be played. To state any of the arguments in favor of the offer is
unnecessary. Every one knows what it would mean to football next fall,
the greater interest it would mean to the game, the incentive it would
prove to every football man to work to become one of the seventeen men
to take the trip, the advertising it would give to the college, and,
perhaps most important, the drawing card it would be to bring new
athletes to the college in the fall. These points and others are too
well known to need pointing out and too evident to need proof.'
This is a typical football argument. It attempts to prove the necessity
of the proposed trip by showing that it would tend to perpetuate the
thing the value of which is under dispute.
In like vein the students of Cornell complain because the faculty did
not grant an additional holiday in connection with the Pennsylvania
football game. It is the familiar cry: 'Support the team! Win games!
Advertise the college!'
'Our friends, the professors, will perforce hold forth in their
accustomed cells from eight till one of that fair morning. The benches,
no doubt, will derive great benefit therefrom....
'We want the football team to have as much support as possible. The
Faculty should want the football team to have as much support as
possible. The Faculty should foster true Cornell spirit whenever it can
honestly do so, and intercollegiate athletics is the greatest single
thing that unites the different colleges into Cornell University. A
victory over Penn would mean a lot for Cornell.'
After all, how important is this end for which such sacrifices are made?
To hear the yelling of twenty thousand spectators, one might suppose
this aim to be the only one of great importance in the life of the
university. Yet who wins, who loses, is a matter of but momentary
concern to any except a score or two of participants; whereas, if there
is one thing that should characterize a university, it is its cheerful
sacrifice of temporary for permanent gains,--in Dr. Eliot's fine phrase,
its devotion to the durable satisfactions of life.
The making of money, through intercollegiate athletics, continues a
curse, not only to institutions, but as well to individual players. Only
childlike innocence or willful blindness need prevent American colleges
from perceiving that the rules which aim to maintain athletics on what
is called an 'amateur' basis, by forbidding players to receive pay in
money, are worse than useless, for while failing to prevent men from
playing for pay, they breed deceit and hypocrisy. There are many ways of
paying players for their services. Only one of these, and that the most
honorable, is condemned.
There are many subterranean passages leading to every preparatory school
notable for its athletes. By such routes, coaches, over-zealous alumni,
and other 'friends' of a college, reach the schoolboy athlete with
offers beyond the scope of eligibility rules. Sometimes payments are
made expressly for services as half-back, or short-stop, or hurdler, and
no receipts taken, the pay continuing as long as the player helps to win
games. Sometimes payments take a more insidious and more demoralizing
form. The star athlete is appointed steward of a college clubhouse on
ample pay, his duties being to sign checks once a month. Or his college
expenses are paid in return for the labor of opening the chapel door, or
ringing the bell, or turning out the lights.
Athletes may be paid for their services in other ways that escape the
notice of the most conscientious faculties and athletic associations.
But there are hundreds of boys who know that they are paid to win games
and keep silent; they are hired both as athletes and as hypocrites.
The sporting editor of one of the leading daily papers said recently,
'It is well known that the Northwest colleges are at present simply
outbidding one another in their desire to get the best athletes. Money
is used like water. It is a mystery where they get it, but they do.'
So common is the practice of paying athletes that they sometimes apply
to various colleges for bids. While I was acting as Registrar of Bowdoin
College, I received a letter from a man asking how much we would
guarantee to pay him for pitching on the college nine. I found out later
that he had registered at one college, pitched a game for his class
team, left his trunk at a second college awaiting their terms, and
finally accepted the offer of a third college, where he played 'amateur'
baseball for four years before joining one of the big league
professional teams.
At the athletic rallies of a New England college, a loyal alumnus is
often cheered for bringing so many star athletes to the college.
Officially, the college does not know that he hires men to play on the
college teams. And what is to prevent a graduate of the college or any
other person from hiring athletes? All but futile are the rules
governing professionalism. Is it not a worthy act to enable a boy to go
to college? And shall he be denied such aid because he happens to be an
athlete? No eligibility committee knows of all these benefactors or even
has the right to question their motives. But the objectionable motives
themselves can be eliminated by one act--the abolition of
intercollegiate athletics. With the subordination of winning games as
the chief end in athletics, falls also the money-making aim and its
attendant evils.
All the serious evils of college athletics centre about the
gate-receipts, the grandstand, and the paid coach. Yet the aim of nearly
every college appears to be to fasten these evils upon the institution
by means of a costly concrete stadium or bowl, and by means of more and
more money for coaches. When the alumni come forward to 'support their
team,' they usually make matters worse. Typical of their attitude is a
letter signed in Philadelphia last fall by some thirty graduates of a
small college:--
'The team has just closed the most disastrous season in its history....
