Basketball as a Sport.

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

There is a good deal of feeling around College that basketball should be abolished as an intercollegiate sport at Harvard, because some men claim that they think the game, as it is played today, is bad. But these same men say that intercollegiate basketball should be allowed. What I want to know is, what the difference might be between the game as played between two colleges and the game as played between two classes? In my opinion if the game is dropped as an intercollegiate sport, the Athletic Committee should at least be consistent and abolish it entirely. It is inconsistent to say that a game is bad and yet allow it to be played. It looks to me as if these men reached their conclusion through an argument similar to this: "We're being defeated all the time at basketball. It is a poor game, therefore we had better abolish it."

Now, in my opinion, if we do not like the game as it is played today, the best thing to do is to see if we cannot better it. There is no use in quitting because the game doesn't suit us and we are getting beaten. There is a Rules Committee on basketball, just as there is on football, which meets every year to discuss how the game could be improved. There are five on the Committee and last year it stood three to two in favor of dribbling. Everybody who plays the game admits that that is more than half the cause of its roughness, and also doubles the difficulty of the referee's duties. By preventing dribbling it would improve the game more than a hundred per cent., and I am pretty certain that it would only take a little pressure to cause the Committee to abolish it. I should think that it would be much simpler, better, and pleasanter to try to better the sport through the Rules Committee than to hurt it by abolishing it; and I hope, at least, that this suggestion will meet with due consideration. R. P. JORDAN '10.