Spartans to Open Season on Sunday

Article taken from The Charleston Daily Mail, September 13, 1931

PORTSMOUTH, O., Sept. 13.- The Portsmouth Spartans will pry the lid off the football season here Sunday when they clash with the Newark, N. J. team, another new entrant into the National Football league, on the Universal stadium field.

It will be a case of an all Eastern team against an all Western team when the two powerful elevens clash onthe gridiron, as the Newark team is altogether made up of Eastern players of note and the Spartans boast an aggregation of Western stars. Another incident of note in the personnel of the visiting team is the fact that it will have an entire backfield which played in college last season, the Holy Cross backfield.

The Newark line will be practically the same as they had last season with the addition of two outstanding starts in the person of Jim Mooney, Georgetown university's all-American guard and John Law, guard and captain of last season's Notre Dame team, who was also mentioned for all-America choices.

The football fans in this region are well aware of the power of the Spartans of last season as the team won 13 games last fall, tied 2 and lost 1. The team this year has such stars as Mayes McClain, Iowa fullback, Tiny Lewis, Northwestern flash, Father Lumpkin, the tornado from Georgia, Dill Glassgow, all-American halfback from Iowa. Chuck Bennett, halfback from Indiana, who, incidentally, was awarded the Chicago Tribune trophy for being the mosstvaluable man to a team, Ray Novotny, of Achland college and high point scorer in the Ohio and fourth high point scorer in the country, Cy Kohl, captain and fullback of North Dakota and Byron Eby, the flashy halfback from Ohio State University, compose the backfield this year.