Here Comes Mr. Jordan

In the past year, a football player has successfully sued a college for "back pay." The president of William and Mary resigned when it became public that athletes grades had been altered. Football players have been suspended for cheating when sports took too much of their time. A recent bowl game between two top teams is being investigated for fixing.

Basketball scandals have, perhaps, stolen some of the thunder from these revelations. But no one at all interested in intercollegiate football can have missed their significance. Judges, senators, presidents of universities with nationally-ranked football teams, coaches, and athletic directors have reviled the present relationship of football to education and the depravity it has bred.

Now comes Mr. Jordan. With seventeen years in the Little Three behind him, and two more in the Ivy League, Jordan seems to feel that paid performers, large-scale recruiting, bribery, cheating, falsification of grades, and special courses for athletes aren't enough. "The evils have been overestimated," he says. "Football is big business, and I'm in favor of making it bigger."

"The game of football, and athletes in general, should be emphasized more," he adds a week later. "I think these critics--and now I see they include senators and judges--should clean up their own business first, although we coaches are always glad to have suggestions."

Just what suggestions are you after, Mr. Jordan? Abolition of eligibility rules, so that an athlete's usefulness to his alma mater will not terminate with his graduation or expulsion? Or perhaps an October 15 trading deadline? Or waiver provisions to prevent bigger conferences from raiding the top players from lesser leagues until other teams in that league have had a chance to bid for their services?

It is extremely unpleasant to find that the only man at Harvard who is currently discussing athletic policy in public is engaged in advocating even more of the emphasis which has already aroused national disgust.

We do not feel that Mr. Jordan should be fired for his speeches, any more than we supported the University of Miami when it expelled a student for failing to make the football team. Mr. Jordan's job is to coach the football team, and with his performance of that duty we have no quarrel. He has already achieved his first objective to substitute respect for the contempt with which the public regarded the Harvard team only a year ago.

We do not feel that Mr. Jordan should be silenced, either. He has as much right to talk about athletics as the judges and senators do. And if he wants to urge reforms in politics, he should do that, too.

We do feel that there are many men at Harvard who can talk more sensibly about athletics and who can give the public a more accurate insight into Harvard's own athletic policy. We wish that one of them would do so.