Everybody's Business

Last Thursday, before a large audience of football coaches from all over the country, Lloyd Jordan attempted to clarify his policy regarding the "abuses" current in intercollegiate football. While Mr. Jordan's attempt at clarification is laudable, the tone and the specifics of his address were not.

Mr. Jordan took to task the group of college presidents who recently drew up a program that included abolition of bowl games and out of season practice. He offered a three-point program of his own: 1.) setting up a standard set of entrance requirements which are honestly enforced; 2.) enforcement of a curriculum that will ensure that a boy graduates with a "respectable diploma"; 3.) a setup by which financial aid to the needy student is administered by an agency designated by the college president and trustees. He deprecated the attacks on college football, adding that "the temptation to suggest that some of these gentlemen who would reform us might perform a far better service by examining their own affairs is almost too great to resist."

What Mr. Jordan seems to overlook is that football is very much the business of college presidents, as long as the presidents set the educational policies of their institutions. The suggestions of the presidents' committee, even it some of the committee members have not always practiced what they preach, come much closer to striking at the fundamental evils of the present situation than does Mr. Jordan's program. And the Jordan scheme would be extremely difficult to administer, let alone enforce.

The point is that so long as bowl games and post-season tournaments offer the lure of money and glory for winning teams, and so long as football and other sports are organized on a year-round basis, an "enforcible" code of admissions or scholarships will be virtually impossible to achieve. The evils in football are not surface stains caused by a few evil practitioners, as Mr. Jordan implies. They result from the bigness of the sport, and so long as the sport is big name, big news, and big money, the evils will be with us.

"The truth is football has grown tremendously in the past 25 years," says Mr. Jordan. "Things that are indecent just don't live long in this country." It is easy enough to refute this argument; prejudice and crooked politics are obvious examples. But the important thing to show the coaches and everyone else concerned is that the "indecent" parts of college football are not surface phenomena and that attacking effects instead of causes will lead nowhere.