Petering Out

There are more blacks playing football for Alabama and Texas this year than there are playing for Harvard.

In Saturday's season opener against UMass, sophomore Dan Jiggetts was the only black in uniform on the Harvard side of the field. It was a hard thing to overlook.

It is astonishing in 1973 that schools such as Alabama and Texas, long considered bastions of segregation which rode their homogeneously white football rosters to national prominence, have greater numbers of blacks on their respective squads than Harvard.

At Alabama, where Bear Bryant has reigned for what seems like eons, there are currently 12 blacks involved with the varsity program. Of these, four are starters. At Texas there are seven black performers, two of whom start.

It is inexplicable that Harvard, steeped in a "liberal" tradition and long-considered a front runner in liberal activity, should lie in such a deplorable state today when it comes to the number of blacks participating in its athletic programs.

Harvard has an undergraduate black population of nearly 10 per cent. Of these, many of the men stood out as athletes, and more particularly as football players, in secondary school. Many were enticed into coming to Harvard because of their impressive athletic statistics and credentials. Yet today, Harvard has the worst black representation in its football program of any school in the Ivy League, if not in the nation.

Harvard has never been particularly noted for the number of black athletes on its athletic teams. Last season, the football team had seven blacks playing. And other sports which blacks would ordinarily participate in, notably baseball, have an equally sorry record.

When football training camp opened this Fall, four blacks reported to vie for positions on the squad. From this meager beginning the number of blacks in the program has dwindled. Early on, two players who figured fairly prominently in the Crimson's season plans dropped out. Just before the pre-season scrimmage with Brown, a third left the team, leaving Jiggetts as the sole black on the squad.

Observing Harvard play football with one black on the team is an eerie experience. It is as if somehow, one has been whisked back in time, as if integration and black identity movements of the sixties had never taken place. It is as if Harvard were back in the fifties or even the thirties.

The issue represented by the single black on the Harvard football team, is not that X number of blacks have left the squad. Rather, the issue at hand is what has brought Harvard to a position where such a situation exists? The important question facing us is why so few blacks enter into athletics once they get to Harvard?

No one seems willing or capable to put a finger on what has brought Harvard to the situation as it exists today. It is not an easy question to answer. But one thing is clear--this is not a one-year phenomenon, but something that has been building and developing over a number of years. And it is a question that we are only beginning to answer.