As to Football.
Editor Trotwood’s:
In college and university circles, during the year 1905, one of the vital questions receiving its share of attention was, as some one has aptly phrased it, “Is football to be mended or ended?” This and similar questions open the subject for discussion, in the progress of which a number of very caustic criticisms have been leveled at the game by the presidents of some of our great universities and colleges and members of their respective faculties. The president of Columbia University, the first to abolish the game, recently declared that football as now played is no longer a sport, but a profession, and, like other professions, demands prolonged training, complete absorption of time and thought, and is inconsistent, in practice, at least, with the devotion to work which is the first duty of college and university students. He also calls attention to the “figure” “gate receipts” cuts in the conduct of the game, which, says he, “marks the game as in no small degree a commercial enterprise.” President Wheeler of the University of California, brings his indictment against the promoters of the modern game for “having changed the gridiron into a multiplication table,” and otherwise tampering with it, until to-day “American intercollegiate football has become a spectacle, and not a sport.” The president of the College of the City of New York reviews the evolution of football, and makes a strong plea for a return to the game of earlier times, “when football was rather primitive; few practice hours, few out-of-town games; no training table; no excuse from regular university work, and the boys led a normal student life.” However, whatever may be the opinion of certain scholastic dignitaries, and however incompetent the “rank outsider” may be to judge the game, a reasonable survey of the situation reveals the fact that public opinion, the most powerful factor with which we have to deal, is now concentrating its forces preparatory to “bucking the centre” of the game as played, or, with the “flying wedge” of reform, dash through its lines and destroy the dangerous features of the “mass play.”
That there should be provision for physical culture in the course of every educational institution is, of course, universally conceded, but the question now up for solution is, what character of exercise, or what system of physical development will come nearer meeting the demand for such training. The champions of the great American game answer, “football.” And yet, when we consider the question in the light of all its pros and cons—and, like all other questions, it has its pros and cons—its three sides—i. e., your side, the other side, and the inside—we are led to believe that it specializes athletic sports to such a degree as to exclude the student body from participation in them. The systematic development of the physique was first given a pre-eminent place in the training and discipline of young men by the ancient Greeks, who sought in this way to perpetuate a hardy and vigorous manhood among their people. The origin of the Greek games is mythical, yet we know that they were revived in 776 by the king of Elia and Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver, as a means by which intestine commotions might be pacified and a pestilence which at that time plagued the people, stayed. Foot racing, wrestling, leaping, quoit and javelin throwing, and, in time, chariot racing were the chief sports with which they developed the physical manhood of the nation. And in this connection, but a moment’s reflection is required to suggest the benefits derived from such a variety of sports and diversity of exercise. Contrast the sports of the Greek game with the exclusive feature of football as played in the colleges to-day. A college president writes of his institution: “In the ten years from 1892 to 1902, only seventy-five different men made the team as players and substitutes out of four thousand or more different male students during that time in attendance.” But this is an age of “specialists,” therefore we will let that pass, and there yet remains the gravest possible objections to the “mass” game. It cannot be denied with any show of fairness, that its present tendency is to discredit scholarship and put brains at a discount, while it inflates and exaggerates the intrinsic value of beef and bone. The primary object of education is to discipline and develop all the faculties and endowments of heart and head, while the maxim, “a sound mind in a sound body,” is by no means to be despised, and yet the hero of the gridiron, the idol of the college or university, might be a young man of mediocre ability, or with no brains at all, and with less character than brains. Then, again, the exaggerated importance which the average student attaches to the more brutal features of the game creates a false standard of courage and manhood, and demands ferocious tests that are unfair as the price of its vindication. False standards of anything in life are, especially to the young, always perilous, and of nothing is this more than of false conceptions of what constitutes real courage. For instance, it is a notorious fact that in the hour of actual battle soldiers who, in “the piping times of peace,” were renowned fist-fighters and bullies, and generally looked upon as “bold, bad men,” have, when the thunder of cannon and the rattle of musketry broke upon their ears, failed to stand the test of courage, and disgracefully and ignominiously fled, seeking safety in precipitate flight, while other men, supposed to be physical cowards, walked calmly and dutifully, and with unwavering step, on through the storm of grape and shell into the very jaws of death. We are reminded, in this connection, that the “dunghill” fights splendidly with his “natural heels,” but it takes a game cock to stand the test of “steel.” Ought our young men to be educated in an atmosphere in which such base estimates of true courage and manliness must become the very breath of their nostrils? Should a young man of culture, courage, refinement and a high sense of honor be subjected to the humiliation of being accounted a “cad” by his fellow students because he does not happen to aspire to “make good” on the team or approve the game? Such a young man may be a swift runner, a good rider, and a well trained gymnast, but there is no field for his physical development if he does not “make good,” and though he be manly, straightforward and proficient in his work, he has no show with the students with the commonest, vulgarest and most ill-bred youth imaginable, provided that “darling of the gods” happens to weigh enough and have enough of the bulldog and tiger in him. Is it any wonder that the brutality of the game, with all its barbarisms and degrading tendencies, has at last awakened the sleeping giant of public opinion, who now threatens to destroy it? And what complicates the situation more are the revelations that from time to time have been made, fixing the crime of dishonesty and insincerity upon some of the faculties of schools and colleges, who have taken devious and questionable ways and methods to violate their sworn agreements with rival institutions, and persistently play professionals as students. But the foxy methods of such schools and colleges have most naturally tended to disintegrate the student conscience and re-acted upon their faculties so as to do either one of two things—i. e., cause the faculty to forfeit the confidence of the better class of students, or train the student to feel that there is no wrong in dissembling, cheating or lying where the success of the team is at stake, as well as the reputation of their college as a leader in athletic sports.
Such a state of affairs most naturally has aroused the interest of those who are jealous and zealous for the welfare of the colleges and universities and individual students, and the tide of public opinion has gradually been swelling until now it threatens the utter destruction of the game. But will the students themselves come to the rescue and save the game while there is yet time, by agreeing to an honest, clean abolition of the objectionable features of the game? For, in the last analysis of the situation, it is “up to them.”
WALTER B. CAPERS.
Columbia, Tenn.