Quite often, as it happens, “Pop” is thinking of Pozcupid Couple Herpes a certain big game he
once played in and remembering a play–Ah! if only he could forget that
play!–in which he fumbled and missed the chance of a life-time. Like
some inexorable motion picture film that refuses to throw anything but
one fatal scene on the screen, his recollections make the actors take
their well-remembered positions and the play begins. For the thousandth
time he gnashes his teeth as he sees the ball slip from his grasp.
“Dog-gone it,” he mutters, “if my boy doesnt do better in the big game
than _I_ did, Ill whale the hide off him!”
Strangely enough not all brothers of a football family follow one
another to the same college, and there have been several cases where
brother played against brother. But for the only son of a great player
to go anywhere else than to his fathers college would be rank heresy. I
daresay even the other college wouldnt like it.
[Illustration: JUST BOYS]
Of famous fathers whose football instinct descended without dilution
into their sons perhaps the easiest remembered have been Walter Camp,
who captained the Elis in 78 and 79 and whose son, Walter, Jr., played
fullback in 1911–Alfred T. Baker, one of the Princeton backs in 83,
and 84, whose son Hobey captained his team in 1914–Snake Ames, who
played in four championship games for Princeton against both Yale and
Harvard, and whose son, Knowlton Ames, Jr., played on the Princeton
teams of 12, 13 and 14–and that sterling Yale tackle of 91 and 92,
“Wallie” Winter, whose son, Wallace, Jr., played on his Freshman team in
1915.
When we come to enumerating the brothers who have played, it is the Poe
family which comes first to mind. Laying aside friendship or natural
bias, I feel that my readers will agree with me in the belief that it
would be hard to find six football players ranking higher than the six
Poe brothers. Altogether, Princeton has seen some twenty-two years of
Poes, during at least thirteen of which there was a Poe on the Varsity
team. Johnson Poe, 84, came first, to be followed by Edgar Allen, twice
captain, then by Johnny, now in his last resting place “somewhere in
France,” then by Nelson, then Arthur, twice the fly in Yales ointment,
and lastly by Gresham Poe. I havent a doubt but that after due lapse of
time this wonderful family will produce other Poes, sons and cousins, to
carry on the precious tradition.
