“When I entered Yale I was an absolute greenhorn, but the greenhorn had a chance then, for he was able to play in actual scrimmage every day; now the squads are so big that opportunities for playing the game for long daily periods are entirely wanting.

“To-day it is a case of a heap big talk, a coach for every position, more talk, lots of system, blackboard exercises and mighty little actual play.

“I have often wondered if things were not being overdone as far as coaching goes in the preparatory schools at the present time.  The superabundance of coaches and the demand for victory combine to force the boy.

“If there is any forcing to do, the college is the place for it, when the boy is older and better able to stand the strain.  In recent years I have seen not a few brokendown boys enter college.  Boys are coming to college now who needs must be told everything, and if there is not a large body of coaches about to tell them, they mutiny.  They seem to forget, or not to know, that most is up to the man himself.

“When a boy comes to college with the idea that all that is necessary is for him to be told, constantly told how to do this and that, and he will deliver in the last ditch, I cannot help thinking that something is wrong.

“I have in mind right now a player in the line, who came to college after four years of school football.  Ever since his entry he has complained that no one has told him anything.  Now this particular player spends ten months of each year loafing, and expects in his two months of football to do a man’s job in a big game.

“No amount of blackboard and other talk is going to make a player do a man’s job and whip his opponent.  No man can play a tackle job properly if he does not realize the kind of a proposition he is up against twelve months in the year and act accordingly.  He has got to do his own thinking, and see to it himself that he has the necessary strength and toughness, to play the game, as one must to win.”

Sanford the Unique

George Foster Sanford is unique in football.  He made splendid teams when he coached at Columbia, while his subsequent record with the Rutgers Eleven attracted wide attention.

In the Columbia Alumni News of October, 1915, Albert W. Putnam, a former player, reviews seven years of Morningside football, and pays the following tribute to Foster Sanford: 

“Sanford coached the teams of 1899, 1900 and 1901.  He coached them ably, conscientiously and thoroughly, and in my opinion was the best football coach in the country.”