UPON ELEVEN MEN

Once again the commercial value of a football team in intercollegiate competition to the college or university which it represents is brought home in emphatic manner. The annual report of the Yale Athletic Association States that "it will be noted that with one or two minor exceptions football is the only sport which developed a profit to the Athletic Association."

The figures certainly bear out this statement, one which could be made for almost any college in the country. Football showed a net surplus of $358,968, hockey of $309, and the rifle team of $39. Baseball, track, crew, basketball, fencing, lacrosse, polo, soccer", squash, swimming, tennis, and wrestling are all of them almost wholly supported by the revenue of intercollegiate football. The vicious circle at once becomes apparent. Successful football teams and huge stadia to house them form a business activity in which no college can afford to fall. Upon the shoulders of eleven men rests the physical development and health of the whole development and health of the whole undergraduate body. And since the development of bodily health has become a recognized duty of the college toward its students the college must have good coaches, good football players, large stadia at almost any cost.

This system cannot be considered sound unless one admits its parallel. Suppose the training of the mind depended financially on the drawing power of a few members of the faculty in their lectures. Suppose the tutorial system. Widener Library and Jefferson Laboratory depended for their existence on the financial returns from three or four Billy Sundays lecturing in Mechanics Hall and the New York Hippedrome on government, literature, and science at five dollars admission. It would be laughable of course but it is no more illogical and wrong than to make the development of bodily health depend upon a similar system. This like the development of the mind. Should depend upon endowment in the case of private institutions, and upon legislative appropriations in the case of state universities. The CRIMSON hopes that Harvard, leader in a same athletic policy, will be the first to raise an athletic endowment to cover the expenses of all sports and so relieve intercollegiate football from a burden which it should not be forced to carry.