Letter to the Sports Editor

To the Sports Editor:

I extend my sincerest congratulations to Dan Jiggets upon his election as captain of the 1975 Harvard varsity football squad.

For the first time, the Harvard football squad has a black captain. However, is this a sign of progressive, unbiased thinking on the part of those associated with the football program or will it be used as just another token front for what may actually be a bastion of racism? Does the election of a black football captain make a mockery of the impressions of Harvard football gained by brothers like Robert Harper?

I ask these questions because strangely enough, on a campus where many brothers have the talent for football, there are more brothers in the WASPish final clubs than there are on the entire varsity football squad. This fact clearly indicates that something is wrong with the football program at Harvard. It is amazing that the Crimson could be 1974 Ivy League co-champions when one considers the abundance of black talent that has been left by the wayside.

Could the fault lie in Coach Restic's track record with black players? The shift in position of Rod Foster, a black quarterback with an accurate arm, has never been satisfactorily explained, for example. If few brothers try out for football at Harvard, could that be the result of encounters with Restic and his coaching staff like that of Harper?

Wherever the fault lies, whether with the coaching staff or with white football players themselves, the Harvard football program had better do something about its generally lily-white appearance. If it does not, there will be more brothers and sisters like the dude in Adams House who said at the beginning of the season that he hoped the varsity would lose because it did not do justice to the black talent it had ignored. Steve Williams '75-3