Sport: Stabilization

Ever since 1869, when 50 long-trousered, bewhiskered Princeton and Rutgers students kicked a "bag of wind" up & down a 360-yd. field to see which side could kick it between the goal posts six times, the U.S. game of football has undergone almost as many changes as women's hats. Last week when the American Football Coaches Association met in Chicago for their annual rule-tinkering, they wrote an extraordinary page into the annals of the sport. The world might be going politically and economically arsy-versy, but the coaches failed to recommend a single major football change for 1939. Said President-elect Lou Little (Columbia): "The coaches feel a nice balance has been reached between offense and defense. We are now in for a period of stabilization."