oks
and athletic pictures go to make a rare collection.

Many of us would like to have seen Jim Rodgers begin his football career
at Andover when he was sixteen years old. It was there that his 180
pounds of bone and muscle stood for much. It was at Andover that Bill
Odlin, that great Dartmouth man, coached so many wonderful prep. school
stars, who later became more famous at the colleges to which they went.

Rodgers went to Yale with a big rep. He had been captain of the Andover
team. In the fall of '92 Andover beat Brown 24 to 0. Jim Rodgers was
very conspicuous on the field, not only on account of his good playing
and muscular appearance, but because his blond hair, which he wore very
long as a protection, was very noticeable.

From this Yale player, whose friends are legion, let us read some
experiences and catch his spirit:

"I was never a star player, but I was a reliable. In my freshman year I
did not make the team, owing to the fact that I had bad knees and better
candidates were available. This was the one year in Yale football,
perhaps in all football, when the team that played the year before came
back to college with not a man missing. Frank Hinkey had been captain
the year before and then came through as senior captain. There was not a
senior on Frank Hinkey's team. The first team, therefore, all came back.

"Al Jerrems and Louis Hinkey were the only additions to the old team.

"Perhaps the keenest disappointment that ever came to me in football was
the fact that I could not play in that famous Yale-Harvard game my
freshman year. However, I came so very near it that Billy Rhodes and
Heffelfinger came around to where I was sitting on the side lines, after
Fred Murphy had been taken out of the game. They started to limber me up
by running me up and down the side line, but Hinkey, the captain, came
over to the side line and yelled for Chadwick, who went into the game. I
had worked myself up into a highly nervous condition anticipating going
in, but now I realized my knees would not allow it. The disappointment
that day, though, was very severe. To show you what a hold these old
games had on me, many years after this game Hinkey and I were talking
about this particular game, when he said to me: 'You never knew how
close you came to getting into that Springfield game, Jim.' Then I told
him of my experience, but he told me he had it in his mind to put me in
at halfback, and ever since then, when I think of i