News Reports While The Colonels Were En Route
Centre dominated the Eastern newspaper's sports sections the week prior to the game. Of course, Howard Reynolds was sending his reports from stops along the way. But there was a lot of other coverage as excitement and speculation built concerning the big game.
It was recognized that the Centre-Harvard game would be the last between the two schools. The presidents of the "Big 3" had gotten together and decided to ban any future intersectional games after the 1922 season.
During the current year, Harvard was taking on Centre and Florida. Princeton traveled to the Windy City to play Alonzo Stagg's University of Chicago team. Yale hosted Iowa.
The presidents even went so far as to agree they would consult each other prior to making out their schedules each year.
Since it was obvious that Centre wouldn't be coming back to Cambridge in 1923, the week was rife with rumors about which Eastern schools could land the Colonels.
Brown, Dartmouth, Boston College, Pennsylvania and Columbia all sent out feelers. The proposals were for Centre to either come to their stadiums, or for a game to be set up in New York City.
And why not?
Centre was the most popular, most attractive team that anyone could hope to play. You want publicity? Centre is your key to the press.
You want a big payday? Centre is your ticket.
David J. Walsh, a New York sports writer, got into the act. He wrote that the logical next trip east for Centre should be to New York because the team had a huge following there, mainly because of all the coverage that the city's press had devoted to the Colonels over the past couple of years.
Quite a sizable amount of money is to be made from doing business with the Colonels, as Harvard will attest.
If Centre can draw more than 50,000 to Harvard Stadium, it would certainly fill the new field of the New York Yankees which could be configured to a capacity of 80,000, and a rich, golden harvest for all concerned would be the gratifying result.
A New York promoter is figuring on bringing Centre College here in 1923 to play the leading Eastern team of the present season. New York, which patronizes anything from street fights to sword swallowing, would riot at the gates for the first view of the Kentucky team.
Seemingly, Centre College has become a permanent institution as a box office boon.
Meanwhile, Howard Reynolds filed another report before re-boarding the train in Cincinnati about the difficulties encountered so far during the journey to Boston.
The accommodating management at Redland Field tried to do everything possible for Uncle Charlie's team. They had the heat turned on in the clubhouse, the hot water turned on for showers, soap and towels in abundance, but no amount of kindnesses shown could obscure the fact that the Colonels' trip has gotten off to a bad start. The train is to pull out heading north at 6:05 P.M., and nearly 10 hours after we should have left Danville, we are only 103 miles into a long journey.