The record-union., 1893-11-23
COLLEGE ATHLETICS.


President Francis A. Walker is dis
posed to look with disfavor upon the
present outcry against college athletics.
He claims that as matter of fact they
are producing better set of men physi-
caly, and such bodily training is, there
fore, thing to be conserved. Time was
when the college leader was the youth
with a towering forehead, his cheeks pale,
his digestion bad, his hair brushed care
fully backward; a man self-consciously
introspective, and with yearnings and
aspirations that were prompted oftener
by dyspepsia than by intellectual ambi-
ton.
But now the idea has fast hold of the
college man that he must conserve and
cultivate bodily strength and vigor if he
would maintain mental power to decent
age. The body is no longer looked upon
as a mere shell for the soul, freedom from
which is to be promoted. That is to say,
college men are more concerned to-day
with the question how to live, than with
the problem how to die.
President Walker, who is a man of
1 broad observation and by no means a
corseted philosopher or cold elassicist,
insists that the advance in bodily devel-
opment and vitality among our young
men is everywhere discernible, and that
the improvement made in the physique
of students is apparent to the most care
less observer. But while he thus favors
continuation of bodily training, and de-
clines 10 join the school that would abol-
ish college athletics and substitute those
mildly physical exercises which are
neither very violent nor very inspiring to
the blood, he draws line beyond which
collegiate bodily training should not go.
We confess that it is not very satisfactor-
lily laid down. 1t lacks comprehensive
ness. All the President has to say on
that point is thus summed up in the Lit
erarg Digest:
Still there is real danger to be guarded
against especially among the younger and
less eA peTl6QCeQ competitors. VI those DlyS-
lcal contests which result merely in the con.
sumption at the time of current physical
force, which would or might otherwise be de-
voted TO study, we cannot dispose confidently
or summar1ly. There are hosts OF young men
competing for honors in athletics to the neg
lect OF study, whose circumstances and means
and views and plans of life are such that they
cannot afford 10 treat their educational priv
tlegeS in this way.
That is to say. the distinguished collie
far as they interfere with the proper at
tention Of the student to his studies. To
us it seems that there is still another and
very much sharper line to be drawn,
namely, that which will separate undue
from beneficial exertion. It is in the
special training for abnormal exertion
that the objection to college athletics re-
sides. Bodily training, body building
that develops, strengthens and energies
the whole man, and with even balance
and distribution, no one will find fault
with.
The extraordinary training or exercise
that develops and builds up one part at
the expense of another; that athletic de-
votion which supposedly prepares one
for fearful and dangerous trial of en-
durance and strength, is the exercise to
which objection is most to be made. al
ways conceding that any devotion to
physical development at the total ex-
pense of the Students education is as
much to be deplored as that devotion to
study the total cost of which is char ged
up to the body.