Football for Player and Spectator/Chapter 11
The attainment of individual perfection is as impossible in football as in anything else, for absolute faultlessness does not exist in the human being. Nevertheless, a young fellow who is ambitious in athletics and who tries hard to outstrip others in the competition for football honors can greatly improve himself in the requirements of the individual. The fellow who has gone through the proper training honestly and courageously cannot but be a better man mentally and physically.
In the first place, a football player absolutely must be physically strong and rugged. The game gives no place for the weak and faint-hearted. It demands the stout and the brave. A large majority of young men are physically able to start. Out of the many who can with consistent training improve their bodies, only a few will do so. If you are with the majority in the first instance, start out with the motto, "I will", and you will succeed in the end.
STRENGTH AND BRAVERY
A small man may be just as valuable a member of the team as the largest one on the eleven. Size is a good asset if the liabilities of other requirements do not offset it and leave a balance on the wrong side. Goliath was a big and mighty man but David was more than a match for him. There is hardly a big team which does not have some member who tips the scales somewhere around the 150-pound mark but who has won his place because he has made himself strong and courageous and is not afraid to perform the duties outlined for him.
SPEED
Next to strength and bravery the essential requirement is speed. A slow man has no place in the game. Quickness may be acquired just as strength may be developed. It is the jump on the other fellow that counts, and any player of a team who does not start his part with the rest of the formation at the proper instant may easily upset the entire play and spoil what otherwise would have been a good gain. Many people wonder why a team runs up and down the field, going through formations for hours during practice, with no opponents to stop them. It is to perfect speed as well as to acquire a knowledge of the signals and formations. A fast working team will always defeat a slow-running eleven.
ENDURANCE
A football player must be a man not easily exhausted or injured. A game is not a severe strain on a man who is physically fit, because proper training has put him into such condition that he can speedily regain the loss caused by the tax on his strength. Taking out time for exhaustion or injury is giving the other side just as much rest and may be just what the opponents need. Other things being equal, the team with the endurance will wear down the opponents, and many a championship has been decided in the last few minutes of the game.
SAND
This term, originally slang, but which has now become a word of general adoption, includes courage, grit and determination. These elements are absolutely essential to the successful player. Bravery, daring, firmness, resolution and unwavering decision to do are the factors which go to make the football player. The one who weakens or hesitates about tackling the opposing player running with the ball, even if that runner should happen to be the hardest man in the world to stop, will never make a football player. Football is not tag, and, no matter if the tackler does put his hand on the runner, the latter is not going to quit if he is a real football player. The runner must have the determination to get away and keep on advancing the ball and the tackler must have the firm resolution that his opponent must not be allowed to go a step further.
JUDGMENT AND VERSATILITY
If you are ambitious to succeed in football do not be a machine player, but sum up every new situation and adapt yourself to it. Do not play your individual position the same way all the time. Vary your style and go at your man differently in each scrimmage. Out of the thousands and thousands of games that have been played there are never two exactly alike. Football affords more complications than chess and does not give the player nearly so much time to ponder. Judgment must be quick and accurate and the man who has a faculty of instantly adapting himself to a situation which suddenly presents itself is the man who makes a valuable member of the team. Conditions constantly arise in a football game which a player has never met before. In such a situation he has no time to go home and figure it out like a mathematical problem; he must act instantly, as would a colonel of a regiment suddenly surprised by an enemy. The ability to get out of a bad predicament or to keep the opponent from escaping, by a piece of strategy, when he gets into straits, is one of the essentials of a football player.
DISCIPLINE
After all a football team is but a small army and the discipline must be just as rigid as if something even more important than the mere winning or losing of a game were at stake. Orders must be obeyed unquestioningly after the team is on the field. The soldier who refuses to follow the mandates of his commanding officer is court-martialed, and the quicker the team gets rid of a member who willfully refuses to obey instructions, the better it is for the team. Rules for training, practice and play must be strictly adhered to if the team is to be a successful one.
SACRIFICE
In a certain sense a player must lose his individuality and make himself a component member of his team. With the proper spirit of sacrifice in all its members, the team becomes harmonious. No man sinks more of his individuality than another, and any man who is to become a football player must be willing to sacrifice as much as any of his comrades. A young man may think that he is being deprived of so-called pleasures when he submits to the training rules necessary to make him a football player, but, as has been fully explained elsewhere, nothing is taken away from him that would do him any good. In football training he is simply following out directions which the best physicians in the land would advise as the proper method of living. Hence it ought not to be considered a sacrifice. Anything a man absolutely needs should be given him. The subtraction of necessities would be a sacrifice. The elimination of luxuries and pleasures is one that helps to build men up, not tear them down.
CONTROL OF TEMPER
This would seem an almost unnecessary sub-head under this general chapter. It cannot but be admitted that the man who loses his head in a game is the man who will probably lose the game at a critical moment. It often occurs that an opponent makes use of a proficiency in shy banter for the very purpose of getting the other fellow going. While tactics of this sort are not ideal in football, they are often presented in the general problem that the player meets. People on the sidelines do not appreciate the continual struggle going on in the individual player to control himself. To conquer an inclination to "get even" is a manly victory. If the resolution to accomplish this is fulfilled in the first game, it comes easier in the next contest, until it finally becomes second nature not to get rattled. Nothing is better preparation for a young man to meet the plays on life's real gridiron without "losing his head."
SPIRIT
No man ever made a success of anything unless his heart was in it. The wall street magnate loves his game on the stock exchange. The merchant king is inspired with a devotion to business. The great politician would go insane if it were not for his world of excitement and the opportunity which his field affords to give vent to his hobby. No lawyer or doctor ever approached the top of the ladder in his profession who did not have an enthusiasm in himself, constantly urging him higher. Likewise, no man can be a football player who does not love the game. Half-heartedness or lack of earnestness will eliminate any man from a football team. The love of the game must be genuine. It is not devotion to a fad that makes men play football; it is because they enjoy their struggle.
A prominent factor of success is the loyalty that the player must feel to his university or college. It is the inspiration that makes him do his utmost for the success of the team. His own individuality should be entirely sunken in what will redound most to the good of his Alma Mater. It is the spirit of loyalty and enthusiasm for the general cause that has made the American soldiers successful on so many battle-fields, and to this sentiment is due the successive victories of the Japanese over the Russians. The fire of loyalty is the greatest influence to animate a man in football as well as in any other form of competition.
GENERAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE GAME
Lastly, the aspirant must master all the fundamentals of the game. The man who cannot start, catch, pass, tackle, block and interfere is not a real football player. There is no telling at what moment he may be called upon to use his versatility to save or to win the game. A championship contest may easily depend on whether one individual can catch a punt, tackle a runner, block an opposing player or interfere properly for his own team mate.
The requirements of the individual may seem numerous, but they are important, and the man who comes nearest to these ideals is the one who is going to make the greatest player.