Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1900-10-09
PURE ATHLETICS
COLLEGE PROFESSOR ON TRAIL
OF PROFESSIONALISM.
BIG GATE MONEY Is A MENACE.
Tends to Extravaganza and Undue
Exaltation of Athletic
Supremacy.

New York, October 9.-At a conference
representing the faculty committees on
athletics of the principal American uni
versities, which was held at Brown Uni
versity, Providence. February Is, 1899. a
subcommittee, composed of Professors
Wilfred Harold Munro of Brown Univer-
sity: Benjamin Ide Wheeler of the Uni
versity OF California;; James -Furman
Kemp of Columbia university: Louis
Munro Dennis of Cornell university; Ira
Nelson Hollis of Harvard university:
George Stuart Patterson of the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, and Henry Bur-
chard Fine of Princeton university, was
appointed to investigate the entire mat
ter of intercollegiate competitions in all
its phases and to report upon the same.
The report which has just been made
public states that at present athletic
sports occupy a dispr oportionate amount
OF attention in many of our universities.
colleges and schools. and the main end
Of all rules must be to prevent outdoor
sports and physical exercises from in
terfering with the mental and moral at
tainlnents. 1t seems far better TO mend
abuses by guidance and regulation than
to end them by the abolition of the
sports. It is obvious that the colleges
and universities should have require
ments as to their scholarship of their
teams. Every member should be in good
standing. No student should be permit
ted TO make athletics the principal occu-
patton of his college life. Only students
who are genuine members of a univer-
sity should be permitted to appear in
public exhibitions and gate money con-
alterations should be wholly eliminated
from the games.
The committee considers that there is
no reason why college teams or even
parts of college teams should be assem-
blel for practice during the summers.
When they receive a money benefit by
having even their expenses paid the
practice trenches dangerously near pro-
feSsionalism. 1t would be better if all
universities and colleges could be brought
to give up even the preparatory practice
two weeks before the term opens. An
other practice which the committee con-
siders Objectionable is the interference
with boys who have developed a taste for
athletics in the preparatory schools. In
many cases correspondence is opened by
graduate committees in search of ath-
letic material, or emissaries are sent out
and influence thrown aroun school boys
to induce them to enter certain institu-
tions. Sometimee even financial aid is
promised toward an education. Some of
our universities are reported to have a
regular system of looking up likely ath-
letes among the schools.
The committee believes that the large
sums of money taken in at many foot
ball games form a constant temptation
to extravaganza and to the illicit use of
money and recommends that gate money
mould be reduced to a minimum by
agreement of all universities.
A set of rules is submitted and recon-
mended for adoption. Many Of these are
already in force at the principal univer-
stiles, but as the committee remarks:
'Their enforcement is not all that can be
wished by the friends of amateur ath-
]etics." Chief among them is the strin-
gent amateur rule now in force at Column
Lia and the rule which forbids a special
student from taking part in any compe-
tition until he has been a year at the mi
versity. The latter rule has been made
even more stringent by a clause which
requires that he shall take a course
equivalent to that prescribed for candi-
dates for a degree in the department of
which he is a member