It Helps To Be Mean If You Aren't Too Big

He was a square, muscular, awkward-looking end when he played football. He moved gracelessly, the heavy muscles ungainly, but he moved effectively and over and over he caught passes a better end might have missed because he had, superlatively, the tremendous determination that makes a fine pass receiver. He blocked savagely and intently, and he played all-out all the time.

"But finally I got to where I hated to think of Sunday," he said not long ago. "I liked playing football, but when you get over 30, you wake up Monday morning and your whole body hurts. When you're young, you get over the ache in a day or two. But when you get old, you hurt for two or three days, and then it's time to quit. When the Rams offered me a job as end coach, I was glad to take it."

So spoke Howard Hickey, who is the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers now. Oddly enough, he is one of six former ends who are head coaches in professional football. He sees nothing significant in this, although an end must, because of the peculiar demands of his position, have a rather wide knowledge of all the intricacies of offensive and defensive football. In the Western Conference of the National Football League, four of the coaches once played end: Hickey, George Wilson of the Detroit Lions, George Halas of the Chicago Bears and Sid Gillman of the Los Angeles Rams. In the Eastern Conference the ends now coaching are Jim Lee Howell of the New York Giants and Frank Ivy of the Chicago Cardinals.

"It's just a cycle," Hickey said the other day. "Maybe in a few years, half the coaches will have been backs. Or tackles. I don't think ends are smarter than anybody else."

Hickey occupies one of the hottest seats in professional football. San Francisco is a rabidly enthusiastic professional football city. The 49ers have had four coaches since 1946—Buck Shaw, Red Strader, Frankie Albert and now Hickey. The owners and the fans are growing disenchanted with a team which has often appeared capable of winning the Western Conference championship only to fizzle out when the chips are down.

A HARD NOSE FOR TROUBLE

When Frankie Albert quit last year, the owners and the citizenry were anxious to get a truly professional coach. After Hickey was named, one fan said, without real justification, "For the first time since the club was organized, the 49ers have a pro coach."

Nonetheless, this may be the best thumbnail description of Red Hickey. He's a pro. He's tough and, in pro football parlance, hard-nosed. Hard-nosed means he doesn't mind putting his nose into trouble, and he can do it with a fair chance of pulling it out again without any damage.

Hickey looks back a bit wistfully to the days when he played for the Rams. His playing days seem long ago to him, although his last active season was 1948. Pro football seems, to Hickey, to have changed substantially since then.

"They don't hate now like they used to," he said the other day. "When I played with the Rams, we really hated some of the other clubs in the league. Like the Bears. We had one set of helmets for the Bears and another set for the rest of the clubs in the league. We knew every Bear game would be a blood bath.