Army is Again Favorite as Crimson, Hurt by Injuries, Faces Cadets Today In the Most Colorful Game of Season

For the third successive year Army's football team, backed by a cadet corps of twelve hundred invades the Stadium to do battle with Harvard in what always turns out to be the most colorful game of the season. After preliminary band manoeuvers and the parade of the cadets the teams will come out for practice and will then start the game at 2 o'clock.

Army, always powerful and resourceful, with its usual band of former college players comes this year, just as it did last October, ruling a slight favorite. The Army comes without Cagle and Murrell, its outstanding stars of last year, but it comes under the direction of a new coach, Major Ralph Sasse, bringing with him the Warner system of offense, originated by Glenn Warner at Stanford University.

Harvard, still suffering because injuries have removed several regulars from the lineup, is again the underdog. The Crimson has only three men in the starting lineup today that answered the opening whistle in the Army game last year. But it has Captain Ticknor, the All-American center, and Wood, its brainy quarterback who has lately developed into a triple threat back. The Army counters with a veteran line that practically played as a unit in the game last year and a trio of unsung but experienced Sophomores in the backfield.

The game is essentially one between two untried teams for neither Harvard or Army has come to grips with a major opponent this year. Both elevens have run rough shod over three small college teams and neither has been scored against. Victory today will make either one of them a serious contender for sectional honors.

If Harvard had its full strength in the game today there is but little doubt that Coach Horween's team would be a favorite at good odds. But Devens is lost to the backfield and Talbot and Ogden to the line. Last night it was still undetermined whether or not Mays would be allowed to enter the tilt. With Devens and possibly Mays out of the backfield most of the punch is gone and the duty to carry on falls on the shoulders of Schereschewsky and Batchelder. The former has never started in a big game while the latter is still a mysterious quantity despite an encouraging showing in the preceding games this year.

The game will be won or lost, from the Harvard viewpoint, according to the way that the substitutes fill the shoes of the regulars. In the line the play of the ends and the tackles defensively will be the deciding factors. The ends have no Cagle to worry about this year but they have an array of backs to watch, and the most deceptive offensive system in the country to combat. In the backfield the manner in which the understudies execute the lateral pass will be one of the deciding factors of the game. But Harvard's chief threat lies in the new plays that have been designed especially for Army and the judgment and resourcefulness Wood shows in calling them