Centre's 'Praying Colonels' View Return to Cambridge

Kentucky's Centre College, which in 1921 astounded the football world by handing Harvard its first defeat in four years, yesterday approved a move to bring its "Praying Colonels" back to Cambridge and "fill the Stadium up again."

"We'd like nothing better than playing Harvard in 1957," said Brisco Inman, Centre's Athletic Director. He agreed with members of the Crimson's 1921 team that Centre would make a fine non-Ivy League "breather" for the varsity, and that the game would boost the H.A.A.'s sagging home ticket sales.

Centre's football team this year went through an undefeated season, sweeping its eight-game slate and leading the country with an average total of 431 yards per game.

"This is the best team we've had since 1921," Inman declared. "If we played Harvard down here there wouldn't be a stadium in Kentucky large enough to hold the crowd," he added.

Members of the Crimson's 1921 varsity, which lost to Centre and its famous quarterback "Bo" McMillan by a 6-0 score, generally agreed with their teammate Winthrop H. Churchill '23 that a "lot of people would love to see Centre back on the Harvard schedule."

Attendance Low This Year

The move to bring Centre back to Cambridge came in the wake of reports that attendance at the Stadium this season fell to 71,500--57,000 below last year's total. The two non-Ivy League teams on the schedule, the University of Massachusetts and Bucknell, were billed as easy Crimson conquests and together drew only 22,500 spectators.

However, Carroll F. Getchell, Business Manager of the Athletic Department, has defended the H.A.A.'s scheduling of UMass, Bucknell, and Tufts for next year. Getchell also pointed out that the decline in home attendance this year was partly due to bad weather and to the loss of one home game from the schedule.