College sports

“ Hence college sports come in for an ever increasing attention and take an increasingly prominent and voluminous place in the university's life; as do also other politely blameless ways and means of dissipation, such as fraternities, clubs, exhibitions, and the extensive range of extra-scholastic traffic known as "student activities."
At the same time the usual and average age of the college students has been slowly falling farther back into the period of adolescence ”

“ At the National Games, however, it was different, and there are many who resented the change.
In the first place, school sports—and college sports, for that matter—are supposed to be somewhat different in tone from other sports, even from those of amateur athletic associations. We try to conduct them on a higher plane, and we try to give to them a purer spirit of amateurism and comradeship than can be obtained by other organizations. And in carrying out this idea it has always been the custom to have school or college graduates act as officials. ”

“ It is only natural that a university or college association which takes an active interest in the sports of its preparatory schools should wish to have the athletes who are making ready to enter its ranks familiar with the events on the inter-collegiate card. We all know very well that, no matter how great the college-man's interest may be in sport, as such, he is not going to waste his time and money and energy in training and encouraging young men who do not expect to go to college, or who practise high kicking and standing jumps, or other feats of which he takes no notice. ”

“ In addition to these four major forms of college sports, tennis, lacrosse, basketball, and swimming also have a prominent place. The four major sports are usually under the control of special athletic associations, which spend large sums of money and have a great influence with the students. ”

“ If athletics advertise the college, as so many persons affirm, they will tend to draw to its halls the young men who are fond of participating in athletic sports or of witnessing the athletic performances of others. Young men of a more studious frame of mind, who care little about athletics, would be attracted by the reputation of the individual professors, the academic standing of the institution, and the eminence of the positions held by its graduates. ”

“ As early as 1840 an annual game was played at Yale between the freshmen and the sophomores, but the establishment of a regular football association dates from 1872, also at Yale. In the following year an intercollegiate organization was formed, and since then football has increased in popularity at the colleges to such an extent that just as baseball has become the great national game, so has football become the great American collegiate game. Track athletics is the most recent form of athletic sports to be introduced into the college, and most colleges now have their field days. ”

“ The students in many schools, as we shall see later, have taken their own physical education in hand. The present passion for athletic sports seems wellnigh universal and has gained such headway that it is evident that it must be taken very seriously. Over $1,000,000 are annually spent on college athletics in the United States, an increase of five-fold in the past ten or twelve years, and some young men, at least, unquestionably go to college for the specific purpose of playing upon the university teams. ”

“ The superiority of English sportsmanship arises, not from the spirit of the men, but from the breadth of the development of the sports, and this, climate aside, is the result of the division of the university into colleges. The average college of only a hundred and fifty men maintains two football teams—a Rugby fifteen and an Association eleven—an eight and two torpids, a cricket eleven, and a hockey eleven. ”

“ The system of college athletics gives opportunity for the development of certain qualities of mind and character not all provided for in the college curriculum, but qualities nevertheless quite as essential to true success in life as ripe scholarship or literary culture. Courage, resolution, and perseverance are required in all the men who excel in athletic sports. ”

“ They establish in the colleges a system of training for their various sports which affects not only the members of the higher institutions of learning, but which reaches almost every young man in the land. To express the idea in Dr. Sargent's words, "the college clubs look to the academies, the academies to the schools, the schools to the homes and firesides, to furnish candidates for athletic honors." Dr. Sargent proposes this as one of his objections to making "excellence in achievement the primary object of athletic exercise." ”

“ In each of the larger colleges there are from fifty to a hundred men who, on the various class and college crews and ball teams, or in the track and gymnasium games, compete for the different championships; and for every one such man who actually competes there are five or ten who take part in the practice games, train more or less, and get a great deal of benefit from the work. ”

“ With reference to the colleges, the good effects of the game of football which they produce in common with the other sports need only a passing mention. Among these may be instanced the esprit de corps to which they give rise, the healthy excitements necessary to young men which they furnish—excitements which, for many, replace and moderate, if they do not entirely drive out, the old excitements of gambling and drinking, gate-stealing, contests between town and gown, formerly so prevalent and so difficult to deal with on the part of the college authorities. ”

“ It's a kind of education that America has worked out for herself unconsciously, I believe, the American college idea of sports. No American undergraduate dreams of playing to amuse himself. He'd scorn to. ”

“ The problem before our college authorities and leaders of student sentiment is how to check the fierceness of the big contests-shortening them, perhaps, possibly forbidding entirely the more strenuous and how to provide sports for all members of the college; so that, instead of a few overstrained athletes and a lot of fellows who under exercise, we shall see every man out on the field daily, and no one overdoing. ”

“ A sure key to the interpretation of "social obligation" will be found in inter-collegiate athletics. I am speaking here, not of athletic sports as such, nor necessarily of athletic contests between colleges, but of inter-collegiate contests as a matter of public exhibition—"a Roman holiday"—and commercial enterprise. Only a finely drawn distinction saves the college athlete from being classed as a professional. It is true that (as a rule) he does not pay for his living out of the gate-receipts. ”

