The sun., 1895-03-22
Harvard and Football.

There Is sound OF signing by the banks
| OF the Charles and young men strain their
voices into strong and objurgatory phrases.
| The Harvard faculty, which for some time
has watched intercollegiate football with a
malevolent eye, has passed sentence upon
that diversion in SO far as Harvard is con-
| cerned. About month ago this same
austere Sanhedrim contented itself with
recommending the Athletic Committee to
put stop to all intercollegiate contests"
| The Athletic Committee is so called, it may
be necessary to explain, because it is not al
lowed to supervise the athletic sports Of
the undergraduates. The recommendation
made by the faculty showed that In re-
ply to that recommendation the members Of
the committee said that they had decided
some time before that Harvard must
unless the character Of the game
was radically improved" and that
they had called on the graduate
| advisers-it sometimes seems as il there
were more advice than football at Cam
bridge-to come forward with counsel as to
the best means Of making the game more
sportsmanlike and less productive of Grip
pies. The graduate advisers thought and
consulted and reported They recommended
that all games be played on the home
grounds of the competitors, that the tickets
be sold to graduates and undergraduates
only, and that "all efforts on the part Of
the press to give undue publicity to the
game throughout the season be discour
aged" In view of the already arduous
duties of the graduate advisers it seems
like overwork to set them at discouraging
the press; but to the report.
Training was to be shortened, summer
practice abandoned, and practice approached
by degrees. a number of changes in the rules
were proposed, changes calculated to dimin-
ish the number of accidents. An additional
umpire, or an increase in the powers OF the
umpire, was advised. The Athletic Com
mittee approved these recommendations of
the graduate advisers, and in reporting
them to the faculty thus acidulously con-
fessed the snub given by the more august
concatenation Of the arts and sciences:
being specially charged by tho President and fel-
lows with the supervision of athletics they regret
that opportunity was given them to make this
statement OF their views and action before the faculty
recommended radical . change tho abolition
OF an intercollegiate sport OF twenty years standing
and OF undeniaby great advantages, moral well
physical.
The committee propose to consider additional
OF reform. and would DO pleased receive
any suggestions from the faculty to confer with
committee OF the faculty upon any OF the points
toned in this communication and In particular upon
matters affecting the relations of the football players
to their college duties. They have illusions q to
the evils OF intercollegiate football in its present
dition but they reluctant believe that Yale
Harvard teams cannot compete with each other in the
spirit OF gentlemen that It ID impossible bring
the sport into a proper relation with the main pur.
poses of college life"
The correspondence between the Faculty
of Arts and Sciences and what may be called
the Faculty of Athletics seems to have
ceased with this communication. The Fac
ulty of Athletics was sad and mad, like
Master FRANCOIS WILLOW as described by
his glad, bad brother, SwINBURNE. The
faculty was thoughtful, as such bodies
often are. For about three weeks it waited
and brooded. The approach OF spring and
dry fields brought matters to a crisis. Long
ago a poet of the Harvard AdUOc1tc-or
wns it the Crimson felt the vernal sap
shooting through his convolutions, and he
girded himself with the earliest cowslips
this dripping dithyramb:
"Iheard tho woodpecker pecking,
The buebrd tendcriy sing;
Iarose. and turned. out OF tho window,
patent. back action handspring"
These lines seem to describe exactly the
course of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
March 10 it issued this short but firm
memorandum or decree:
THE faculty having received and considered q COM
munlcatlon from the committee on the regulation OF
athletic sports, dated Feb 2o. 1898. remain OF the
opinion that no student should be permitted to take
part In intercollegiate football contests"
Hence universal woe in the college and a
goodly amount of anger. And no wonder.
Harvard has had hard luck at football, but
she put up a rattling eleven last year, and
had good hopes for next fall. And II the
faculty persists in the error of its ways she
will be compelled to sulk ingloriously, while
Yale and Princeton and Pennsylvania are
accumulatinR glory. For the game will 20
on at the other colleges, although the
pionocephalc paranoiacs, who hate foot
ball, are already cheeping as IL the
game were dead or going to die at
the command of number OF gentle
men, few of whom were never young
and most OF whom are perhaps DER
young to know what they are doing. And
leave out Of consideration their discourtesy
To the Athletic Committee, but their vote
virtually says to the youths Of Harvard and
of every college with whom Harvard has
played football, you are not gentlemen and
you can't DO trusted to play like gentlemen"
And II this vote is not rescinded, what is to
become of all the youthful passion and ex-
uberance which have found vent in footballt
1t will make itself heard and felt, we fear,
in the unseemly riotous fashion of the
collegians of twenty-five years ago. The
Police Department and the Fire Department
OF Cambridge may be reminded of old times.
and the fat policemen in the Boston theatres
will get some exercise.
Seriously, tho Harvard faculty seems to
have resolved that Harvard should not take
part In intercollegiate football games, with
n =.