Good Clean Fun

THE INJURY Margaret M. Cimino '87 suffered when a goalpost fell on her head after Saturday's Yale game is a direct result of the business which is poisoning American sports. Cimino was hurt in the traditional tearning down the goalpost celebration after the game. But this "celebration" is not revelry--it is the winning fans' chance to participate in the violence they have been watching for the past three hours and humiliate the enemy even more. And it is when The Game--or any other game--means more than the contest of skill and strategy it was designed to be that violence and ulterior motives lurk.

The Game has gone too far, Football is unique among American sports in the idolization it inspires in fans, who wave terrible towels, tear down goalposts and throw bottles at quarterbacks. Football players are true sports heroes, they are doing something we can never hope to do and our dependence on them is complete. Everyone, male or female, has kicked a ball around, shot a few hoops in gym class, or played in an office softball game, but few of the 71,000 people in the Yale Bowl Saturday have every played serious full-contact football. We can never hope to beat Yale personally, and are that much more bitter when we lose.

"Yale Sucks" hats were a hot selling item in Cambridge last week. Yale doesn't suck, it never has and it never will, but those of us at Harvard want to believe it does. We want to reassure ourselves that we are "the best." People who have nothing to do with what happens on the field think it is some reflection on their greater worth. They are apt to harbor grudges when their self image is attacked. Losing teams have been turned on by fans who took a defeat too personally. Mickey Rivers almost never plays center field in Fenway Park and when he does he wears a batting helmet for protection against the cherry bombs thrown by fans who remember his part in the Yankees--Red Sox brawl of May 1976.

For the players such animosity rarely exists. Even in the most bitter rivalries, the game is a test of strength and skill between equals and the teams can shake hands afterwards. The players respect each others abilities and have the exclusive bond of having been in the area together.

"As damaging to organized sports as overzealous fans are the businessmen who manipulate the players and the games for their own benefit. Professional sorts is a product. National Football League Commissioner Pete Rozelle has said it many times, each time he talks about what is good for the game." And that commercialism has done serious damage to amateur sports. The damage is most active in football and basketball where the pros rely on colleges as their major league Granfed most of the seniors suiting up for The Game have as hope of playing professional ball next year, but they are still part of the product. The product infects every level of organized sport where performance on the field is linked to anything more than excellence. People have been rightly outraged by reports this fall of high school coaches receiving death threats and parents keeping their pubescent children back in school, hoping for a future scholarship. The carrot of a "scholarship" has been a lie for many years and still Marcus Depree can barely read.

To the owners, coaches, union organizers and promoters, what happens in the game is only important in terms of how much it can make them. With season tickets, television contracts and possible gambing a professional team doesn't even need to win to make money. In fact, one of the best ways to keep costs down and maximize profits is to get rid of older players even though they might perform better than gullible rookies willing to sign any seemingly big money contract thrown their way. Players are enticed with deferred payments, cash bonuses, and unfulfillable incentive clauses which look good in the newspaper but even better on tax forms. Even when players are making real money they are being exploited, because their interests are different from those of the people footing the bill.

In college, players are truly exploited. The school gets their service virtually free of charge and demands sacrificing everything for a winning season. Alumni donations hinge on the outcome of The Game and over $1.4 million was spent in New Haven last weekend on tickets alone. At larger schools with better teams and fewer scruples the business is even bigger. For a nationally ranked team, a successful season can mean a bowl game and more television appearances, both of which mean big money.

EVERYTHING in sport revolves around money, and all the major ones have pressing problems, but in none as much as football. Professional hockey and basketball are teetering on the brink of fiscal collapse and increasingly poor play is diminishing fan interest. Baseball is sounder for a variety of reasons. It demands more skill than physical force, the season is much longer, the players have the strongest collective bargaining agreement in sports, the teams mercifully have avoided all but the barest of playoff series, and the sport somehow does not lend itself to betting.

Gambling and football, on the other hand, are Siamese twins. Most newspapers in the country publish predictions and the latest betting line. Anyone who doesn't believe that games have been fixed is a fool. This year millions of dollars will be bet on the Super Bowl and major college bowl games; whenever there is that kind of money at stake people are going to be tempted to protect their investment. Last year two former Boston College basketball players were sent to jail for fixing games. If gamblers could buy a couple of nobodies on an insignificant team, they could do it on a game that really meant something. It is possible, for instance, that Super Bowl III was fixed to give the pro football merger credibility, though the allegations will never be proven.

Major college football players are no strangers to being bought. No-show summer jobs and free "demonstration" automobiles are given to every potential All American, and perks abound for all. In the Ivy League, Coach Joe Restic takes care of his own and helps players find jobs when they graduate.

It may seem like callousness and overreaction to link the tragedy at The Game to betting a couple of bucks on the Raiders-Jets game. But both come from a distortion of what the game is supposed to be, an athletic contest between equals. That ideal is so far lost that speeches about sportsmanship and the spirit of competition are universally scoffed. They are cliches, but only because the message isn't getting through.

The exploitation of players by owners and coaches, and fans insance vicarious identification with the game both stem from forgetting the meaning of athletics. The problems in professional sports are deep-seated; while small changes are coming about, the fundamental problems will remain until fans stop watching the games. Which they aren't going to do. Spectating is fun but at Saturday's tragedy unfortunately shows it must be kept in perspective.

High schools and colleges can help eliminate some of the negative implications of the games. Stop holding pep rallies which incite the fans to kill that Saturday's foe. Field hockey, volleyball and baseball teams don't seem to have any trouble getting psyched for their games without dancing in a gymnasium full of bunners and screaming fans. Stop charging so much for tickets and soaking the television networks for all they are worth. Using the excuse that football is expensive and has to pay for itself and because it is profitable and must support the rest of the athletic program is only one more example of games being played for the wrong reasons.

But finally the burden rests with us, the fans. Obviously watching sports is fun, but we have to control the impact it has on our live. This is not to say do away with competition, but recognize it for what it is--a contest of skill and excellence between groups of highly trained athletes doing something we can't. Admire the players ability on both sides. Cheering favorite players and rooting for the home team is fine, but doing it at the expense of the opponent only hurts both. All that last Saturday's game means is that this year Harvard had a better football team than yale. We can pride in that but tearing up the field implies that we want to prove something more. Everyone condemns the obscenity-hurling drunk who pours beer on the players as they run down the runway at Sullivan Stadium. He's on the fringe, he's out of control, but his attitudes aren't that unique. And before the goalposts fell on Saturday, that attitude sold a lot of "Yale Sucks" bats.