The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1929-10-24
/ ALKING
IT OVER
WITH JOE WILLIAMS

New York, Oct. "a.
A LII right, now that the Carnegie
N Foundation has blown the
whistle and the police have arrived,
what about It? Is 1t true that col
lege athletics are a sitting menace
to the we'll stuffed academic skull
of the nation? I mean TO ask has
the turn Of sports reached such a
stage that in order TO insure educa-
tional security football as it is cur
rentiy practiced must be booted into
the ash can?
Before proceeding further with this dis
sertation ] wish TO confess that am
scarcely qualified to present an opinion OF
ssiue and that succeeding comments rep
resent nothing more than random refiee-
tIons
In the beginning II must be admitted
that the gentlemen who functioned for
the Foundation in completing the inquiry
certainly pulled up in front Of the post
onice with wagon load of imposing data
Using 3s3 pages to tell It. they proceed TO
tell the world that only a handful Of
colleges in the land are free from the
sinister faint Of professionalism in one
form or another.
THIS faint takes the general
Il form of recruiting desirable
athletic material and substituting
said material by means Of salaried
Jobs around the campus. In a great
majority OF cases these jobs are
lowly in character. such as waiting
on table and assisting in the upkeep
of the grounds and the salary Is
commensurate to the labors en-
tailed. These monetary rewards are
handed out only to the star athlete,
and thus he is enabled to keep him
self in spending money most Of the
time while the pale-faced aspirant
to a Phi Beta Key must skimp 1t
along as best he can.
As the foundation report implies. this
IL psIpably unfair and even the fact that
In the big weekend spectacles the athlete
is the chief magnet in filling the stadium
with thousands Of customers at 81 per
head does not seem to square the econo-
mics Of the matter. OF course ] am aware
that in some instances the athlete is more
commercial than in others and that there
have even been times when he has been
known to accept money for doing chores
around the premises which he did not do
at all.
While nv list of acquaintance does not
include a great number of all-American
football players who shined shoes to get
through college, I do recall being waited
Tot uar rd fack1e
wears ago at a time when I lunched with
william Bingham the athletic director.
and Coach Horween and his assistants.
n
+ MENTION this by way OF show
Il ing that this phase of college
athletics is not wholly a myth. In
cidentally, a compilation of the
number of athletes who are actually
working their way through college
would have made an interesting adj
dition to the Foundations report,
even if 1t did add nothing to the
bleakneSS of the sweeping indict-
ment.
In one important respect. the report Is
probably quite disappointing to the alarm
list element because a statistical study Of
1857 students showed that the young man
who went In for Athletics was a definitely
better student than the young man who
didn't.
have heard 1t said on supposedly
authoritative grounds that theoretically at
least. the main reason young men go to
college is to study and learn. Well. you
have the Foundations word for it that the
athlete studies and learns. and that he
does better lob of 1t than the non
athlete.
THIS would seem to indicate that
Il the athlete is at least mildly
interested in an education, and the
possible fact that he was recruited
ard subsidized by "the FaginS of
American sport" has not automati-
cally made pool room bum of him
However. even the fact that the
athlete manages to do right well by
his studies does not completely sat
isfy the Foundation boys.