The committee had attended the four principal championship games of the season, and at each of these games they had stationed themselves in different parts of the field, in order to notice what seemed to be the objectionable features of the play. Their report says: “In every one of these games there was brutal fighting with the fists when the men had to be separated by other players, or by the judges and referee, or by the bystanders and the police. In addition there were numerous instances where a single blow was struck, instances that occurred in every one of the games. A man was felled by a blow in the face in the Harvard-Princeton game, in the Harvard-Yale game and in the Yale-Princeton game. In the Wesleyan-Pennsylvania game a man was thrown unfairly, out of bounds, by an opposing player. Then, as he was rising, but before he was on his feet, his antagonist turned, struck him in the face and knocked him down, and returned in triumph with the ball. In all of the games the manifestations of gentlemanly spirit were lacking—the spirit that scorns to take an unfair advantage of an opponent. The teams played to win by fair means or by foul. If two teams are at all evenly matched, and one plays a gentlemanly and the other an unfair game, the self-respecting team will always be beaten.... In the four games which we attended there were but two cases where a player was punished for brutal or unfair play. In several cases the team was punished by having a ‘down’ given to the other side, but only twice was a man disqualified.”
In 1885 an important change was made in the personnel of the committee by increasing their number from three to five; of the five members two to be representative undergraduate athletes, one a recent graduate, one a physician, resident in Boston or in Cambridge, and the director of the gymnasium, who is also a member of the Faculty. The other colleges, urged on by a natural spirit of progress in the development of football, and spurred still further by the public attention which had been attracted to its abuses, had materially altered its character. The committee carefully watched it progress as shown in the championship contests between the other colleges, and after careful consideration, came to the conclusion that a decided change had taken place; that it had largely lost its brutality, and, although rough, its roughness was of a kind that often encouraged a manly spirit; that although still far from perfect, it was but in a transient stage of development, and that the new rules, with a few slight exceptions, had proved efficacious in regard to the evils they sought to remedy. They therefore recommended that the Faculty should allow Harvard to renew her intercollegiate games of football. The report was accepted and Harvard was reinstated in her position in the intercollegiate league.
Since the reinstatement of Harvard into the football league, no important action has been taken by the athletic committee. The committee have been much abused, and still more ridiculed, but a calm survey of the work they have done, however much one may differ with them on a few measures, must be convincing that they have been needed as a restraint upon the exceeding growth and concomitant abuses of athletics, and that their work has usually been successful.
The formation and growth of the different athletic organizations up to about 1882 formed by itself a distinct period in Harvard athletics; then began a new period, marked by their curtailment, or, more justly speaking, the curtailment of what seemed to be their abuses, by Faculty restrictions. Within the last few years has begun still a third period, marked by distinctly new athletic action; this is the curtailment by the students themselves of Harvard participation in intercollegiate athletics; a feeling that the intercollegiate athletic interests of the college have become too complicated and too cumbrous, and that action should be taken to restrain them.
When, in order to win an intercollegiate athletic meeting, it is necessary, as is the case, not only to send good athletes upon the field, but also to train good amateur detectives in order to ferret out unfair entries from other colleges, the time certainly has arrived when some sharp remedy should be applied. Often, it may be, these unfair entries are not sought by the college under whose colors they compete, they may be simply “mug hunters,” attracted by the rich prizes, and the wide reputation which attaches itself to an intercollegiate prize-winner; but, nevertheless, such entries are oftener and more easily made, and are more readily winked at when there are thirteen colleges and over two hundred entries, than when there are only two colleges and fifty entries. A clearly drawn distinction between college and non-college athletics is absolutely essential for the true welfare of college athletics, and this line it is hard to preserve in any large intercollegiate league.
Never yet has there been a large intercollegiate league in any important branch of athletics which has not been productive of bitter ill-feeling and charges of unfair play. The generous rivalry begun on the athletic field has far too often borne fruit at the conventions in underhand combinations worthy only of those political conventions of which they are cheap imitations, and too often victory on the athletic field must be preceded by a victory on paper, insignificant, perhaps, to the uninitiated, but which under its apparently harmless words conceals the future coup d’état by which victory is to be won. The defeated team, smarting at the recognition that it has been tricked, is obliged quietly to submit or be taunted with not having pluck enough to accept defeat; or else it may carry on a wordy war which no one outside the college understands, which brings no satisfaction, and which usually ends in nothing being accomplished. This is followed the next year very naturally by a sullen determination to return the compliment, not only on the field but also in the convention. These disputes, this ill-feeling, this idea that victory even meanly won, is well won, are real troubles which must be guarded against. They are practical signs of a partial disappearance of the line which ought to separate professional from college athletics, and the origin of them is largely due to the existence of intercollegiate leagues.
No quack medicine in the shape of edicts against what the world calls “professionals,” will stop this tendency. Such attempts remind one of the nobleman who, because his son was nightly attacked by the nightmare, hung all the old women, so-called witches, in his neighborhood, instead of regulating the boy’s evening diet. Nor can the trouble be prevented by abolishing all intercollegiate contests. Such a remedy would be like cutting off a man’s hand in order to extract a splinter. This plan was proposed last spring in an eccentric report presented by a majority of the committee on athletics appointed by the board of overseers, but, nipped in the bud by its own apparent weakness, it was suffered to pass quietly out of sight. The Faculty, however, aroused by the fresh importance attached to the subject, appointed a committee to investigate thoroughly the entire athletic question; statistics were collected having reference to the general standing in college of athletic men, and the effect of athletic sports upon the colleges as a whole; and the conclusion reached was that, although several abuses still exist, they are greatly overestimated; that the physical standard of undergraduates has been greatly raised since the general introduction of athletics; that as a usual thing the rank of athletic men is higher than the average, and the report ended by recommending the authorities at once to secure fresh land for new athletic ground, and to build an addition to the gymnasium. This report representing—as concerns athletics—the most conservative college in the country, practically puts an end to the opposition to athletics as a factor in college life, and recognizes the fact that college intercollegiate contests will and ought to retain a permanent and important position in the college world.
Now that the Harvard authorities have at last given official recognition of the importance and permanency of college athletics, it is all the more important that these evils arising from intercollegiate leagues should be driven out of existence. The quickest and only thorough way of effecting this is for Harvard to withdraw from all intercollegiate leagues, and to confine her annual championship contests to Yale alone. There are many other reasons besides those given in this article why Harvard’s position in intercollegiate leagues acts as a drag upon her true interests; increased expenses both in training and traveling attendant upon so many championship contests; the longer time necessarily spent in preparation for matches not important in themselves, but which lost by accident would impair the chances of winning the championship; the element of chance in determining the winner of the intercollegiate track athletic games, ever increasing with the admission of so many smaller colleges which have no hope of ever securing first place. The only solution of the present athletic problem for Harvard is a withdrawal from the intercollegiate leagues. As the case now stands, in most branches of athletics the contest eventually narrows itself down to one final effort between Yale and Harvard. There is everything to gain and nothing to lose by the change. The idea is rapidly gaining ground at Cambridge: a free discussion of it in the college papers has only added new converts. Dissolution from all athletic leagues, practice games against the best teams in the country, and championship games with Yale alone, would cure many of the evils which seem to have attached themselves to Harvard athletics.
NOTE.—The illustrations of the different groups of athletic, football, baseball, lacrosse, and other teams in this series of articles on college athletics, are from photographs by Pach Brothers, of 841 Broadway.