In 1904, Fred Murphy coached at Exeter.  Fred says: 

“This was probably the best team that Exeter had had up to that time.  The team was captained by Tommy Thompson, who afterwards played at Cornell.  Eddie Hart at that time stripped at about 195 pounds.  This was the famous team on which Donald MacKenzie MacFadyen played and later made the Princeton varsity.  Tad Jones was quarterback the first year he came to school.  In those days they took to football intuitively without much coaching.  You never had to tell Tad Jones a thing more than once.  He would think things out for himself.  He showed great powers of leadership and good football sense.  Howard Jones and Harry Vaughn played on this team.”

“Charlie McCarthy of Brown will long be remembered for his great punting ability,” says Fred Murphy.  “He had a great many pet theories.  McCarthy is one of the best football men in the Brown list.”  In a letter which I have received from Charlie McCarthy, as a result of a wonderful victory over Minnesota one year, McCarthy writes: 

“The students of the University gave me a beautiful gold watch engraved on the inside—­’To our Friend Mac from the students of the University of Wisconsin.’” This shows how highly McCarthy is held at this University.

McCarthy continues, “I go out every fall and kick around with the boys still and I hope to do so the rest of my life if I get a chance.  I think the greatest football player I ever saw was Frank Hinkey.  Speaking of my own ability as a player, I haven’t much to say.  I was not much of a football player but I got by some way.  I neither had the physique, nor the ability, but tried to do my best.  I am glad to say no one ever called me a quitter.  I am proud to say that Brown University gave me a beautiful silver cup at the end of my four years for the best work in football, although the said cup belongs by rights to ten other men on the team.”

As one visits the dressing room of the New York Giants and sees the attendant work upon the wonderful physique of Christy Mathewson, one cannot help but realize what a potent factor he must have been on Bucknell’s team.  When Christy played he was 6 feet tall and weighed 168 pounds stripped.  He prepared at Keystone Academy, playing in the line.  In 1898, when he went to Bucknell, he was immediately put at fullback and played there three years.

Fred Crolius says of him:  “Of all the long distance punters with hard kicks to handle, Percy Haughton and Christy Mathewson stand out in his memory.  Mathewson had the leg power to turn his spiral over.  That is, instead of dropping where ordinary spirals always drop, an additional turn seemed to carry the ball over the head of the back who was waiting for the ball, often carrying some fifteen or twenty yards beyond.”

Football has no more ardent admirer than Christy Mathewson.  It will be interesting to hear what he has to say of his experience in the game of football.