The alumni will cooperate cheerfully with the undergraduates in
increasing the football levy. It only remains, then, to initiate a
campaign for procuring the money.... We must depart from our time-worn
precedents and give _more money for the coaches_! Alumni are tired of
reading the accounts of useless defeats!'
The extent to which interest in athletics is deadened by paid coaches
was shown last spring, when a track team from one university, after
traveling over two hundred and fifty miles--at the expense of the
student body--to compete with the team of another institution, took off
their running shoes and went home because the _coaches_ could not agree
on the number of men who should participate in the games. Could there be
a more abject sacrifice of the educational purposes of athletics?
Consider the spectacle. A glorious afternoon in spring, a perfect
playground, complete equipment in readiness, two score of eager youth in
need of the health and recreation that come from sport pursued in the
fine spirit of sport. Could anything keep them from playing? Nothing but
the spirit of modern American intercollegiate athletics and the
embodiment of that spirit, the paid coach, who knows that there is but
one crime that he can commit--that of losing a contest.
The athletic policy of many an institution is determined by a commercial
aim, the supposed needs of advertising, much as the utterances of many a
newspaper are dictated by the business manager. But does the advertising
gained through intercollegiate athletics injure or aid a college? At one
railroad station I was greeted by a real-estate agent who offered to
sell me 'on easy terms a lot in the most beautiful and rapidly growing
city in America.' (Thus do I safely cover its identity.) Among the
attractions, he mentioned the local college. He was proud of it; he said
it had the best baseball team in the state. Apart from that he had not
an intelligent idea about the institution, or any desire for ideas. The
only building he had visited was the grandstand. He could not name a
member of the faculty or a course of instruction. College advertising
which gets no further than this is paid for at exorbitant rates.
The people of Tacoma discovered recently that college athletics
conducted as a business are too costly. They brought college students
1400 miles to play a football game at Tacoma on Thanksgiving Day for the
benefit of the Belgian refugees. The charitable object of the game was
widely advertised and there was a large attendance. After they had paid
the expenses of the 'amateur' teams, the coaches, and the advertising,
they announced that there was nothing left for the Belgians.
A writer in the _North American Review_ tries to justify the time spent
by college boys in managing athletic teams on the plea that it is good
training for business. He gives testimony to this effect from a graduate
of two years' standing 'engaged in the wholesale coal business in one of
the large New York towns.' Following the usual custom, this young
graduate returns to his college and gives the admiring undergraduates
the benefit of his wisdom, lest they be corrupted by the quaint notions
of impractical professors. He has them guess what part of his college
work has proved of greatest use; then he assures them that his best
training came as manager of the baseball team. Such is the mature
judgment of the coal-dealer. And such is the advice of alumni which
makes undergraduates resolve anew not to allow their studies to
interfere with their college education. But some people raise the
question why a boy should be maintained in college for four years, at a
great cost to society and to his parents, in order that he may gain a
little business experience when he could gain so much more by earning
his living.
The conflicts frequently arising between faculties and students over
questions of intercollegiate athletics are the natural outcome of the
independent control of a powerful agency with three chief aims--winning
games, making money, and getting advertised--which are antagonistic to
the chief legitimate ambitions of a university faculty. No
self-respecting head of a department of psychology would tolerate the
presence in the university of persons working in his field, in no way
subject to him and with aims subversive of those of the department. No
professor of physical education should tolerate a similar condition in
his department. It is one of the hopeful signs in America that several
of the men best qualified to conduct athletics as education have
declined to consider university positions, unless they could have
control of students, teams, coaches, alumni committees, grandstands,
fields, finances, and everything else necessary to rescue athletics from
the clutches of commercialism.
I have read a letter from one of the ablest teachers in America,
declining to accept a certain university position under the usual
conditions, but outlining a plan whereby, as the real head of the
department of physical education, he might begin a new chapter in the
history of American athletics. His plan was rejected, not because it had
any defects as a system of education, but solely because it would cause
a probable decline in victories, gate-receipts, and newspaper space.
That university continued the traditional dual contest of coaches and
physical directors with their conflicting ideals. Recently I received a
letter from the professor of physical education who _did_ accept the
position, himself one of the ablest athletes among its graduates,
declaring that he would no longer attempt the impossible, in an
institution which deliberately prostituted athletics for commercial
ends.
We hear much about the value of intercollegiate games for the 'tired
business man' who needs to get out of doors and watch a sport that will
make him forget his troubles. It is true that for him a game of baseball
may be a therapeutic spectacle. The question is whether institutions of
learning should conduct their athletics--or any other department--for
the benefit of spectators. Doubtless university courses in history could
provide recreation for the general public and make money, if instruction
were given wholly by means of motion-pictures. But such courses would
hardly satisfy the needs of all students. Is it less important that
departments of physical education should be conducted primarily for all
students rather than for spectators? We do not insist that banks,
railroads, factories, department stores, and legislatures jeopardize
their main functions in order to provide recreation for the tired
business men. Universities are institutions of equal importance to
society, in so far as they attend to their main purposes. Athletics for
the benefit of the grandstand must be conducted as business; athletics
for the benefit of students must be conducted as education.
