Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-10-08

And If this be treason you can take
away my block letter"
The Revolt of Youth.
A few years ago, George Owen OF
Harvard, who played great foot ball
there, wrote just this for magazine.
He called intercollegiate foot ball,
which has the limelight at this season
of the year and which is responsible
for millions of words of incoherence,
drudgery of the worst sort.
OF course, young Mr.. Owen was
f1ayed in the prints for this. But the
wiser generation listened and thought
the thing over. Today any number of
athletic directors, graduate managers
and coaches will tell you that this
spirit Of revolt has spread. OF course,
these gentlemen, whose lucrative and
pleasant positions depend upon the
keeping up of the old spirit" are
whittier they are drifting. In the mean
time the wise generation becomes more
knowing and more cynical In regard
to these overemphasized college activi-
ties.
I heard one coach admit: THE fight
talks do not get over very big any more.
I notice this in the dressing rooms be-
tween the halves The sophomores will
listen with some of the old eagerness.
The juniors will. pretend. But the
seniors will give you look which you
will not like
They seem to be saying with their
eyes, And now are you going to dish
out some more Of that old blah? Well,
then, make it snappy and give us a
rest till 1t Is time to go out there again
and get pounded / certainly do not
like the looks that those seniors give me.
The time is coming when even the
freshman teams will not pay the slight
est attention to the pep talks"
All of which maintain is an indica-
ton Of the sane perspective and the re-
lentless wisdom Of the younger genera
ton.
The "MatcriaI' Hits Back.
A LSO, there Is much deploring con-
IA corning the, lack of loyalty to the
foot ball coach, and this seems TO
be increasing. When you come to think
of it why should there be any particu-
larly intense loyalty to the average
coach. am thinking Of the character
istic attitude of the coach toward his
material" and 1t is merely material
to him.
At the start of the season the aver
age coach will tell the expert that his
material has been hard hit by gradua-
tions. When a possible all-America
player Is taken away from the coach
In the natural course of things through
graduation, he feels that it must be done
chiefly to annoy him.
Then the coach will say that his ma
terial-what is left-is dumb and ter
rible. The younger material does not
take this as good naturedly as the ma
terial of former days. Half of the time,
when the coach is telling the expert
that his material is awful, he knows in
his heart that it is good. But he does
not say So
The material must be poor, or at the
best indifferent, for the purposes Of the
average coach. Then, when 1t becomes
a team that wins all or nearly all Of
its games the coach takes bow for
making a great foot ball team out Of a
SQUAD of dumbbells and incompetents.
Ali coaches do not do this, but most
of them have this attitude in greater
or lesser degrees.
With the spread of the revolt Of youth
some day a foot ball squad will walk
out on the coach as the Carlisle Indians
walked out on Glenn Warner. They
said that they played foot ball for fun,
and that If the coach was going to
make work out Of it they would not play.
That Indian notion of the motives for
foot ball seems to be spreading.