who went to a big game with a friend who WAS. When the home team held the invading team on their own one-foot line, the crowd went wild with joy and enthusiasm, and uttered a bedlam of joyous noises. The guy who was NOT a football fan, asked his enthusiastic friend what all the excitement was about. The other fairly shouted at him that "we held them, we held them on our one-foot line, don't you understand? We held them on our o\,?n one-foot line !" Whereas the other was heard to calmly remark: "It seems silly to me. If they could hold them why didn't they do itin the middle of the field? Why'wait until they got to the one-foot line?" Which, while it may be logical, is NOT football.

Tcrlks On Flooring

Don F. White of White Brothers. San Francisco, rvholcsale hardrvood dealers, gave a one-hour talk at the lumbermen's training course at the University of San Francisco, October 14. He talked on flooring, both hardrvood and softlvood, told hou' to figure it, n'hat to look out for. and ho'iv it is rnade.

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