III
It is when we rightly estimate the possibilities of athletics as
education that the present tyranny of athletics as business becomes
intolerable. Is it not an anomaly that those in charge of higher
institutions of learning should leave athletic activities, which are of
such great potential educational value for _all_ students, chiefly under
the control of students, alumni, coaches, newspapers, and spectators?
Usually the coach is engaged by the students, paid for by the students,
and responsible only to them. He is not a member of the faculty or
responsible to the faculty. The faculty have charge of the college as an
educational institution; athletics is for business and therefore
separately controlled. Why not abandon faculty direction of Latin?
Students, alumni, and newspapers are as well qualified to elect a
professor of Latin and administer the department in the interests of
education, as they are to elect coaches and administer athletics in the
interests of education.
A few of the more notable coaches of the country are aware of the
possibilities of athletics controlled by the faculty for educational
purposes. Mr. Courtney, the Cornell coach, spoke to the point when he
said,--
'If athletics are not a good thing, they ought to be abolished. If they
are a good thing for the boys, it would seem to me wise for the
university to take over and control absolutely every branch of sport; do
away with this boy management; stop this foolish squandering of money,
and see that the athletics of the University are run in a rational way.'
Next to the physical development and the maintenance of the health of
all the students and teachers of an institution, the main purpose of
athletics as education is to provide recreation as a preparation for
study rather than as a substitute for study. But, intercollegiate
athletics having won and retained unquestioned supremacy in our
colleges, students do not tolerate the idea of a conflicting interest.
Even the nights preceding the great contests must be free from the
interference of intellectual concerns. An editorial in one of our
college weeklies makes this point clear. If a member of the faculty
ventured to put the matter so extremely, he would be charged with
exaggeration. But in this paper the students naively present their
conviction that even the most signal opportunities for enjoying
literature must be sacrificed by the entire student body in order that
they may get together and yell in preparation for their function of
sitting in the grandstand. In this case the conflicting interest
appeared in no less a person than Alfred Noyes. For a geographically
isolated community to hear the poet was an opportunity of a college
lifetime. Yet the students wrote as follows:--
v 'THE RALLY _vs_. NOYES
'Returning alumni this year were somewhat surprised to find the
Hall used for a lecture on the eve of our great gridiron struggle,
and some were very much disappointed. The student body was only
partially reconciled to the situation and was represented in great
part by Freshmen [who were required to attend].'
The relative importance of intercollegiate athletics and other college
affairs, in the minds of students, is indicated by student publications.
There is no more tangible scale for measuring the interests of college
youth than the papers which they edit for their own satisfaction,
unrestrained by the faculty.
Let us take two of the worthiest colleges as examples. The Bowdoin
College _Orient_, a weekly publication, is typical. For the first nine
weeks of the academic year 1914-15, the _Orient_ gave 450 inches to
intercollegiate athletics. For the same period, it devoted six inches to
art, ten inches to social service, thirteen inches to music, and twelve
inches to debating. Judging from this free expression, the students rate
the interests of intercollegiate athletics nearly three times as high as
the combined interests of art, music, religion, philosophy, social
service, literature, debating, the curriculum, and the faculty. Second
in importance to intercollegiate athletics, valued at 450 inches, are
dances and fraternities, valued at 78 inches.
Another possible measure of the student's interest is found in _Harvard
of Today from an Undergraduate Point of View_, published in 1913 by the
Harvard Federation of Territorial Clubs. The book gives to athletics ten
pages; to the clubs, six pages; to debating, five lines--and that
student activity requires sustained thinking and is most closely
correlated with the curriculum. The faculty escapes without mention.
'From an undergraduate point of view' the faculty appears to be an
incumbrance upon the joys of college life.
These publications appear to be fair representatives of their class. It
is probable, furthermore, that the relative attention given by the
student papers to intellectual interests is a criterion of the
conversation of students.
Not long ago, I spent some time with the graduate students at an Eastern
university. Their conversation at dinner gave no evidence of common
intellectual interests. They appeared to talk of little but football
games.
On a visit to a Southern state university, I found the women's
dormitory in confusion. The matron excused the noise and disorder on the
ground that a big football game was pending and it seemed impossible for
the girls to think of anything else.
'The big game comes to-morrow?' I asked.
'Oh, no, next week,' she said.
