Rome or Reason

We have happened to see no more searching analysis of the evil of present-day intercollegiate athletics than is contained in the report of the President to the Overseers of Harvard. Mr. Lowell points out that in intercollegiate athletics the primary object has become the entertainment of the spectators whereas in any sound system of education the primary object of athletics must be the health, the pleasure and the discipline of the athlete himself. In that distinction lies the clue to the whole problem which now perplexes all those who discuss the manifest evils of commercialism, overemphasis, professionalism, ballyhoo and vulgarity in intercollegiate athletics.

Take, for example, the argument about what constitutes an amateur. For fifty years various official bodies have been trying to invent an automatic and foolproof definition of amateurism. They have not only failed to invent one which is not readily broken in the spirit, however much it may be observed in the letter, but the failure has produced a widespread feeling that the ideal of amateurism is foolish, highbrow and snobbish. The reason for this is plain. An amateur is usually defined as a man who does not compete for money and does not practice athletics as a way of earning his living. The athletic world is full of men and women who do not compete for money, who rank as amateurs and are in fact thoroughly professional. Whatever may be the source of their income, their main business in life is to win championships, and it is certainly a snobbish and unreal distinction to say that they are amateurs if they have a private income and professionals if they live directly or indirectly on the profits of the sport.

The distinction which really matters, especially for the colleges, is between sport which is run for the entertainment of the spectators and sport which is run for the pleasure of the players. For when the spectators own the sport, as they now own intercollegiate football, the players are professionalized regardless of how they are recruited or subsidized, regardless of whether they play for dear old Rutgers, or for cheers and newspaper headlines, or for membership in fraternities, or for a head start in business afterward. When the spectators own the sport the players don't own it. They don't play the game for its own sake. They are entertainers. And out of that fundamental fact flows the whole business of professional coaches, barnstorming exhibitions, underhand evasion of the rules and the conception of football as big business. New York World.