“In the early ’30s our Brooklyn [Dodgers] team was [coached by] John J. McEwan. . . . Coach McEwan had an ironclad theory that there was no such thing as a legitimate end run, and it soon got around the league that we didn’t even have one from our tight double wing back formation. One day ‘Stumpy’ Thomason, a speedy halfback who had played at Georgia Tech, asked McEwan in utter frustration: ‘Coach, how do I run this play, anyway?’ McEwan, the former West Point head coach and English instructor, answered in a typical MacArthurian stanza:

“‘Son, dispatch yourself with the utmost precision and proceed as far as your individual excellency will permit.'”

— Herman Hickman, a guard on those Brooklyn teams, in the Feb. 7, 1955 issue of Sports Illustrated