Word: woodman
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Yale team, were flashy side whiskers, and after a few plays of the game with Harvard at the Polo Grounds, he turned to the referee and said, "Mr, referee, this man opposite me is pulling my whiskers." "Marcou probably was," chuckles old Varsity man Francis C. Woodman '88, who had a player opposite him that aimed his fingers at Woodman's eyes every time he had the ball. Any innovation might prove useful in the new game...
Although many games were played on a frozen field, and the players were no padding except on their elbows an knees, there were fewer injuries than there are today. One reason is that the teams were lighter. Woodman, for example, who played left tackle for three years in the Eighties, weighed only 175, and was considered easily heavy enough for that position...
...Woodman makes a point of keeping posted on what is currently happening at Harvard, but he still loves to talk of the old days. "My profile used to be Greek," he says, "but now it's Roman. A Princeton man broke my nose." This accident happened not in malice, but in a football game; Woodman played tackle on the Varsity in 1887, and owns the distinction of having kicked twenty field goals in what was, at least quantitatively, Harvard's greatest victory, a 154-0 smearing of Exeter Academy. Captain of the Freshman crew, he decided to switch to football...
After Harvard, where he says he concentrated in "fun and football," Woodman worked as agent for an English publishing house for a few years, and then after a year's sojourn in Europe, went to teach at the Morristown School in New Jersey, where he held "not a chair, but a settee," and afterwards became headmaster. In 1905 he wrote to his Class Secretary, "We are living the simple life, and are trying to teach the rising generation how to live it. My experiences have all been concerned with the training of the American boy, a very fine species...
...Woodman's chief interests nowadays are Harvard and football. He is contemplating a book on old-time football, and also hopes to publish various sketches and reminiscences of his life. About Harvard he is enthusiastic, and being broached on the subject, will tell you forcefully, "Harvard is in every way superior to what it was in the gay Eighties, and the student body seems much more earnest than in my days;" but he won't stay talking to you long, for there's plenty for a man to do in Cambridge these days...