FOUNDATION STUDIES PLACE OF FOOTBALL

New York City, January 24--The Carnegle Foundation of Teaching has undertaken this year a thorough going investigation of the place that football at present occupies in the intercollegiate world. This move follows the general interest in the question aroused after the close of the football season last fall.

The Carnegie Foundation was founded 20 years ago at a time when playing rules of football had to be revised, and the opinion was expressed then that at the end of two decades another accounting of the game, and sports in general would be most opportune.

The conclusions of the Carnegle Foundation investigators cannot be forecast, but it is thought not unlikely that their report will touch upon and perhaps propose remedies for certain practices that have already been much discussed. These include the present emphasis by student bodies and the public upon football, scouting, proselytzing, coaching from the side lines, the question of professional football and baseball, paid coaching, and a tendency to treat the whole matter more as a business than a sport.

Whether this emphasis is an exaggeration remains a matter of dispute. Previous expressions of opinion by Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, President of the Carnegle Foundation, indicate that his organization regards it as out of proportion. In his annual report issued a year ago in March, he said:

Places Athletics

"Today the outside activities of the college overshadow and run counter to the intellectual life. Athletics, in large measure, professional in its methods and organization, fills a larger place in the eyes of students and even the public than any one other interest. No student in the university colleges should expect to receive the recognition or appreciation given to a successful football player.

"No reasonable man will object to the employment of these activities--for example, athletics--in their due perspective. But when they are allowed to dominate the intellectual life of the colleges they become abuses. The paid coach, the professional organization of college athletics, the demoralization of students by the use of extravagant sums of money, constitute a reproach to American colleges and those who govern them."

Hopkins Opposed

On the other side stand President Ernest M. Hopkins of Dartmouth and President John Grier Hibben of Princeton. The former told the delegates to the N. C. A. A. meeting that the benefits greatly outweighed the evils and that, on the whole, the situation was on a healthy basis, working no detriment to the intellectual purposes of the college. Dr. Hibben told the Princeton alumni that the only protests about the overemphasis on football came from those outside of the colleges.

The principal issue raised by Professor Richardson in his report to the N. C. A. A. is that of keeping the college amateur from the professional taint and yet not drawing too line a line. Professor Richardson pointed with approval to the position taken by the Harvard Advisory Committee. Charges of professionalism have been made against college men who play on hotel baseball teams, or are active in the game as camp counselors, or give athletic instruction in some other form. The Harvard position is that such participation does not impair their amateur standing.

The question of scouting has its propo- nents and its opponents also. Coach Roper of Princeton denounces it. Others defend it as practiced today, since there is no secrecy about the presence of a rival representative.

Highly paid coaching has long been a moot question and probably will receive about as much attention from the Carnegie Foundation as any that will be considered. On this subject the Carnegie Foundation has expressed itself before. A survey made in the South, which was covered in the Foundation's report issued in 1924, declared that the "athletic coach, and in particular the football coach, sets the standard of the whole system of intercollegiate sports and is responsible for many of its most demoralizing features. It recommends that the coach should be a member of the Faculty, employed for the full season and elected by the Faculty or other college authorities; and that his salary should be paid by the college and not by alumni or other organizations, and should be in no wise contingent upon winning certain critical games."

This report alleged that the influence of alumni in demanding winning teams was one of the greatest contributing factors of athletic evils