Pigskin Philosopher

They call Harold Williams "Josh" with good reason. The varsity backfield coach, like his line confrere, Ted Schmitt, is a firm devotee of the kidding technique as an aid to coaching.

Williams is--although he probably doesn't realize it--something of a philosopher, too. When he talks about a coach's job, he unconsciously expresses the reason why men turn to this low-paid, insecure livelihood.

It is the constant reaction of the players that Williams considers the coach's greatest reward.

"You're working with something alive," he says. "Something you can teach. Something that occasionally talks back to you.

"And you watch it improve; you watch a team grow. The best part of the whole business is that the boys--most of them--appreciate what you're trying to do for them.

"They come back to you in later years, thanking you for little things you've taught them. That's the very best part of coaching."

Williams must love to coach, for he pursues his profession at considerable personal hardship. The numerous administrative details of modern football leave a coach little free time during the season, anyhow. For Josh, the hard grind has been made even more lonely because Mrs. Williams and their two daughters have stayed at home near Pittsburgh.

"It's an awfully tough thing to move the family around," he says wistfully, "but I certainly do miss them all."

Williams has spent the fall alone, kidding the backfields along. This is not to imply that the puckish little man is always a joker. He can be as sarcastic as he is jolly, should the occasion require. He is a tough taskmaster, and any deviations from the perfection he demands bring a biting, albeit witty, comment. Even at its sharpest, the Williams crack has a decidedly humorous aspect.

Most of his remarks, of course, lose their humor when removed from the athletic context. The following, though, is a pretty good example of Williams' ability to take a common coaching practice and add his own peculiarly funny barb.

One of his major jobs is to train and coordinate the defensive backfields. In the early part of the week, Williams will have a skeleton junior varsity team (just backs and ends) run through enemy pass patterns as they have been reported by the Crimson's scouts.

Before the workout starts, Williams will stride over to the J.V. huddle.

"Cmon you guys," he'll hiss. "You're as good as those clowns. Get out there and show them up." This latter with a contemptuous wave at the varsity defense. And the J.V.'s promptly roar through the first-stringers.

But only briefly, For Williams then crosses the scrimmage line, calling the varsity around him.

"Listen to those scrubs," he shouts loudly enough to be heard all over the field. "They're out-yelling you and out-playing you, too. What are you going to do about it?"

Because both sides have heard the complete series of exortations, everybody is fusions. The players are as angry at Williams as they are at their opponents, and they play with an aroused fury. Laughs come a bit later. In the meantime, the stratagem has had its desired effect.

Williams has always wanted to coach. Born in Mars, a small town close to Pittsburgh, he attended the University of Pittsburgh, from which he was graduated in 1931. Short and wiry, he played wingback--a left-handed one, too--for Pitt, travelling to the Rose Bowl in 1930. (Southern Cal murdered us," he recalls.)

In the course of his coaching career, he has moved from Pitt to Florida to Temple, and back to Pitt. The second stretch with the Panthers terminated in 1950 when Lloyd Jordan, newly-appointed here, asked Williams to come to Cambridge.

At Florida, Williams had coached the golf team, a task he has recently assumed here. He disclaims any exceptional ability ("I'm just out there for the fun of it"), and, indeed, laughs aside inquiries about his scores.

"It's going to be tough," he says, in reference to his new post, "To do a decent job, we really ought to be out on the greens all fall, then practice on the indoor range during the winter.

"But even with the handicaps, I hope we can bring Harvard's golf team up to where it should be."

Right now, however, Williams is turning all his abundant energies toward football, and final preparations for Saturday's finale. The game is to Williams something more than a sport, to be forgotten when winter comes. It is a contribution to life, in the very best sense of the phrase.

"I'll tell you," he says. "Football is a team game, and of course your aim is to have all eleven men functioning as a unit.

"But before you can have teamwork, each man has to do his own job well. Everybody fulfills his particular function, and then the whole thing moves."

Which, it would seem, is a solid outlook for a man who is a teacher as well as a producer of victories.