Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 71: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE POOR FISH. Donna has plasters. Every football writer in the country gave me credit for having developed Boswell Mullings, who won the game, and I got offers from big colleges everywhere. That was just what [ wanted, too, but things broke-tough for me. I was angling for a three years’ contract from one of the big three—Harvard, Yale, or Princeton — and wanted twenty-five thou- sand dollars a year. I don’t think I’m worth it, or any football coach for that matter, but they’re getting the dough right now, so I figured, while riding the crest of fame on the Harvard win, I’d horn in for a cut of it. I’m only getting four thousand dollars a year at Centerville, a little school in the South, and, when I get six offers of three-year contracts averaging from ten thousand to twenty thousand dollars a year, I see where I’m going to be sitting pretty at the end of three years with a fortune in the bank and maybe touring Europe to while away my spare time. But, just as I’m considering which one of the contracts to grab, a friend of mine wises me up that Harvard is going to come through with a two-years’ contract at may- be twenty-eight thousand dollars a year, which is going to hurt awful. Right away I get dizzy and pass up everything else, and then, when all the worth-while colleges have signed up their coaches for the com- ing year, I get word that the Harvard fac- ulty has decided to stay with the coach they got, and I’m completely outa luck. Of course I don’t say nothing, and when the Centerville faculty, thinking they’re go- ing to lose me, begs me to stay, and offers me an increase to seven thousand five hun- dred dollars a year, which is two thousand five hundred dollars more than they can afford, I’m on the level and tell ’em I'll stay, but won’t take more than five grand and I sign for one year. But I’m sore at myself. I’m sore because I figure it one of those opportunity-comes-once-in-a-lifetime things and it knocked at my joint to find nobody home. Had I made Boswell Mullings a great football player it would have been some- thing else again, but great football players are born as often as made. I had no more to do in making Mullings great than Bar- 861 num made Jumbo an elephant. Mullings was a natural football flash. He had more brains than any three average players. He was a genius, and he’d have beaten Harvard last year if the Siamese Twins or Hank O’Day had been coaching. But his coming through for the only score of that game, while Red Hastings, almost single-handed keeping Harvard from scoring, proves the win that gives me my big chance and If muff it. You can imagine the mood I was in the day Halibut Haines horns in on my vision with his ‘‘ Art thee the football men- tor” stuff. Here I was with a football squad so ragged looking they’d make a crazy quilt. Mullings had graduated, so had Hastings, a wonderful defensive player, and three other high-class men. We had Harvard on our schedule again, because of course they couldn’t drop us after we beat ’em, as it would look like they was afraid of us. And, what I expected they’d do to us this year was plenty. Which meant that all the rep’ I had gathered last year would explode like a toy balloon that’s draped it- self on a picket fence. THI. I wap forgotten such a thee-talking bird as Halibut Haines existed, being busy try- ing to make a lotta good longshoremen look like a football team, when Maloney comes up one day with a grin and says: “That baby’s a pip’.”’ ‘“What baby?” I says, watching Gor- man, a sorrowful looking fullback, muff a tackle little Jackie Coogan could have got with one hand. “That fishcake, Haines,” says Eddie. ‘“ He’s cleaned the school outa watches, and there ain’t two pairs of cuff-links in the place.”’ ‘“ Whaddye mean?” I says. ‘He ain’t crooked?” ‘ Craps,” says Eddie. ‘“ He’s a passing fool. He’s so good he’d take Lily away from the Wildcat.” I signaled the-two alleged football squads to call it a day and we walked toward the clubhouse. ‘“ Come to think of it,” I says, recognizing who he meant, “ he wanted to Comicwiooks CO)