Football Pot Still Simmers, But No Decisions Ready Yet

Harvard's muddled football situation continued muddled this week, but there were signs that some break might be in the oiling.

Art Valpey continued his travels, this time stopping off at the University of New Mexico. The director of athletics invited him out, so Art combined the trip with some business in the mid-West. New Mexico is scheduled to name its new football coach within a few days.

Connecticut Trip

Last week Valpey paid the University of Connecticut a one-day "social call." The UConus are also hunting a new football coach.

Valpey has not been under particularly heavy fire despite the Crimson's disastrous 1949 football season, and his contract has a year to run. Hence the "social calls" do not imply that he is being forced out here. However, it would not surprise many if he should be worried about contract renewal next year, since Harvard faces the same schedule in 1950 as it did in 1949.

Other reports on the football front indicate that influential alumni have been taking considerable interest in the administrative side of the University's gridiron troubles. These reports say that these alumni groups blame poor Athletic Association organization for most of Harvard's football plight. They believe that Harvard's admissions office, job office, scholarship office and alumni all are willing to do quite as much for football players as their counterparts at Yale and Princeton, but that the HAA has failed to organize these groups so that they can effectively aid Harvard football.

Hence these alumni groups are urging that Athletic Director William J. Bingham '16 be kicked upstairs or that he be given an assistant who will do the organizing job they believe is necessary.

The final decision, however, rests not with these alumni groups but with Provost Buck and the Corporation. And so far they have remained absolutely silent about the whole football situation.