Intercollegiate sports

“ Their own publications, the country over, if distribution of space is a true criterion, indicate that they regard intercollegiate athletics as more important than the combined offerings of art, music, literature, social service, politics, philosophy, and religion. This excessive interest in athletics by proxy is antagonistic to scholarly ambitions and to the cultivation of habits of sustained thinking. ”

“ My impression is that at least three fourths of the teachers I have met the country over believe that the American college would better serve its highest purposes, if intercollegiate athletics were no more. At a recent dinner of ten deans and presidents, they declared, one by one, in confidence, that they would abolish intercollegiate athletics if they could withstand the pressure of students and alumni. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With the freedom of their fraternity and club life and the absence of faculty and parental restraint, have come constant distractions from study in connection with a succession throughout the year of class, fraternity, and intercollegiate games of football, baseball, basketball, tennis, golf, chess ”

“ Athletic regulations should not debar a student from playing summer baseball.
15. No student in an American college should be eligible to compete in intercollegiate athletics until he has begun his second year's work. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Probably the quicker and surer way would be to suspend all intercollegiate athletics for a college generation by agreement of groups of colleges—during which period every effort should be made to establish the tradition of athletics for education. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These three—which are the controlling aims of intercollegiate athletics—are also the aims of horse-racing, prize-fighting, and professional baseball.
These two sets of aims are in sharp and almost complete conflict. Roughly speaking, success in attaining the aims of athletics as education is in inverse proportion to success in attaining the aims of athletics as business. Intercollegiate athletics to-day are for business. The question is pertinent whether schools and colleges should promote athletics as business. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But a distinctively American attitude towards sport is also manifested in the intense personal and university rivalries developed, the very rock upon which the modern system of inter-collegiate athletics rests, no less than in the genius for organization and systemization which has, within the last twenty-five years, made organized athletics such a tremendous factor in the life of all American universities. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The gymnasium and playground are considered of unusual importance, as the faculty encourage athletics not only for physical, but for moral and social culture. Football, cricket, baseball and other athletic sports are the most effective equalizers that can be adopted. ”

“ If one consider the important place which these interests occupy in the mind of so-called students, and if he add to them football, baseball, lacrosse, hockey, wrestling, boating, swimming, gymnastics, as well as daily, weekly or monthly publications, he will feel convinced that for a great part of the students none too much time remains to be expended or, as some college boys would say, wasted on study. He will be confirmed in his conviction when he observes that intercollegiate contests are not interrupted by such matters as reviews or approaching examinations. ”

“ 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 student body have secured high places in intercollegiate athletics, oratorical and forensic contests, adding much to the repute of the university, already holding an honorable rank for scholarship and culture. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Of independent origin but hastened by the spread of the gymnasium is the vast athletic interest of undergraduates. Its earliest form, conducted on a considerable scale, was rowing. The first rowing club was formed at Yale in 1843, and the first intercollegiate race was rowed on Lake Winnepesaukee in 1852, Harvard defeating Yale. Rowing is now a form of athletics at every college where facilities permit. The first baseball nine was formed at Princeton in 1859, and the game spread rapidly to all the other colleges. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The facts are well known to many who are engaged in the work of college education, and there is no wish here to individualize. One of the worst causes of their existence has been the all-pervading pressure of intercollegiate athletics. An institution with few professors and many students, which has much ambition for athletic reputation and therefore has admitted athletes with little discrimination, is confronted with an embarrassing choice of alternatives. ”

“ 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. ”

“ College sports are the cleanest, most honorable of sports. They teach the students in this college to be manly in losing, to hold their tongues when the visiting team makes a fumble, and to cheer one for the other. It’s so different from the national game, outside of the college, where the crowds in the bleachers throw pop bottles at the umpire, insult the players, and nag one another bitterly. ”

“ What athletics may achieve without the hindrance of intercollegiate games and business motives is suggested by the experience of Reed College. There the policy of athletics for everybody was adopted five years ago before there were any teachers, students, alumni, or traditions. Last year all but six of the students took part in athletics in the spirit of sport for the sake of health, recreation, and development. Sixty per cent of the men of the college, including the faculty, took part in a schedule of sixteen baseball games. ”

“ It may be replied that disorders consequent upon victories are not confined to the college campus. Indeed, to the minds of many candid men, the great disorders which bring dangerous disgrace to the present system of college athletics, and reflect upon college government as well, occur at the intercollegiate contests, when the athletes meet on neutral ground. Such men admit the advantages of the system. ”

“ Let our colleges first adopt whatever measures may be necessary to make athletics yield their educational values to all students and teachers. If intercollegiate athletics can then be conducted as incidental and contributory to the main purposes of athletics, well and good. But first of all the question must be decisively settled, which aims are to dominate—those of business or those of education. And it will be difficult for a college already in the clutches of commercialism to retain the system and at the same time cultivate a spirit antagonistic to it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The years of late boyhood and early manhood say from twelve or fourteen to twenty-eight or thirty, and often until much later are those in which athletic sports prove not only most attractive, but also most beneficial to the individual and the race. In college and in most of the schools which are preparatory for college rowing, foot-ball, base-ball, running, jumping, sparring, and the like have assumed a constantly increasing prominence. ”

“ If the objection arises that intercollegiate athletics have educational value, there is no one to deny it. 'Athletics for education' and 'athletics for business' are general terms, used throughout this discussion as already defined. ”

“ 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 lower schools as a rule tend to imitate the worst features of intercollegiate athletics, much as the young people of fraternities, in their 'social functions,' tend to imitate the empty lives of their elders that fill the weary society columns of the newspapers. ”