Laurel Wreath

When Charley Caldwell went back to Princeton five years ago to become head football coach, Tiger alumni did a good job of restraining their enthusiasm. Hungry for a winning football team after years of indifferent records, many of them had been hoping for a big-name coach with a national reputation. Charley Caldwell, an old Tiger letterman (1922-24), had had his chief coaching success at Williams in the relative obscurity of the Little Three (Williams, Amherst, Wesleyan).

Within two years, Coach Caldwell lifted the alumni out of their grumps by winning his first Big Three title (over Harvard and Yale), then did it again in 1948 and 1949. This season, Caldwell has had old Tigers purring like cats knee-deep in cream. Scorning the T-formation and using a juggernaut single wing with buck laterals (TIME, Nov. 6), Caldwell guided Princeton to its fourth straight Big Three title, first Ivy League title in 15 years, first undefeated season in the same length of time, and unchallenged ranking among the top teams in the U.S.

Last week fellow coaches, voting in the Scripps-Howard newspapers annual poll, handed Charley the laurel wreath of the profession: they voted him "Coach of the Year." With III first-place votes out of 384, he led Runners-Up Lynn Waldorf of California (50 first-place votes), Bud Wilkinson of Oklahoma (42), Bob Neyland of Tennessee (34), and 55 others.

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