THE FAME OF HALL

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

It appears to me that in your recent anxiety to break a "hot" story you were guilty of several distortions during your coverage of Bob Hall's retirement as Yale Athletic Director.

In the first place, Mr. Hall was not fired, as you seem to imply. A former business man, he simply found an attractive offer from a New Haven firm hard to resist. Ivy League Athletic Directors have never been notoriously high-paid.

Secondly, the implication that Mr. Hall represented the evil forces of professionalism and Mr. Griswold the pure forces of amateurism and that the two were locked in mortal combat far overstates the case. With at least one aspect of the problem, it is highly likely that the two were in agreement. Yale's scholarship program is at present so "pure", athletically speaking, that it has reached the logical extreme of absurdity. A scholarship holder at Yale today must maintain grades in the top two-thirds of his class in order to participate in athletics. This means he must have an average some-what better than 70--and 70 is considered a "distinction" grade at New Haven. Under this arrangement, a scholarship-holder with "distinction" marks in all his courses may still be forbidden to participate in sports, while a non-scholarship holder with less than "distinction" (but still passing) grades can continue to play. In certain instances undergraduates are actually giving up scholarships in order to engage in Yale athletics, thus imposing an unnecessary and difficult financial burden on their parents.

If Bob Hall found fault with this system, one could hardly blame him. Certainly the Administration, which has appointed a committee to improve the situation, did not.

Thirdly, if there was disagreement between Hall and Yale it centered about the former's enthusiastic efforts to keep the Bowl filled (and the athletic budget balanced). It is true that this meant scheduling "name" teams, as the CRIMSON pointed out. It also meant selling tickets at reduced prices to a variety of local civic groups ranging from Rotarians to Camp Fire Girls; this sometimes led to a situation where Old Blues were sitting in the end-zone and Four-H Clubbers on the 50 yard line, and Old Blues obviously shook their heads at this.

In summation I would simply like to point out that if Yale was irritated with Hall at all it was over a matter of promotion rather than professionalism. And it appears to have been a minor irritation at that.  Winthrop Knowiton '53