Sport: Cagle & Co.

(See front cover)

"Well, I can't see. . . . Well, why don't you. . . . Wait a minute. . . . Sure . . . that's simple. . . . Why didn't you tell me that before. . . . Well, of course, if you do it that way. ... A baby could understand. . . ."

Such is the general tenor of conversations often held between a certain famed young man and the bright young person whom he calls his wife. The famed young man has always found it difficult to grasp the inward significance of mathematical and other studious problems. The "wife," or in terms divorced from West Point slang, the famed young man's West Point roommate, is a "star man," standing in the first ten of the first class. He is good at all things studious. His name is J. A. K. Herbert. He is Captain of B Company.

The famed young man, Private Christian Keener Cagle of Company B, does not find that being "the greatest football halfback since Red Grange" helps him with his studies, though J. A. K. Herbert sometimes does.† But neither does his fame diminish bis popularity at the Point because, newspaper and schoolgirl illusions to the contrary notwithstanding. Christian Keener Cagle is not a domineering, fire-eating, muscle-bulging hero off the gridiron. He is quiet, retiring. He brought a drawl but not much rambunctiousness with him from Louisiana. He is not even redhaired, as legend says, nor six feet tall. But two feet are better than six if they can carry you as fast as Cagle's through a broken field. And it is some consolation, if you are not handy at theme-writing, to be able to throw an accurate forward pass —a Cagle accomplishment for which some experts rate him a more valuable player than Iceman Grange of Illinois ever was. Entering another season of seeing his name in big headlines and hearing it thundered from the stands, drilling with his teammates in the new Army jersey of gold with a red stripe, Cadet Cagle must last week have realized two things about Army football this autumn: 1) the Army is about a week behind other teams in practice; 2) the Army has what looks like the hardest schedule of any team this year —Harvard, Yale, South Dakota, Illinois, Ohio Wesleyan, Notre Dame, Stanford.*

Many and many a famed stalwart besides Christian Keener Cagle was last week watching plays being diagnosed upon a blackboard and making phantom first downs across an empty field and plunging ferociously at a tackling dummy. Yale heard that Freddy Loeser would play center this season despite the fact that he fractured his skull in an automobile accident during the summer. At Annapolis was Johnny Gannon who helped the Navy tie Michigan last year. Discarding the huddle system, Columbia rehearsed two crack, barking quarterbacks, Liflander and Joyce. Princeton's fleet Eddie Wittmer turned up, sole survivor of a first-string backfield otherwise dispersed by graduation. At Stanford, giant Center Walter Heinecke reported, despite poor health which may keep him on the bench. Charlie ("Foots") Clements, Alabama tackle, seemed to be wearing bigger shoes than ever. Husky after a summer job as highway policeman, Fullback Harold Rebholz returned to Wisconsin. Harvard welcomed two of its less gentle sons, Quarterback Putnam and Fullback Harper.