| In 1879, Richard Henry Pratt founded
the Carlisle Indian School, a remarkable 40-year chapter in this country's
failed social policy regarding Native Americans. Pratt's faith could be simply
described as: "Kill the Indian, Save the Man!" to eradicate any manifestations
of their native culture. When four decades of forcible education ended in 1918,
it wasn't clear what Pratt's experiment had killed and what it had saved. But
there was one indisputably notable legacy-- the Carlisle football team. In the
early 20th century, the Carlisle Indians ascended to the pinnacle(顶点) of the
collegiate game. In those years, it began to engage all the Ivy football powers
on the gridiron(运动场). And from 1911 to 1913, including the season in which the
legendary Jim Thorpe returned from the Olympics to score 25 touchdowns, Carlisle
had a 38-3 record, including a 27-6 rout of West Point. Washington Post sportswriter Sally Jenkins has produced a fascinating new book, "The Real All Americans": The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation (Doubleday. $24.95), that examines the Carlisle legend in wonderful detail. At the turn of the century, football was exploding on the college scene, particularly at the Ivy elites, where the sons of the gentry could prepare for the rigors of leadership on the gridiron. They preferred their football brutal. Conversely, the Carlisle team was undermanned and seriously undersized. But Carlisle was blessed with gifted athletes and a wizard of a coach, Pop Warner. Because Carlisle couldn't match the brute force of its rivals, Warner created an entirely new brand of football, relying on speed, deception and guile. In that 1903 Harvard game, Carlisle used the hidden ball trick to score on the second-half kickoff. While the return man pretended to cradle the ball, another player had it tucked into a pocket sewn inside the back of his jersey and ran unmolested 103 yards for a touchdown. Carlisle developed new blocking techniques that compensated for its size disadvantage: the spiral throw that put the long pass, with its premium(优势) on speed, into the offense and a repertoire of fakes; reverses and misdirection that remain a central part of the game. It took brains to concoct the schemes and intelligence to execute them. These innovations did not go unrecognized. After Carlisle trounced Army in 1912, The New York Times hailed the conquerors from Carlisle for playing "the most perfect brand of football ever seen in America." Still, today this country celebrates football like no other sport. Jenkins does a marvelous job of making an intimate connection between our beloved, modern game and the unlikely team that, a century ago, helped make it what it is today. |