It was one fall day in the gay nineties. Eleven mud streaked men crouched tense on the field. The diminutive quarterback whispered hoarsely, “V-formation, I carry the ball!” Then, in a louder sing-song, “1-2-96, 100!” Instantly the quarterback tucked the ball under one arm, hooked his fingers about the belt of the man immediately before him and was carried speedily down the field, the rest of the team dropping back to form the sides of the V. There came a disgusted grunt from the foremost runner. He was stopped. In stopping, however, he had the forethought to spread his feet firmly, and through the passage thus made the ball-carrier scuttle on hands and knees across the line to make a touchdown for Maryville.
That diminutive quarterback was Kin Takahashi, the first football captain of Maryville College, and obliging center was Judge M. H. Gamble of Maryville.
As we sat in his office one rainy afternoon, Judge Gamble told me of those first years in the history of football at Maryville College. Even now, he speaks of those first games with the fresh enthusiasm of a boy. “If you once get a liking for the game,” he remarked whimsically, “you’ll never get over it.”
“Was the game different from what it is now?” “Why certainly. Even the spectators were different. Didn’t have any cheering then, or cheerleaders. But I don’t think we needed them. Every fellow had his own individual Indian yell that he’d turn loose whenever he had a mind. Spectators would often become participants in those days. Sometimes they’d get so mad they’d swarm down into the field to help out their team. I remember that at one game they crowded in, yelling like wild Indians, until, we didn’t have any room to play. The teams got together to decide how to clear the field. We agreed to pull off a fake play that wouldn’t be counted. So, when the signal was given, all twenty-two of us went charging down the entire field, knocking the crowd right and left. Well, when we looked back, the field was clear except for those that were to their feet, and they were making pretty good time to get off.
The sort of plays we used in those days were different from those used now. The V-formation was soon ruled out because so many of the boys got hurt in that play. Forward passes were severely penalized. We had end runs, though – plenty of them – but with no interference. No one had ever heard of interference. The fellow carrying the ball had to make his own way, once he got to running. As for open formation – well, it never occurred to us to play any other way than close formation on the defensive. I remember how our line would lock arms and stand like a rock wall against any offensive play. Absolutely no team could make a break though the line when we stood like that. That was one of the best lines in the south, then if I do say so. I was the center, George Humphrey and Hamilton were tackles, and Edwards and a fellow named Price, of North Carolina, were guards. Tom Nuchols and Snyder were ends. We were all big fellows, raw-boned and muscular, and I tell you, we were some line!”
“There was one trick we often tried that wasn’t exactly ethical, but all the teams did it, too. We didn’t have any time out, so when the team would become too winded to go on further, one player would drop down in a dead faint. The game was stopped, of course, while a few of us would work over him. After a few minutes, he would come to and the game would continue. We were playing all right then because we had a few minutes rest.
“Our first teams were not what you might call official because a bunch of boys got together because they liked the game. We didn’t have a coach or any planned sort of plays, so we had to work out those matters for ourselves. Kin, the Japanese boy, was our captain and he and I would work on plays hour after hour when we should have been studying. We’d get a board and some grains of corn and he would be one team and I the other. We’d put our man in position and maneuver until we had worked out a satisfactory play, which we would try out on the boys the following afternoon.”
“What sort of uniform did we have? Well I don’t suppose you could correctly call them uniforms. Our suits were homemade. We’d buy this brown domestic and get our suits made at home. At first we played in tennis shoes, but it soon occurred to us that heavy cleats on our shoe soles would help out. We turned cobblers and nailed trips of leather on the bottoms of our oldest pair of shoes. I remember one boy who didn’t like the idea of loading down his feet, so he played barefoot. Said he could run faster. That was Tom Nuchols. I still tease him a little about it. We didn’t have any such things as helmets, but we let our hair grow long on the supposition that it would protect our heads. You’d know a football man in those days by his shoulder length hair. Hairpulling? I should say so. We had numerous unofficial scraps in the process of a game that would have to be settled before the regular game could go on. “Oh, we were funny kids in those days.”
Funny kids, maybe, but they were fighting kids. And if our teams nowadays have rule books, coaches, uniforms, and helmets, they have no more courage and pure love of the game than those boys of 1890 who galloped down the field with red battle in their eyes and long hair streaming.
