THE PRESS

A former football player of Harvard University, George Owen Jr., of the class of 1923, has written an article for the Independent of November 7 in which he says:

It is a crisp Saturday afternoon in October, and we are among the thousands of spectators at an important college football game. "Wouldn't you like to be in there, George?" comes the question from a neighbor. "No, I would not," is the spontaneous reply. In view of the fact that I played college football for four years and was fortunate enough to be a member of winning teams, this may seem a strange answer; but it was the only honest answer I could give.

The writer expresses his belief that a majority of college football players do not enjoy playing the game. The reason is the "terrific grind necessary to keep in the running." He continues:

You can't play the game and smile both: I well remember a coach who, on finishing a preliminary "fight talk" to a team two hours before it went on the field for an important game, said: "I don't want to see a smile on any one of your faces between now and game time."

As a result, the possibility of failure prays so on the mind of the player that his capacity for enjoyment of the game as a game is, in many cases, completely lost. It is only after the season is over that he can look back with any pleasure on what he has been through, and then the degree of pleasure is measured largely by the degree of the team's success.

No one who knows anything about our colleges will question or be surprised at these statements. And they may be extended from football to apply to all branches of what are known as "major athletics." The most interesting thing about so frank a confession, perhaps, is that it should be made by one who is barely off the college campus. That college athletics are beginning to does some of their glamor for the undergraduates (though not yet for the alumni) seems possible if for no other reason than that a change in fashion is about due a rising sense of boredom against so artificial and absurd and top heavy an institution. We note, for instance, an editorial in the Ohio State Candle for October in which college athletics receive a mereless keelhauling. The Nation.