“ To the left of the picture is a part of the College, and over the gateway shows a portion of the old Schools, the majestic dome and lantern of the Radcliffe Library filling the intervening space.
A couple of undergraduates lean against the building to the left of the picture.
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the friendly and often stimulating intercourse between senior and junior members of the colleges grew apace, and was no doubt encouraged by the increasing fashionableness of athletic sports, which gave a “Blue” the importance of a fellow, and a greater consciousness of importance. ”

“ Whatever changes the future is to bring in the development and control of inter-collegiate athletics, our universities cannot very well escape the fundamental fact that they have become an integral part of our university system, and that, rather than attempting a change by radical measures, they [234] can best correct any present abuses by wise regulation, by a constant effort toward a modification of the present overwhelming emphasis on the one game, football, and above all, by a consistent encouragement of universal participation on the part of the students in some form of college sport. ”

“ Nowadays the Varsity team too often is far from being the apex of a pyramid whose foundations lie in a widely distributed and wholesome interest in sports for their own sake. Too often we have the spectacle of high-school students coming to our universities with their careers all made for them, because of their ability in athletics, bringing with them a spirit of professionalism utterly foreign to university ideals. ”

“ Naturally athletics was selected as one of the chief fields of effort. Her managers knew that athletic supremacy would give the college the greatest prestige. Championships in the different branches of sport would attract students, and with a full roster of students, year after year, it was thought to be only a question of time when all the rest would come to her. ”

“ The athletic alumni bring in new students for athletic purposes, and these students increase the athletic excitement while they are undergraduates, and go out from the institution to multiply the athletic alumni.
I am only stating what every insider knows perfectly well, that our college athletics today is almost universally commercialized. All the big colleges have “alumni committees,” who are out scouting for the best athletic material ”

“ They fail to see that there is more in the annual "big game" than nine or eleven supreme athletes brought together to "represent" the University. Fortunately there are many more who view the whole question in its proper perspective, men who are no less thrilled by the contagious enthusiasm of the annual big games, and who recognize them as an inevitable and not undesirable factor in our college life, but who seek to bring athletics into a sane and wholesome relationship with the academic life of our universities. ”

“ A student may throw his hat in the air, grab a megaphone, give 'three long rahs,' go through the gymnastics of a cheer-leader,—putting the most ingenious mechanical toys to shame,—and yet leave some doubt whether he has adequately defined college spirit.
What is this college spirit that hovers over the paid coach and his grandstand—this 'indefinable something,' as one writer calls it, 'which is fanned into a bright flame by intercollegiate athletics'? Shall we judge the spirit by its manifestations in an institution famed above all else for its winning teams and its college spirit? ”

“ Then he made direct reference to athletics in its relation to both college spirit and college life.
“Sport is too much with us. Of late years I have observed a great increase in the number of athletic students, and a great decrease in scholarship. The fame of the half-back and the short-stop and the stroke-oar has grown out of proportion to their real worth. The freshman is dazzled by it. The great majority of college men cannot shine in sport, which is the best thing that could be. ”

“ The Baseball and Football Interscholastic leagues are encouraged and looked after by Harvard University athletes, because they develop players who enter Harvard and make good material for the university tennis. For that reason the influence of Harvard men has always been exerted in behalf of the schools that send the best and the most material to college, and also, of course, for the best interests of sport. ”

“ So notorious, indeed, is the discrepancy between college athletics and scholarly work that few college authorities latterly venture to avow as cordial a support of this training in sportsmanship as they actually give. ”

“ The athletic game gives it the easiest outlet, the simplest opportunity to express college loyalty by an outward sign, a shout, a cheer, a song. Follow the same men from day to day, from week to week, and you will find that the majority of them, even among the athletes, know that the central object of their college life is to get an education. ”

“ It is loyalty to college--college spirit--which makes the college man a valuable addition to the institution he adopts. It is the self-same spirit or a sentiment that stands for the best in college life and is an absolute essential to its success in its highest meaning, and it is college athletics, of which football is the highest exemplification, which make this spirit possible. ”

“ The duty of learning one's lessons is, in these times, opposed by at least two elements of college life. One is self-indulgence and the other is athletics. Self-indulgence is a general cause and constant. Athletics have in the last thirty years come to be a force more or less dominant. Athletics represent a mighty force for collegiate and human betterment. Football, which [Pg 39] is par excellence the college game, is an admirable method of training the man physical, the man intellectual and the man ethical. But football is not a college purpose; it is a college means. ”

“ College games, for the most part, nowadays are played on college grounds. Accordingly the sport has been withdrawn from the miscellaneous multitude and confined to the field where it really belongs and the spirit of the game is now just what it should be—exclusively collegiate. ”

“ This is an excellent rule, and will effectively put a stop to summer ball-playing by young men who are preparing for Princeton, and who hope to achieve the honor of playing on the university nine. It is to be hoped that every other university and college in this country will adopt similar rules. ”

“ It is an impressive illustration of what has happened to our higher institutions that, in certain of them, the one regular meeting place of the entire student body in a common interest, is the bleachers by the athletic field. One continues to believe in college athletics, in spite of the frequent absurdities and worse, done in their name; only if the numbers of those playing the game and those exercising only their lungs and throats from the bleachers, were reversed, better all-round athletic education would result. ”