Harvard Football

When William J. Bingham's resignation was announced earlier this month, sportswriters sharpened their pencils and alumni critics sharpened their axes. Since then both groups have been busy whooping up a "renaissance" in Harvard football. They have accepted a nationwide fallacy about the place of football in a college program, and have submerged the strict amateurism which Mr. Bingham represented.

College football has grown tremendously--enough to earn itself the status of a "national scandal." It has shaken the conservative foundations of many colleges, making them bid in a competitive human market. In return, football has offered these colleges prestige and money, not only to attract and support better football players, but also to bolster the college's position in the educational world.

But the danger of letting football become such an important means of support is that a successful team has become an end in itself. The star football players who are going to help attract a better student body must themselves receive the most enticing offers of all. The money earned from increased football attendance cannot be denied to those who have had such a great part in earning it. The bigger the return, the bigger the investment.

This is the merry-go-round on which colleges have found themselves. Some of them are now trying to climb off.

Harvard has never mounted the merry-go-round. It has always considered football a part of education, of what the Student Council has called the production of the "whole man." The College needs inter-collegiate sports just as it needs intramural sports and intercollegiate debating. It needs a reasonable proportion of football victories, but it does not need eleven supermen with special privileges.

Harvard's current problem is to get that reasonable proportion of victories without giving up any principles in the process. To do this, we should play only teams with the same amateur standards as our own. We should keep admission and scholarship policy in line with Harvard's educational standards. How this can be done will be the subject of future editorials in this series.