“Head Coach Camp and I attended the Princeton-Harvard game at Princeton on that day.  Upon our return to New York we received a telegram from Mrs. Camp to the effect that the score made by Yale against Wesleyan was 105 to nothing.  One of the graduate coaches was much impressed with the opportunity to turn a few pennies and he requested that the information be kept quiet until he could see a few Princeton men.  The result was that he negotiated the small end of several stakes at long odds against Yale.  When the news of the Wesleyan score was made public the next morning, the opinion of the public changed somewhat as to the merit of the team.  It nevertheless went into the Princeton game as not being the favorite and in the opinion of disinterested persons it was expected that Princeton would win handsomely.”

Cowan the great has this to say: 

“I happened to be down on the grounds to watch the practice just a few days before the Yale game.  They did not have enough scrub to make a good defense.  Jim Robinson happened to see me there and asked me to play.  He had asked me before, and I had always refused, but this time for some reason I accepted and he took me to the Club house.

“I got into my clothes.  The shoes were about three sizes too small.  That day I played guard opposite Tracy Harris.  I played well enough so that they wanted me to come down the next day, as they said they wanted good practice.  The next day I was put against Captain Bird, who had been out of town the first day I played.  He had the reputation of being not at all delicate in the way he handled the scrub men who played against him, so that they had learned to keep away from him.

“As I had not played before, I did not know enough to be afraid of him, so when the ball was put in play I simply charged forward at the quarterback and was able to spoil a good many of his plays.  I heard afterward that Bird asked Jim Robinson who that damn freshman was that played against him.  The next year I was put in Bird’s place at left guard, as he had graduated and fought all comers for the place.  I was never put on the scrub again.

“My condition when in Princeton was the best.  Having been raised in the country, I knew what hard work was and in the five years that I played football I never left the field on account of injury either in practice or in games with other teams.

“It is a great thing to play the game of football as hard as you can.  I never deliberately went to do a man up.  If he played a rough game, I simply played him the harder.  I never struck a man with my fist in the game.  I do not remember ever losing my temper.  Perhaps I did not have temper enough.

“When we speak of a football man’s nerve I would say that any man who stopped to think of himself is not worthy of the game, but there is one man who seemed to me had a little more nerve than the average.  I think that he played for two years on our scrub, and the reason that he was kept there so long was on account of his size.  He only weighed about 138 pounds, but for all the time he played on the scrub he played halfback and no one ever saw him hesitate to make every inch that he could, even though he knew he had to suffer for it.