In spite of its insistent demand for the subordination of individual to team effort football has produced more stars than any other college sport that has been dependent on organization on the field. The game has found room alike for the man who is born to lead in athletics and for the man who must attain such eminence as he can through unceasing effort and the assimilation of the best obtainable coaching. Among those who follow the game closely, equipped with some knowledge of technique, the quiet worker gets as much recognition as the star, but the general public dearly loves a hero, and football provides them in ever increasing numbers. The great drop-kicker and the great runner, these are the two types readily understood and as readily admired by the mass of the crowd at a big game, but they themselves are usually the first to point out the fact that their feats often would have been impossible were it not for the aid of the other members of the team.

From time to time a man appears, however, to whom coach and spectator alike doff their hats. Their work is so palpably that of sheer genius that there is no room for envy even in the breasts of other players. Their kingdom is that of the Heffelfingers, the Poes, the Brickleys, the Wendells, the Osgoods, the Glasses, the DeWitts, the Thorpes, the Hudsons, the Dalys and many others - truly a glittering host. A few of the brightest stars of the gridiron were practically beyond coaching - Hinkey of Yale, Hamilton Fish Jr. of Harvard, John DeWitt of Princeton, Heston 222 of Michigan, Wyckoff of Cornell, Hare of Pennsylvania - men who could play football apparently without taking thought. Seldom does a season pass without the appearance, East and West, of at least one man of this type, and it often happens that there will be several in the football limelight.

The follower of the game of long ago will remain faithful to a large extent to the heroes of his time - Yalensians to Bull, Vance McCormick, Wallis and Winter, McClung, the Blisses, the elder Hinkey; Princetonians to Hector Cowan, Riggs, Wheeler, Janeway, Lamar, Black, Edgar Allen Poe, Phil King, Trenchard, Holly and Lea, Addison Kelly, and many others; Harvard men to Mackie, the Traffords, Arthur Brewer, Lee Emmons, Newell, Hallowell, and others of their day; Pennsylvanians to Wharton, Gelbert, Rosengarten, Thayer, Brooke, Schoff, Vail, Knipe, Osgood and Carl Williams - it is impossible to name enough of them in reasonable space to satisfy the old-timer. But the mass of the football public is forgetful, and hungers for new sensations by new men. They are forthcoming almost annually, it seems, but the time will come, I think, when genius in football will not have to produce a long run for a touchdown or a field goal in time of desperate need in order to earn the lasting encomiums of the public. In that happy day some of the wonderful, even inspirational work done by players who do not figure immediately in the scoring will be estimated at its true value, not alone by veteran players but by a public that has been thoroughly educated up to the finest points in individual technique and in generalship.

If you talk to-day to an old-time Princeton player about the famous field goal of Arthur Poe, of the almost equally famous goal of John DeWitt, he will grant you the spectacular eminence of these men, but will want to put in a word for the less noticeable work of these same players and of others who have not achieved anything like so great fame.

The same is true of the Harvard, Yale, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Chicago or Cornell veterans. They will want to talk of the feats that made them wonder even while in action, no true appraisal of which has been made by the mass of football followers. If genius is the capacity for taking infinite pains, then theirs is the truer estimate, and there has been far more individual stellar work in important games than the casual observer had suspected.

It is natural, however, that the enduring feats should be those that were connected with some psychological moment, that moment that football provides with greater frequency than almost any other game, and in turning out the man for the moment Princeton has led all the universities and by a comfortable margin. Oddly enough, too, if one delves deeply into these remarkable Tiger performances he will find that some excellent bit of individual work on the part of another player led up to the great play of the day.

Measured by the paucity of time remaining in which to turn defeat into victory, and the unexpectedness of the maneuver, Arthur Poe's field goal at New Haven in 1899 occupies the pinnacle so far as individual genius in the moment of trial is concerned. Only the year before Poe had beaten Yale single-handed, and no one would have been greatly surprised had he picked up a loose ball and made a long run, perhaps for a touchdown; but that Poe could drop-kick a goal from the field not the most sanguine of the Princetonians themselves would have believed. Poe was a very small man, not at all the ideal end of to-day so far as build was concerned, but he was a terror at following the ball, and when he played against Yale for the second time, the Blue had a wholesome respect for the little Tiger busybody.

Poe appeared at right end, and played his usual slashing game, which included remarkable interference for so small a man, throughout one of the toughest struggles ever indulged in between the Blue and the Orange and Black. There were sensational features of the sort in which the crowd delights long before the emergency call came to Poe, and even had he not won the game for the Tigers, there would have been enough to talk about for years to come. Princeton that year had the slashing Tiger tackle play moving with terrific speed and beautiful timing, and with Reiter carrying the ball, was at all times a potential ground-gainer of the dangerous order. It was a long run by Reiter, followed by a series of short plunges, that gave the Tigers their first score. This run in itself was made possible not alone by superb interference, but by individual work of a high order on Reiter's part.