The Cap and Gown

by Charles Reynolds Brown

David Starr Jordan has said many times that “the football field is a more wholesome place for a young man than the ballroom,” and those who know the facts endorse his claim. The young fellow gets hurt now and then in football, but taking into consideration the part of him which suffers and the after effects of it, we commonly find that the injury is less damaging than are the hurts received in indoor, fashionable dissipation. Athletics bring men out under God’s open sky, into the fresh air, and under the stimulus of healthy rivalries. They train men to see clearly, to hear accurately the first time, to decide quickly, to move instantly, and to stand together in a genuinely social spirit. These qualities have high place in the combination of talents which makes for success; they have high place as well in the formation of sound character.

But to tackle the subject more closely let me name several ways in which athletics worthy of an educational institution are particularly beneficial. They serve as an outlet for the surplus physical energy of boys and young men. In simply walking to school, even though he carries some girl’s books as well as his own, the healthy young man does not consume in twenty-four hours all the physical energy he manufactures. Throbbing within him there is an exuberant physical life, excitable and not yet under firm control. There is the consciousness of new and untried powers in regard to which he feels deep concern. There is the push of impulse not fully regulated by conscience or experience. Unless there is some wholesome outlet he will burst the levee, devastating whole fields of his own nature and of other natures besides, by an unwholesome use of that surplus physical energy.

Training for athletic events means early hours, clean habits, constant occupation of mind and body, for in any college worthy of the name the young man must be a student all the while, as well as a quarterback or a pitcher. The training, therefore, becomes a mighty safeguard thrown around a lot of young fellows who are face to face with the devil of temptation. Even for those who do not make the team or the nine or the track, if they are taking regular gymnasium work in hope of that success next year, or if in other ways they have caught the spirit of clean, honest, joyous sport, athletics give an added motive and a stronger impulse toward clean living.

“Wild oats,” as they are lightly called, produce a sorry and a debasing harvest. No man with sense enough to be allowed to run at large ever looks himself in the face and takes satisfaction in the memory of such sowing. The fellow who thinks he is not wise or experienced until he has become familiar with the haunts of gamblers and harlots, until he has the smut and smell of those associations upon him, is regarded by saner men as green, oh, so green! He sometimes calls his escapades “seeing life,” but it is not life he sees there; it is death—and a foul, rotten, ill-smelling type of death. The trainer will not tolerate it. The man himself would be regarded as a traitor to the university if on the team he “broke training” for such indulgence. And the whole spirit of wholesome athletics is such as to stamp that course as base and mean. As an outlet for surplus energy then and as a safeguard against certain forms of wrong-doing, wholesome athletics in college life hold a place of honor.

They furnish also a means of joyous recreation. The mind bent and strained all the time with serious employment loses its spring, if not sometimes its sanity. The relaxation of honest fun, the excitement of a sport where one measures his strength and skill against that of others, the self-forgetfulness which comes with absorption in something other than one’s work—all these are imperatively demanded for the normal development of youth into maturity. We would all bring up in the madhouse or the sanitarium, if we did not now and then have some such diversion!

This demand for recreation, if no intelligent and wholesome forms of expression are at hand, crops out in those college pranks which sometimes border on lawlessness. The spontaneous fun of college life is ever enjoyed and applauded. There was a Yale man once suspended for this excusable caper. The students were required to attend service on Sunday in the chapel where the preacher was sometimes dull and tiresome. One particular offender against the youthful demand for vitality and brevity used to divide his sermons into heads and subheads almost endlessly, Roman 1, Arabic 1. One in brackets, a, b, c, etc., etc. This friend of mine arranged to have his class of one hundred and sixty men sit together well up in front, and every time the preacher passed from one head to another, they uncrossed their legs in unison and crossed them over the other way. When the reverend doctor passed from one in brackets to two, or from a to b, he saw one hundred and sixty pairs of legs taken apart and recrossed simultaneously. When this had been done six or eight times the people in the adjacent section and in the galleries became more interested in watching this mighty movement of legs than in the sermon, and the minister himself was so disconcerted that he presently gave it up and closed the service with the sermon unfinished. The dull preacher might better have put more life into his sermon, thus affording some legitimate opportunity for the exercise of interest on the part of his hearers.

Athletics bring wholesome recreation not only to those who play on the eleven or the nine, or who appear on the track, but to that larger company of fellows who strive for that honor; to a multitude whose interest in exercise and outdoor sport is quickened though they never aspire to ’varsity positions; to the thousands of spectators who assemble to witness the game and cheer the winners. The physical quickening, the mental relaxation, the temporary forgetfulness of hard work, the joyous hours in the open air, are all good for the whole company of people who thus, directly and indirectly, share in the advantages of athletics. Keep the game free from the taint of professionalism, free from betting, free from the disposition that would win fairly if possible, but win at any cost, and we have a form of recreation distinctly beneficial to the whole community!

The discipline of athletics develops obedience, self-control, and the spirit of cooperation, all of them useful, moral qualities. Many a rich man’s son, ambitious for college honors, has gotten his first taste of real discipline on the athletic field. At home he had indulgent parents—they were self-indulgent because of their wealth and they scarcely knew how to be other than indulgent to their children. The boy was waited upon by well-paid servants eager to do his bidding and humor his whims. His generous tips greased the way for him when he traveled or went in pursuit of pleasure. He had never felt the rough, raw edge of an exacting discipline.

But when the trainer took him in hand this son of affluence was treated as though he had been working his way through college by currying some man’s horse or by waiting on the table at a boarding club. If he played football he was knocked down as promptly and as hard, when he got in the way of a bigger and better player, as if his father had been a hod-carrier. And all this is exactly as it should be! Sometime, somewhere, he should learn the democratic spirit by being compelled to meet his fellow men without favor shown or advantage given; he should learn how to take the hard knocks and keep sweet, not losing his head or his temper. The boys say, “If a fellow plays football it does not take long to find out what kind of a fellow he is.” The real quality of the man comes out more readily and more genuinely perhaps than it would in a college prayer-meeting. And the man himself finds out what kind of a fellow he is, to his own lasting advantage.

Wellington used to say that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the athletic fields of the English schools. He meant that when he found himself standing up against Napoleon’s fiercest attacks, he had under him a body of men who had not waited for their army experience to learn discipline. Obedience, self-control, and the necessity of standing together had all been learned long ago at Rugby and Eton and Harrow until these qualities were bred in the bone! Now as mature men they fought the great battle through to a finish just as they used to put the pigskin across their opponent’s goal in the years gone by.