Some men are natural leaders, others shove it down your throat. Arthur L. Valpey, Jr. has never shoved anything down anyone's throat. He just explains in his relaxed, quiet way what he would like to see done, and they try to do it, and more--"they" meaning not only the 44 men on the Varsity football squad, but also the assistant coaches, team doctors, grounds keepers, sports writers, and, in fact, everyone who knows him and his job of football.

A lot of people have tried to analyze how he does it, but they all end up by saying, "I don't know. He's just a great gay." It seems much easier to make a character study of a dramatic, Dick Harlow-type or an eternally pessimistic, Frank Leahy-type coach.

Art is neither demonstrative nor buried in gloom. He is more likely to pat an end on the back as he comes out of the game after missing a sure-fire pass than to laud a halfback in hopes of making him an All-American. And he always figures Harvard's chances in any game at about what they should be.

Honesty Is His Policy

His biggest drawing card is an easy-going but sincere honesty. He deals with you straight-forwardly and expects the honor returned. And he has been winning friends without apparent effort ever since he came East.

Harvard's new head coach arrived in Cambridge last spring to be greeted by 50 demoralized football players, a group of sports analysts who honestly wondered if he was a lamb being thrown to the wolves, and an undergraduate body which cared less about football than in any school he had ever seen.

He told the disgruntled athletes that he would consider it a good season if they won four games. He not only taught, but explained to them a system of play which had proved itself at Michigan. And he made them want to be part of a team--his team.

He took the sports writers, showed them his team in action, and had them printing such items as greatest young coach in America" and "best in New England since Leahy."

The students? Well, Art suspects that the way to win fans is to win football games--big time football games. That's why the blackboard outside the varsity dressing room each fall Saturday carries not strictly scores of Ivy League games, but those of big games throughout the country. He's never said it, but you get the idea that the day Harvard beats Michigan is a bright and not too distant day in Art's plans.

To the 33-year-old protege of the H. O. Crisler Training School, football is a business. It is an inspiring one, or else he would not have accepted $8,000 per annum to work a 94-hour week during the fall, cutting out lunches to squeeze in the time, and a regular 40-hour week during the rest of the year.

Joined Michigan Staff

But as in any business, efficiency and thoroughness pays off. Art has thought that way ever since he definitely decided to become a football coach in 1941. At the time, he was only a few hours from his Master's degree at Michigan, but he dropped work on the degree because he figured it would be of little use to him in his new business.

The following year he returned to Michigan, where he had played first string end in '36 and '37, and became a member of Crisler's coaching staff. "My whole idea was to get experience at the various coaching positions," Art says. The next five years were spent in preparation for the business of football with Crisler as tutor.

Sees Horween

Nor did Art fly blindly into the open arms of HAA Director William J. Bingham last year when the latter offered him the head coaching job at Harvard. Instead he went to Chicago, where he spent two full days discussing the values of the Harvard job with a local leather manufacturer named Arnold Horween. "Horween had been head coach at Harvard at the age of 28, and I wanted to get his viewpoint on a young coach's chances there," Art explains.