Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1916-03-01
Bv FRANK G. MENKE.)

A study of the rules governing anna
teurism in athletics convinces US that
there are so few simon-pure golfers
and football players in the United
States today that they can be count
ed almost on one hand.
Jerry Travers and Francis Ouimet,
the golfng stars, are regarded as anna
teurs. They are not amateurs; they
are professionals, if we interpret the
rules correctly. And in the profess
sional class belong at least five hun
dred other golfers who are under the
delusion that they are amateurs.
Eddie Mahan, the great Harvard
football STAR and the men who will be
the Crimson's pitching mainstay in the
spring, is in the professional class, &C
cording to the rules. So are his team
mates. So are all the players on the
Yale, Princeton, Syracuse, Amherst,
Trinity, Dartmouth, Michigan, Michi-
gan Aggies, Colgate, Carlisle, Williams,
Tufts, Wesleyan and score of other
teams.
Article 10 of the constitution of the
Amateur Athletic union, the governing
body in amateur athletic affairs in the
United States, says, in part:
"An athlete becomes a professional
If he enters a competition open to a
professional, or knowingly completes
against a professional"
Jerry Travers, Francis Ouimet and
hundreds of other supposedly amateur
golfers have competed in open tourna-
ments-have played against profess
SIGNALS and have done so knowingly.
By this act they violated the laws of
the A. A. u. and became professionals
In every sense of the word.
Later, when those men-Travers,
Ouimet ct al.-who had become faint
Hd by playing in open tournaments,
played against real amateurs they
tainted every one of those amateurs
with professionalism. The rules of the
A. A. u. are specific on this point, and
IAN be construed to mean that if
Fravers, after competing against a
professional, played in a tournament
against 500 amateurs, every one of
those amateurs would become profess
SIGNALS by their very action in playing
against Travers.
There is no alibi for those who
played against Travers, Ouimet, ct al
after they became tainted through
playing in an open tournament. Igno-
rance of the law excuses no one. The
amateur law reads plainly, and it was
up to those men who wanted to pre-
serve their amateur status to make
sure that they were not playing
against professionals.
And now as to football:
George Brickley was signed to play
for Connie Mack's Athletics last
spring. The fact was heralded through
out the country. BricIley played two
or three games with the Athletics dur
| ing the summer and was paid for his
services, in keeping with the contract
he signed when Mack corralled him.
Brickley entered Trinity college last
September and played halfback on the
eleven He was in every sense pro-
fessional, and all his teammates be-
came professionals through their ac-
ton in playing with him.
Here is the A. A. U. rule to back
UP this statement:
"a single professional player in a
team makes that team professional"
Brickley and the professional Trim
fly team played seven games during
the 1915 season. Every team that Trim
fly played became professional through
its action in playing against a team
that had become professional through
the fact that it knowingly played
Brickley, the professional baseball
player.
Norwich, Brown, Bates, Amherst,
Williams, Tufts and Wesleyan were
the teams that played against Trinity,
and each became tainted with profess
sionalism by its action in competing
with the professional Trinity team.
These teams, in turn, tainted all those
they played against later.
Brown played Trinity, got itself in
| the professional class and then passed
it along by playing Yale and Harvard
| These teams tainted Princeton. SYRIA
cuse played Brown and automatically
got into the professional class, and