De-emphasis

Among the heap of letters gracing our desk a few days ago was a plea for journalistic unity. The editors of the Daily Princetonian, anxious over football's current health, are drumming up enthusiasm for the return of spring practice and a requirement that each Ivy League members play five other members every year. Their missive, like those sent to the other six Ivy League newspapers, exhorted us to join with them in this drive. We can hardly go along, though.

The faults in this campaign are not particularly glaring. (In fact, its very innocuousness alone precludes any gush of vigorous support.) We drag feet, however, because the two resolutions involve serious though latent trouble, trouble which is not worth risking in view of the paltry blessings their adoption would bring.

Take spring practice. The Princetonian's point that spring practice is a minor excrescence of bloated football, rather than a cause, may be true. Doubtlessly it was excised more as a simple gesture of intent than anything else. What is basic, though, and what the Princetonian ignores, is the importance of this symbolism. This ruling was a clear warning to all those concerned that bigger and better de-emphasis was soon to come.

To reverse it now, just to relieve coaching staffs of minor inconvenience, would have an effect far out of proportion to the benefits of things like better body-contact training. Such a move would herald the de-emphasis of de-emphasis in a way no eager alumnus could mistake. Even if the presidents limited their concessions to this one, the effect on admissions, recruiting, and the like would be incalculable.

Though different in several respects, the Princetonian's scheduling proposal is in the same class. The five League games requirement, according to its originators, would develop cohesion among members of the Ivy League and make them more of a tight little athletic world than the generally low quality of their teams has made them already. Anything less, say the Princeton men, will result in too many outside games.

By this, they presumably mean outside games with gridiron powerhouses, the sort of thing that stretches any admissions director's conscience. What is forgotten is that many such out-landers are not so powerful as all that. Teams fielded by such colleges as Colgate and Davidson are much better suited to Harvard's schedule than, say, Pennsylvania or even Princeton.

To pass this resolve, then, would limit the University, cut down its scheduling discretion and, in case the Ivy League produces a few powerhouse teams itself, force Harvard to wage football beyond its capacities. Common standards for admissions policy, scholarship grams, and other affairs basic to control of football are all very proper, but conformity on things like scheduling is not worth the impositions involved.

All things considered, we can see no toward from these measures that would not at best be offset and at worst outweighed by their detects. Amateur athletics are not something plastic adjusting briefly to popular indignation then resuming their neo professional shape. De-emphasis must be permanent and thorough, despite incidental irritations. We hope that the Ivy League presidents in meeting assembled this January will not tamper with their current program, especially for so little purpose as the Princetonian suggests.