“Is that what you call them?” asked Dick.
“That or the Coachless Wonders,” was the smiling response. “Isn’t it the dickens about Farrell? Mean trick to play on us, I say.”
“Oh, I guess he didn’t mean to play any trick. Guess he’d much rather have stayed here in Clearfield and coached the team than have been called home to see his sick mother.”
Cotner shrugged his shoulders. “If he _was_ called home,” he said.
“Well, wasn’t he? That’s what I heard. What do you mean?”
“I mean that Joe wasn’t getting much money here, as you probably know, Dick, and he’s a pretty good coach. His contract expired this Fall and it hadn’t been renewed. The Athletic Committee was ready to renew it, but Joe didn’t show up. Then came that letter saying his mother was ill in Ireland and he was going home to visit her. It just occurred to me that maybe his mother was another school somewhere and that he was after more money.”
“Oh, I don’t think that of Joe,” answered Dick, shaking his head. “Joe was always terribly loyal to Clearfield, George. Besides, he could easily have told the Committee if he thought he wasn’t getting enough salary.”
“Yes, and the Committee would have told him that he was getting all the school could afford to pay him. Well, I don’t know anything about it, more than I’ve been told, but that idea occurred to me. Lanny’s worried stiff about it. He’s had three different men on the string and not one of them has been landed. Two wouldn’t think of the job at the salary and the third had never done any football coaching. That was Bert Cable’s man, a fellow over in Bridgeport named Mooney. I guess we’d been moony if we’d taken him. It’s tough on Lanny, though. He’s trying to look after three squads at once and doesn’t really know what to do with any of them. And now Grayson is making a talk about getting along without any coach at all! And some of the grads on the Committee are more than half agreed with him. They say we haven’t much money and what we have we ought to use in fixing the field up and building a new grandstand. Wouldn’t that jar you? Fancy trying to turn out a winning eleven without a coach! And this is our year to beat Springdale――if we’re ever going to do it again.”
George Cotner scowled across the gridiron a moment and then continued with his grievance. “We’ve got pretty fair material this year, too, Dick, and we ought to come out on top, especially if Morris Brent comes around in good shape and turns out the drop-kicker and punter he threatened to be last year. But we ought to have a good coach to look after him. Lanny’s afraid to let him practice for fear something will happen to his bum leg again, and afraid to keep him out of practice for fear he won’t get in shape for Springdale. Even if Lanny could coach the First Team, there ought to be someone to look after the others. There’s the Scrub down there running around like chickens with their heads off, going through signals when they ought to be handling the ball and learning the a, b, c’s. Harry Partridge is trying to captain them, but he doesn’t know anything about it. He’s a good guard, but he’s never had any responsibility and he’s terribly unhappy right now. Besides, hang it all, we ought to be mapping out a campaign. But when I tell Lanny that he looks wild and runs his hands through his hair and says he has all he can attend to without bothering with plans. Why, if we had――――”