Valpey, HAA Mum on Uconn Visit

Reports came out of Connecticut yesterday that Crimson football coach Arthur L. Valpey and two unidentified men were seen Thursday in the town of Storrs, site of three soda foundations, a bookstore, and the University of Connecticut which has a football team but no coach.

Uconn athletic director and former head coach J. Orleans Christian told the press Valpey had passed through Storrs "purely on a social call." He explained that he had been a friend of former Michigan coach Fritz Crisler and had met Valpey in Ann Arbor.

Christian said further he "could make no statement" on whether Valpey was being considered for the head coaching Job until the latter might choose to apply for it officially.

HAA Knows Nothing

The Harvard Athletic Association yesterday confessed total ignorance of Valpey's journey and of his personal plans for the future.

Valpey declined yesterday to comment on or even to acknowledge his trip.

Storrs is a town through which nobody "passes." It is a tiny hamlet on a country road between two arbitrary points on two minor highways. Except for a few farmers within its borders, its population is almost completely connected with the university.

Since his visit with Christian reportedly consisted mainly of a tour of the institution athletic facilities, Valpey has given strong foundation to rumors that he is looking for a new job.

If the rumor be true, there can be only two reasons: Athletic Director William J. Bingham '16 has asked for his resignation or else Valpey feels that another season at Harvard can do nothing but damage his chances of advancement in the coaching profession.

Circumstantial evidence does not favor the first assumption. For a coach whose team lost eight of nine games, Valpey has received an amazingly minor share of grandstand criticism.

Bingham himself has laid much of the blame for the record on a schedule which put the Crimson out of its class. Many undergraduates said it was the alumni's fault, that they had not fulfilled their duty to convince promising athletics to apply for admission, and the College's and HAA's fault for refusing to encourage athletes who do apply.

Sportswriters rated lack of material a much greater factor in the team's nose-dive than lack of coaching skill. Pressure from the outside for Valpey's dismissal has come only in isolated cases.

Student opinion, and most significantly opinion among members of the squad, has been definitely in favor of Valpey. Spectators remember the long injury list, the fine if losing games with Army, Cornell, and Princeton.

On the other hand, Valpey may be quitting to save his career. A clean break and fresh start from the bottom might eradicate the miserable 1949 record and place Valpey on the list of available small school coaches rather than that of coaches who are closer to the "big time," who have irrefutable excuses, but who nevertheless have never won.

Two other men were with Valpey when he made his tour of the University of Connecticut's athletic facilities, but their identity remained a mystery which neither Uconn athletic officials nor Valpey himself would clear up. Students who spotted Valpey in the course of his unheralded sight-seeing four did not recognize his two associates. One rumor said they were Valpey's coaching assistants, Elmer Madar and Steve Sebo.

Valpey came to Harvard in 1948 and compiled a four win, four less record during his first season here. Last year, however, the bottom dropped out of the Crimson pigskin market and the team racked up but one victory as against eight defeats.