AN INSTANCE OF SYSTEM

The word "system" as applied to football regimes and organizations is to most people an elusive and unsatisfactory term. Many have been the bewailings as a result of lack of "system" from men who have not the slightest conception of what that word really implies in connection with a football organization. There have been popular demonstrations from time to time in the past decade in favor of this or that system with very little knowledge of just what was being acclaimed. The only external evidence of some systems has been a copious amount of notes on the work of the year, discussing each situation as it arose and giving a detailed account in writing of just what was done in every step of the work, all this information to be handed down to future years for their instruction and edification. Other systems have apparently neglected this side entirely and have proceeded on entirely different lines, keeping no such account of the doings, but relying on the particular shining genius of one of the men in charge to put the thing through on a right basis.

It is not the purpose of this comment to attempt an accurate definition of a complete and successful football system, either in the abstract or in relation to this season's work. Perhaps a definition in words of theoretical explanation would be less intelligible than a simple analysis of that organization which has proved itself the best adapted to successful football in the past twenty years. There is one element in the Harvard organization in effect this year which has already proved its worth. For the first time since we can remember the Freshman team has been included as one of the units in the football organization and there has been constant communication, including actual coaching as well as tactical advice, between the University team's coaches and the Freshman coaches. This has not resulted in the slightest interference with the plans or policies of the undergraduates who were placed in charge of the Freshman squad; on the contrary, it has proved valuable to them in countless ways. The Freshman team broke a string of defeats last Saturday. It met a team which heavily outweighed it and which had the usual number of exceptional individual players. Without detracting the slightest credit from the team itself, it is a feather in the caps of the men who worked with the team as well as a vindication of the present organization.