In 1908 Richard Cresson Harlow was playing on the line for the University of Pennsylvania, and wearing handles on his hip pads so that his teammates could toss him and the ball over the scrimmage line for a first down, President Theodore Roosevelt stepped in to prohibit this maneuver as a menace to the young manhood of the nation. Since this palcolithic period of football, Coach Harlow has seen and brought about constant progress in the game. The forward pass without the added weight of a player was the greatest historical source of speed. Wit rather than weight has steadily become the emphasis. But since Harlow returned form the Navy to assume control over Harvard football fortunes a year and a half ago, he feels that he has witnessed what amounts to the industrial revolution of the game.

As Coach Harlow leads a Crimson eleven into the sixty-fourth Yale game, and his own ninth, he sees the great recent transition of football as "from a game to hard work." On the eve of his dawn departure yesterday with his 38-man squad, Harlow looked around at his four assistant coaches and observed: "A fellow's idea of a good time used to be to get out there four days a week and scrimmage, and then hit a guy in another color jersey on Saturday." Now practices are a combination of dancing class and Yogi, as each man must learn every offensive and defensive stop to perfection. Movements must be repeated over and over again, so that reposes are mechanical rather than studied. The man ho must stop and think what to do today finds himself watching the other team score from a worm's eye view.

Leoped Army Intelligence

Two factors, says Harlow, one offensive and one defensive, have taken football out of the sandlot and mad it a science. Complications of shifting defensive formations have not only ulcerated the coach; they have also forced the quarterback to mix psychology and prophecy. Play-caller Chip Gannon, today, may survey the Yale lineup and bend down to call the sure-fire play for his matches. But as the Crimson rushes out of the huddle they may find the Bulldogs just ain't where they're supposed to be. Actually any Yale shifts are only the Ornithologist's birds coming home to roost--Harlow is perhaps the greatest defensive innovator in American football. His so-called "looping" defense, where his line shifted toward be sideline and his backs in the other direction, took prewar Army intelligence three years to analyze in scouting reports.

The Crucial Step

The other fundamental element in today's rapid pace, according to Harlow, is the man in motion. Only in the past two years has the use of the back in motion reached its ultimate refinement in the T formation. First crudely evolved from the Chicago Bear approximation of the T, the motion-left-and-right was quickly-adapted by Charlie Caldwell of Princeton to the single wing. "With a man in motion, a play can always explode," is the opinion of one of the device's fathers, Coach Harlow. The resulting strain on the ingenuity of the defensive secondary lines is tremendous, and they must always overcome the tendency to commit themselves before the play unravels. If the safety loses a step to a man in motion, on the other hand, he can lose the ball game.

To name "the sweetest" eleven he has ever coached, Harlow is obliged to combine his teams of 1937 which beat an undefeated Yale 13-6, and the 1941 squad, "dear to my heart because of adversity." But despite some of the drudge character of football today, Harlow is quick to insist that the has never gotten more out of any bunch than his present team. "They have given everything they have," he says. "They have done everything I have tod them to do."

The order of the day is to beat Yale.