At the season's peak, more than 1,000,000 spectators watch U. S. football games every Saturday. Last week's 15 most interesting games drew 450,000. In New York City four football crowds added up to 115,000. Biggest single bowlful of spectators (65,000) was at Pittsburgh.
The attraction at the Pitt Stadium was Minnesota and a game that seemed more likely than any other to have important consequence next month when experts begin the fantastic business of picking a U. S. champion. Minnesota's star halfback, Francis ("Pug") Lund, last season played 460 out of a possible 480 minutes.
He gained a total of 682 yd. compared to 639 for all his opponents. Last spring he had his left little finger amputated because he had broken it so many times that it would no longer bend. For the first three periods Pitt not only bottled up Lund, working behind
a line which averaged 200 lb., but also protected a 7-point lead, gained when a lateral pass from Weinstock to Nicksick resulted in a touchdown. Before leaving Minneapolis, the 36 members of the Minnesota squad were presented with rabbits' feet by Mayor Bainbridge. They did no good at all until the last quarter when a Minnesota back named Julius Alphonse shook loose 22 yd. from the Pitt goal-line and sprinted across for the tying touchdown.
A few minutes later, after a 40-yd. march to Pitt's 18-yd. line, Minnesota sprang the "Sunday play"—a double lateral pass followed by a forward. Lund to Tenner—that it had saved for just such a crisis. The touchdown won the game, 13-to-7.
Fifteen hundred Michigan students and faculty members signed a petition asking that the team's star end, Negro Willis Ward, be allowed to play against Georgia Tech. At a mass meeting, athletic authorities insisted that he should not play because 1) it would be discourteous to Georgia Tech; 2) he might be injured. Two hundred campus radicals threatened to prevent the game by standing in the middle of the field. The Ann Arbor Ministerial Association drew up a protest. Said the Michigan Daily: ". . . If the athletic department forgot it had Ward on its football team when it scheduled a game with Georgia Tech, it was astonishingly forgetful; ... if it was conscious of Ward's being on the team but scheduled the game anyway, it was extraordinarily stupid. . . . The line-up of the team, regardless of what motivation there was, is the concern of the coach. . ..."
Ward, son of a Ford factory worker, an A student in political science who is even more famed as a trackman than footballer, sat calmly in a radio booth, watched his teammates defeat the Southerners, 9-to-2.
Bookmakers in Manhattan reported that $100,000 had been wagered on Fordham v. St. Mary's. Beaten by Nevada in last fortnight's most surprising upset, St. Mary's started off badly when Fordham's Maniaci intercepted a pass, made a mad 80-yd. dash for a touchdown in the first quarter. Harry ("The Horse'') Mattos tied the score with a touchdown in the next quarter, threw a pass to Erdelatz for another in the last. St. Mary's 14, Fordham 9.