TOWARDS FOOTBALL GREATNESS

Due to the suicidal schedule arranged for next year's Yale football team, "The Yale News" recently advocated earlier Fall practice for its squad. "The most obvious change, and the one which can be most easily brought about," said the "News", would be to terminate the agreement between Harvard and Princeton which sets September 15 as starting day."

The athletic officials in New Haven have arranged an intensive program, beginning with Columbia and Princeton on the first two Saturdays. Since Columbia usually begins practice around September 1, and since that former football doormat is this year the East's representative to the Rose Bowl, it appears that Yale is offering her football team as a willing sacrifice to big-time football. The necessity for big games and championship teams with resultant packed stadiums has returned to the East along with athletic association deficits. Yale's athletic officials have cause to reach for profitable crowds.

The same situation can be found at Harvard. The emptiness of the stadium, during the last two years had doubtless suggested to the H.A.A. the advisability of packing the schedule with difficult games which would draw greater attendance. But in spite of pressure, even from within, the Director of Athletics has wisely and consistently refused to acquiesce. Should Harvard release Yale from the September 15 agreement, it will simply mean that football practice at Cambridge will have to commence sooner, that sniffer schedules will eventually be arranged; it will mean a return to all the emphasis and ballyhoo from which Harvard has, with some success been trying to extricate its football.

Although the life of most athletic associations now depends on gate receipts, universities like Yale and Harvard cannot sensibly continue to believe that this will always be the case. The addition of paying games and the consequent lengthening of the season are at best artificial stimulants. It will take far stronger measures than these to cure athletic finances. Although Harvard's position is hardly more secure than Yale's in this respect, the H.A.A. has rightly judged that the potential evils of renewed over-emphasis are far greater than the benefits of increased gate-receipts.