Word: platoons
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...that more boys would be able to play, injuries would be reduced and smaller colleges would get a chance to make the best use of their football talent. In practice, things worked out just the opposite. More boys played, but they became the robot-like specialists of the two-platoon system; injuries increased because the players never got a chance to warm up again after riding the bench; and more than 50 colleges quit football because they had neither the money nor the manpower to support the huge two-platoon squads. Last week, abruptly ending an unhappy era, the N.C.A.A...
Reaction to the new substitution rule* was immediate, often indignant, but generally downright delighted. Surprisingly, some of football's big-time coaches, who have the money and manpower to benefit from the two-platoon game, were in favor of the change. Said Oklahoma's Bud Wilkinson: "It's in the best interests of the game. The two-platoon system has a tendency to make big teams bigger and little teams weaker." Colorado Mines' Coach Fritz Brennecke saw other benefits: "It will reduce the pressure on recruiting and finances . . . Everyone will have to know how to block...
...bosses a 150-man squad, sputtered: "I don't like it . . . Who's going to keep books on the players?" Wisconsin's Ivy Williamson, whose team lost in the Rose Bowl, could only mutter that "football won't be the same without the two-platoon system. It made for a better game." Said Ohio State's Woody Hayes, whose goman squad gets its practice for only an hour and 20 minutes daily: "We simply cannot train a boy to play offense and defense in that time...
Second, despite the fact that coaches have trained men in the fundamentals of the "other" platoon, very few players today are totally competent two-way operatives. The situation--here at least--is not so bad as in the mid-West. But a system which has been geared to produce specialists cannot be expected to turn out football players under the same limited practice conditions...
...small college coaches favoring the abolition of the multi-team system--big college still for it. Strangely enough, from what quotes have appeared in the press recently, it would seem that their wards are not much worried, however. The man who was supposed to benefit most from the two-platoon system, the player, in many cases favors the one-way ticket...