Last spring, at a large university on the Pacific Coast, I met one young
woman of the freshman class who had already been to thirty-one dances
that year. At a state university of the Middle West, I found that the
students had decided to have their big football game on Friday instead
of Saturday, in order to wrench one more day from the loose grip of the
curriculum. When the faculty protested, the students painted on the
walks, 'Friday is a holiday'--and it was.
Intellectual enthusiasm is rare in American colleges, and is likely to
be rarer still if social and athletic affairs continue to overshadow all
other interests. Their dominance has given many a college faculty its
characteristic attitude in matters of government. They assume that boys
and girls will come to college for anything but studies. They tell new
students just how many lectures in each course they may escape. A
penalty of unsatisfactory work is the obligation to attend all the
meetings on their schedule, and the usual reward for faithful conduct is
the privilege of 'cutting' more lectures without a summons from the
dean. Always the aim of students appears to be to escape as much as
possible of the college life provided by the faculty, in order to
indulge in more of the college life provided by themselves. Their
inventive powers are marvelous; they bring forth an endless procession
of devices for evading the opportunities for the sake of which
(according to old-fashioned notions) students seek admission to college.
The complacent acceptance of this condition by college faculties--the
pervasive assumption that students have no genuine intellectual
enthusiasm--tends to stagnation. In the realm of thought some appear to
have discovered the secret of petrified motion.
The pronounced tendencies in higher education aggravate the disease.
Feeble palliatives are resorted to from time to time,--the baseball
schedule in one college, after six hours of debate by the faculty, was
cut down from twenty-four games to twenty-two,--but the bold and
necessary surgeon seldom gets in his good work. When he does operate, he
is hung in effigy or elected President of the United States.
Concerning the policy of no intercollegiate games at Clark College,
President Sanford says: 'Our experience with this plan has been
absolutely satisfactory and no change of policy would be considered.
Doubtless some of the less intellectually serious among the students
might like to see intercollegiate sports introduced. It is generally
understood that in a three-year college there is not time for such
extras.' The faculty appear to be unanimously in favor of no
intercollegiate games, since the course at Clark College takes only
three years. Intercollegiate contests appear to be ruled out chiefly on
the ground that, in a three-year course, students cannot afford to waste
time. But why is it worse for a young man to waste parts of three years
of his student life than to waste parts of four years of it?
The educational effect of our exaggerated emphasis on intercollegiate
athletics is shown in the attitude of alumni. It is difficult to arouse
the interest of a large proportion of graduates in anything else. At one
of the best of our small colleges, in the Mississippi Valley, I saw a
massive concrete grandstand. This valiant emulation of the Harvard
stadium seemed to me to typify the indifference of alumni to the crying
needs of their alma mater. For these graduates who contributed costly
concrete seats, to be used by the student body in lieu of exercise,
showed no concern over the fact that the college was worrying along with
scientific laboratories inferior to those of the majority of modern high
schools. 'What could I do?' the president asked. 'They would give the
stadium, and they would not give the laboratories.'
IV
There have been numerous attempts to prove that intercollegiate
athletics are not detrimental to scholarship by showing that athletes
receive higher marks than other students. Such arguments are beside the
point. Though we take no account of the weak-kneed indulgence to
athletes in institutions where winning games is the dominant interest,
and of the special coaching in their studies provided for them because
they are on the teams, we must take account of the fact that wherever
the student body regards playing on intercollegiate teams as the supreme
expression of loyalty, the men of greatest physical and mental strength
are more likely than the others to go out for the teams, and these are
the very men of whom we rightly expect greatest proficiency in
scholarship. That they do not as a group show notable leadership in
intellectual activities seems due to the excessive physical training
which, at certain seasons, they substitute for study.
But this is not the main point. A large college might be willing to
sacrifice the scholarship of a score of students, if that were all. The
chief charge against intercollegiate athletics is their demoralizing
effect on the scholarship of the entire institution. The weaklings who
have not grit enough to stand up on the gridiron and be tackled talk
interminably about the latest game and the chances of winning the next
one. They spend their hours in cheering the football hero, and their
money in betting on him. The man of highest achievement in scholarship
they either ignore or condemn with unpleasant epithets.
Further hindrances to scholarship are found in the periodic absences of
the teams. It is said that athletes are required to make up the work
they miss during their trips, but is not this one of the naive ways
whereby faculties deceive themselves? They are faced with this dilemma.
Either the work of a given week in their courses is so substantial, and
their own contribution to the work so great, that students cannot
possibly miss it, and 'make it up' while meeting the equally great
demands of the following week, or else the work of all the students is
so easy that the athletes on a week's absence do not miss much. What
actually happens, year in and year out, is that the standards of
scholarship of the entire institution are lowered to meet the exigencies
of intercollegiate athletics.