Sport: The Specialist

Michigan's football team hasn't played in a Rose Bowl game since the first Tournament of Roses game in 1902. It was a sizzling New Year's Day in Pasadena, but Michigan's eleven "iron men" lasted the whole game, without using any of the four subs they had brought along.

The other team, Stanford, found the going harder. One banged-up Stanford man after another was helped off field—until there were no subs left. A third-quarter dialogue between Michigan's captain and Stanford's has been preserved— though perhaps in slightly altered form —in Michigan's annals. Said the Michigan captain: "In view of the circumstances, I suggest we end the game by mutual agreement." Answered the Stanford captain bravely, through bloody lips: "We'll play on." A few minutes later, Stanford's W. K. Roosevelt (a cousin of Teddy's), one of whose legs had already been banged up earlier in the game, injured the other. That did it. The game was called off with six minutes left to play. Said Stanford's captain: "If you are willing, sir, we'll call it a day." The score: Michigan 49, Stanford o.

Modern Design. Michigan's 1947 Wolverines are a good bet to be the second team in Michigan's history to play in Pasadena's Tournament of Roses. They have been rated the nation's best. They are as unlike Fielding ("Hurry-Up") Yost's old-time Michigan teams as modern design can make them. There are no roughcast iron men on Michigan's 1947 squad. It is a collection of chrome-plated, hand-tooled specialists. Some never get a chance to make a tackle, others never throw a block. Usually none stays in a game long enough to work up as much sweat as the radio announcer, who tries to keep track of them as they trot on & off.

Michigan's shrewd Coach Fritz Crisler has taken advantage of the unlimited substitution rule. In the first four games of the season, Crisler's team used everyone but the water boy, and averaged 55 points a game.

The way they did it was something to behold. Lacking brawn, they have to be nimble. And jack-nimble is what they are —and as well-drilled as the Rockettes. Michigan's sleight-of-hand repertory is a baffling assortment of double reverses, buck-reverse laterals, crisscrosses, quick-hits and spins from seven different formations. Sometimes, watching from the side lines, even Coach Crisler isn't sure which Michigan man has the ball. Michigan plays one team on offense, one on defense.

Only two players (Halfback "Bump" Elliott and Fullback Jack Weisenburger) play on both. Thus, in effect, Crisler's first team consists of 20 men. Whenever Michigan's defensive team regains the ball, Crisler orders: "Offense unit, up and out," and nine men pour onto the field at once.

In the season's opener, Michigan State went down, 55-0. Then Michigan rolled over Stanford-(49-13), Pittsburgh (69-0) and Northwestern (49-21). Last week came the traditional grudge match: the Little Brown Jug game with Minnesota.

Brown Jug games have a way of turning into upsets, and this was nearly one. The gamblers had guessed that Michigan was 26 points better; Michigan was hard put to it to win 13-6.