Osler's Razor

[This is a tale of Baylor history accompanied by another photo of the Alpine sky. Yeah, it is a complete non sequitor. Deal with it.]

One of the more colorful gridiron contests ever was the Princeton-Baylor game in 1931. As often happens, there was a foul-up, and the communications regarding the game had been addressed to Mary Hardin, who was a secretary in the athletic department at Baylor’s Waco campus. The letters, of course, were then delivered to the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor, whose squad arrived at Princeton on the day prior to the game, greatly surprised to find they were expected to play football. UMHB, due to the unfailingly polite tone of the Princeton communications, had understood the invitation to involve their world-champion twirling squad, which was composed of eleven very attractive and quite competent baton twirlers.

As one might expect, the UMHB ladies put their talents to good use, and managed to wrangle invitations to a quite randy party at a bicker club which included key members of the Tiger football squad, followed by general licentiousness at the Ivy Inn, where they kept their unknowing opponents out far past curfew and drunk beyond repair. The following day, the almost immobile men of Princeton lost to their spry opponents 37-36, the deciding point being scored by Sophomore RB Jennifer Sauders of Elm-Mott on a play in which she froze a defender by uttering “Dei sub numine viget” in a particularly intoxicating tone, fraught at once with both religious and sensual meaning. To add insult to injury, the UMHB gals celebrated their victory with a rousing on-field display of twirling while still in gridiron uniforms complete with shoulder pads, followed by a fine meal and revelry at yet another eating club.