“In my freshman year, however, I felt that I had been wronged, and foolishly I took it to heart.  Since that time I have changed my mind as I have had an opportunity to know the player personally and my own observation and the general high reputation he has for sportsmanship have thoroughly convinced me of my mistake.  The particular play in question was in the Yale 1915 game.  We started a wide end run, and I was attempting to take out the end.  I dived at his knees but aimed too far in front, falling at his feet.  He leaped in the air to avoid me, and came down on the small of my back, gouging me quite severely with his heel cleats.  I felt that it was unnecessary and foolishly resented it.”

One of the most famous games in football was the Harvard-Yale encounter at Springfield in ’94.  Bob Emmons was captain of the Harvard team and Frank Hinkey captain of Yale.  This game was so severely fought that it was decided best to discontinue football relations between these two universities and no game took place until three years later.

Jim Rodgers, who was a substitute at Yale that year, relates some interesting incidents of that game: 

“In those old strenuous days, they put so much fear of God in you, it scared you so you couldn’t play.  When we went up to Springfield, we were all over-trained.  Instead of putting us up at a regular hotel, they put us up at the Christian Workers, that Stagg was interested in.  The bedrooms looked like cells, with a little iron bed and one lamp in each room,” says Jim.  “You know after one is defeated he recalls these facts as terrible experiences.  None of us slept at all well that night, and my knees were so stiff I could hardly walk.  Yale relied much on Fred Murphy.  Harvard had coached Hallowell to get Murphy excited.  Murphy was quick tempered.  If you got his goat, he was pretty liable to use his hands, and Harvard was anxious to have him put out of the game.  Hallowell went to his task with earnestness.  He got Murphy to the point of rage, but Murphy had been up against Bill Odlin, who used to coach at Andover, and Bill used to give you hell if you slugged when the umpire was looking.  But when his back was turned you could do anything.

“Murphy stood about all he could and when he saw the officials were in a conference he gave Hallowell a back-hander, and dropped him like a brick.  His nose was flattened right over his cheek-bone.  Fortunately that happened on the Yale side of the field.  If it had happened on the Harvard side, there would have been a riot.  There was some noise when that blow was delivered; the whole crowd in the stand stood aghast and held its breath.  So Harvard laid for Murphy and in about two plays they got him.  How they got him we never knew, but suddenly it was apparent that Murphy was gone.  The trainer finally helped Murphy up and the captain of the team told him in which direction his goal was.  He would break through just as fine and fast as before, but the moment his head got down to a certain angle, he would go down in a heap.  He was game to the core, however, and he kept on going.