Why, when football coaches like Frank Leahy and Fritz Crisler have teams like their 1947 Notre Dame and Michigan machines, will they never come out and say, "I'm going to win this game."? Because morale, that intangible something which even the best coach has only slight control over, figures in the final score of virtually every game.

Take the Green Bay Packer-Chicago Bear surprise of last week as a good example. Before their game with the Bears, the Packers had played four other clubs, only one of whom gained more than eleven (11) yards rushing. Now Packer Coach E. L. "Curly" Lambean had gone ahead and in no uncertain terms declared that this team was the greatest thing to hit Wisconsin since Schlitz, every bit as good as his championship aggregations of 1929, '30, and '31 and the players knew it. The Bears were just ordinary Godfearing pro football players. They had Lujack, Luckman, and Layne and they stopped the Packers cold, 45-7. Overconfidence! Next time these two teams meet, the Packers will probably cream the Bears, but that's where Lesson Two comes in.

A team can go either up or down following a horrendous defeat. It can figure that the upset was merely its own fault and then finish up its season in fine style. Or, like last year's Harvard team after the Virginia disaster, it can figure it just isn't any good after all and end its season in spathy.

And here's how all this affects Harvard's chances against Cornell tomorrow. The Crimson, on the strength of its one performance to date, has been praised in the skies by the sportswriters, ranked twelfth in the nation according to the Williamson ratings (a fallacy anyway), and picked by the Associated Press to win. Overconfidence again? Perhaps.

A coach can bring his team "up" psychologically for a game only twice during a season. Art Valpey claims he did nothing to bring his boys "up" for Columbia. They came up by themselves, and they will do the same thing for Yale and Army. In the meantime, they will be psychologically "down" for games like Dartmouth. Princeton, Brown, Holy Cross. And Cornell, How low they sink in comparison to Cornell's rise (it is fresh from a win over tough Navy) will decide the game. For the Crimson is able to win: if it doesn't, morale will be the cause.

Army, Valpey's next opponent after Cornell, will be "up" for its game tomorrow with Illinois, the roughest on its schedule. If it had to meet Navy the week after it played Harvard, chances are it would be unable to stay up for two weeks and the Crimson would take the Army's "down" game sandwiched between its two "up" games. But after Illinois, Army plays Cornell and tomorrow's Harvard-Cornell clash will decide for the Cadets which game they must be up for--Cornell or Harvard.

So don't let the statistics fool you. Morale is more important than all the figures and ratings in the world.