ADMIRABLE FUTILITY

The radio has turned from accounts of the pitcher wiping off the ball and the halfback knocking the dirt out of his cheeks long enough to allow a work from the other side. Station WTIC has opened its mouthpiece to Professor Odell Shepard who has much fault to find with the American idea of sport and with college sport in particular. Professor Shepard thinks the whole trouble lies in our lack of a spirit of play. Business men for instance he claims play golf merely to keep fit for more business. What is important to them is not the actual play but the work of lowering a handicap.

College sport suffers because the men most vitally interested in it are men who have the idea of sport as a business. The primary interest of the coach is his reputation. The alumni are bent on advertising their college. As a result the athlete is in an atmosphere of work working to make the team and then to beat a rival team. That coach is a rare Avis who tells his candidates first of the fun and relaxation of what they naively call "games". Rather he talks first of What the team did or did not do to St. Timothy's last year and how he is sure the boys will duplicate or reverse last years splendid or regrettable performance. He goes on to tell the men without previous experience of Jo Zilch, who at the age of twelve was given up for dead and who at the age of twenty ran the hundred in ten seconds flat or shut out St. Timothy's or made the All American Team. He moralizes on the educational value of such effort and finally may tell the candidates that they are all going to have a great time together. But the big idea is work.

This is all very true. It has been said before and will be said again. The public is perhaps tired of the repeated hue and cry about "professionalism", "modern gladiatorial combats", and "over emphasis". But repetition is one of the laws of education. A few score men will continue to fight these at the risk of becoming tedious.

It seems rather futile however. Half a dozen magazine articles a few editorials a student conference and "The New Student" per month can hardly compete against the sport pages of hundreds of newspapers. It is perhaps fortutious that Professor Shepard can bring a new vehicle of expression with which to fight the good fight. But his chances of swaying public sentiment are few. We can but admire his effort.