NEW HAVEN, CONN.--The men who run Yale football are a very serious bunch, not given to many puns. Except for some late November experimentation in the art of scoring extra points last season, they can rarely be accused of straying from the straight and narrow Blue and White line. Unfortunate experience has taught them to avoid things like full back spinners and ten-year contracts.

Their basic idea of football is a game in which the Yale team scores many, many touchdowns. While they were very happy last year, it must be noted that currently they are a very downcast group right now. One doesn't have to be a paid New Haven statistician to know that Yale has scored one (1) touchdown in its last three games; one doesn't have to be an Ivy League football coach to know that Yale has won none (0) of its last three games.

Eddie Molloy has a bad knee and Yale has a bad attack. The experts, both medical and otherwise, seem to feel that there is little hope for improvement in either case.

Molloy probably won't be back for the rest of the year, according to both the doctors and Jordan Olivar. And what old Blues feared after he was injured has happened--his sucessor, Jim Lopez, just hasn't shown the passing accuracy that Yale must depend on. Lopez has helped the Elis defensively, but probably right now Olivar would trade all of last year's defensive platoon for a small, slow, little man like Carroll Lowenstein, with a sturdy accurate arm like Lowenstein's.

Lopez just hasn't helped Yale. Against Cornell, when the Big Red and Blue battled to a scoreless tic, he cost the Bulldogs a touchdown when he was unable to connect with a receiver on four throws from within the Cornell twenty. The discouraging thing about this, according to Eli sportswriters, is that the incompletions weren't the result of bad luck, they were the result of bad throwing.

"We miss Molloy down here more than you could ever guess," one New Haven sportswriter said before Saturday's loss to Dartmouth.

There are other problem for Olivar. One has been finding a place for Yale captain Joe Fortunato. Fortunato, a clever hard tackling linebacker last year just hasn't been able to make the transition to the game of one platoon. He isn't a shifty runner, and he can't play the line.

"Yeh, Fortunato's the captain," said the same sportswriter, "and Oliver was counting on him heavily."

"He played five minutes in the 7-to-7 Colgate tie."

Colgate Without Clasby

If Cambridge fans want to know how it is to have the captain play for five minutes, they might imagine what would have happened in the Harvard-Colgate game if Dick Clasby had seen such limited action.

At fullback Jerry Jones, the team's leading rusher last season has gained less than 50 yards this season. Slowed down at first by the flu, Jones hasn't come along well. Latest statistics give him 43 yards gained in 12 carries. Jones in the process has lost his job to a former junior understudy, Phil Mathias. Mathias has carried the weight of the Yale attack and has stood up surprisingly well. He carried 31 times for 100 yards against Colgate, and made 34 in ten tries against Dartmouth. But observers say he is not the runner Jones was in the Stadium here last November.

Six Fumbles

A newly discovered tendency to fumble, which cost them the ball exactly six time against Dartmouth in the 32-to-0 game, has also caused much concern. So far nothing has been prescribed, but the feeling is that the Yale backfield, unable to score for so long has tensed, and the fumbles are the result.

But all the incomplete passes and costly fumbles don't make Yale a sott touch. A powerful line, which up to last week had given Yale the best defensive record in the country, makes the Dartmouth loss seem more like a cold than cancer. The Yale line was good last year, it is even better now. Few teams have been able to go through it, most, in order to gain, have had to go over it. Bill Beagle, whose thoughtless refusal to kick barefoot has disappointed thousands of spectators completed four touchdown passes last Saturday.

In Cambridge Lowenstein completed five.

Yale has a solid line but a lot of weaknesses. One of them oddly enough has been finding a successor to Yeager; the Elis have converted on only five of ten opportunities this year.