Letter on Athletics by C. G. Fall '68

The following comparison of American and English athletics, with an argument in favor of the English system, is reprinted from the Harvard Bulletin:

What has Harvard, either the College or the undergraduate, gained in the last fifteen or twenty years from its numerous thrashings on the river and on the football field? Is the College any better for them? Are the alumni or the students any better for them? Isn't it a good time to do as the merchant does annually: take an account of stock and ascertain if the business pays? The various crews and teams have got some exercise. The men who composed them have got some social prestige and popular notoriety, and the undergraduates some lung-exercise and some disappointments. But has this result been worth what it has cost? The money cost alone, as some newspapers estimate it, of the last game is from a quarter to half a million dollars; and if half this sum comes out of Harvard pockets, was the game worth the price of the candle? This is for a single year; but how about the years which have gone to their desolate graves? These are questions that are running through the heads of thousands of Harvard's lovers just now. And how are they answering them? As they are sensible men they are doubtless answering them in a sensible way.

Here is one man's answer. Is it a sensible one? His readers shall judge. He thinks the time has come to get something out of Harvard athletics except thrashings. The time has come for the undergraduates, not the few but the many, to get some good out of athletics. Sports should be more generally pursued for the good they can give, for the exercise, the physical development. The great mass of American collegians get nothing out of athletics. They exist for the few; for the Jews and not for the Gentiles. Is not the motto, the greatest good for the greatest number, as applicable to collegians as to the general public? A hundred men or so are engaged in the various sports. But how about the other nineteen hundred? Are not these men worth considering? Are not their health, enjoyment, physical development worth a thought?

Across the water in the English universities, two thousand men in each of them go to their sports every afternoon as regularly as they go to their lectures every morning. These sports are and have been ever since the men were boys at school a part of their curriculum, and not once a week or once a month, but once a day from October to June. At two o'clock you see them pouring out at their college gates, and at four or there-abouts you see them hurrying back. Three hundred or so of them row; three hundred more of them play Rugby; four hundred and fifty play association football; two hundred perhaps play hockey, and the rest have other recreations; track athletics, lacrosse, cross country riding, motoring and so forth.

This for the winter months. But when the spring comes on apace, the sports change somewhat. Three hundred row, net the same three hundred always; four or five hundred play cricket; hundreds play tennis; and the rest go punting on the river, ride out into the country, or do something else for a couple of hours. The college halls are as deserted as Sahara. A man is seldom found, is almost ashamed to be found, is almost ashamed to be found within the quadrangles. He is out of the swim. If he can't do anything else, he takes a lonely walk or a lonesome trip on a bicycle.

This is the English system. It is an old one. It has taken a century no doubt to develop it. The boy begins in his school days under the eyes of a master who was athletic, in his days, and the eyes of his older schoolmates. He does this for pleasure; but if he finds no fun in it, he does it because he must. He will be punished if he doesn't, either by the scorn of his fellows or the kicks of the upperclassmen. He has his sport for five or six years until he loves it, and until he reaches the university. It has then become habitual. At college he is sought after. The rivalries between the twenty and more colleges in each university are so great upon the river, the cricket and football fields, and elsewhere that every freshman is asked to come out and be tried; and he is tried until he is found to be of no use to his college.

But what does he do then? Sit down and warm a seat and cheer the others? Not he! He isn't that kind of a six-pence. If he can't do one thing he does another. If he can't row he tries cricket or Rugby, or association, or hockey, or lacrosse, or track athletics, or something else. He doesn't suck his thumbs or sit and holler "Oxford!" "Oxford!" He is fond of exercise, a couple of hours of it every day and he will have it. The result of this is he is always having or preparing for a game or a tussle of some sort and he never has an attack of nerves when the tussle is going on or after it is finished. Some of the Cambridge crew who rowed against Harvard this year had rowed in thirty and more races. And the undergraduate who gets no further than the "Torpids" while in college has rowed in at least twenty races, more miles, more hours and in more races than any man in the Harvard varsity usually rows.

Ah! there is health and life and sport and friendship, stern endeavor, courage, endurance and noble purpose in all this, and with it all often the best scholarship, for the athlete is fitted for hard study. Mens sana in corpore sano. There are doubtless athletes who do little studying, but there are few students who take no regular exercise.

Oh, that some one would devise some system by which Harvard "rooters"--excuse the word--could do something besides rooting! An Oxford man is never a rooter and nothing but a rooter. The rooter is as unknown there as the dodo. Nor does he ever hurry his breakfast to crowd around a horse-car and give a varsity team a send-off. Such send-offs would be as common as frogs in a millpond. Soldiers Field, even in the season, is as dead as a desert except within or near the Stadium; but University Park and the various private college fields are beehives of sport. Nor does the Oxford man do any less studying than the Harvard man.

Cohasset, Dec., 1906.