Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-03-18
DAVE HARRIS.
Some Outlines Of Sport.

Some Outlines of Sport.
~ ROBABLY the United States
- spends a billion dollars a year
for sports. This is a formidable
figure and there are no avail
able statistics. You can do a little
estimating for yourselves. Take the
golfers to start. 4fiere Sfe about 5000
600 of them in the United States, ac-
cording to estimates that are fairly
authoritative.
When you count the cost of golf in
dollars you readily can see that 1t
would reach startling amount per
year. OF course there are golfers and
golfers, from the wealthy club member
to the public links player with his few
worn clubs. But when you start to
strike an average you will come to
the conclusion that golf costs the in
dividual player close to 800 a year.
Probably the next most expensive
sport is intercollegiate foot ball. The
attendance at college foot ball games
for the brief period of eight days a
year is almost as great as the attend
ance at professional base ball games,
which are played on an average of 154
days a year.
In some of the greater universities
the receipts for foot ball in its season
run close to 100000. 1t is explained
that this sum is expended for the up
keep of other sports and athletic ac-
tivitieS connected with the university.
1t can be seen that college sport comes
very high indeed.
This makes the idea of DR.. Nicholas
Murray Butler, president of Columbia
University, seem highly impractical.
His theory was that the alumni of the
university should produce the money for
the maintenance of foot ball so that
the detail of the gate receipts might
be done away with, DR.. Buffers theory
apparently being that the vastness OF
foot balls gate receipts was responsible
for overemphasis and all the evils
charged against the game.
Big Bite for Alumni.
DUT it would be something Of tax
- on the alumni of the wealthiest
university in the world to dig up
a million or so a year to support the
though intercollegiate and collegiate
sports would have TO remain self-sup-
porting while their maintenance runs
that high.
Expanding DR.. Buffers idea to take
in the Nation, I am wondering what
the Secretary of the Treasury would
say to a plan to do away with gate
receipts generally and have the United
States finance all of its own sports
hazard way, would run to about a
billion a year. Under Government
supervision it probably would run
higher. All enterprises under Govern
ment supervision seem to run higher.
The matter of improving the breed
of the thoroughbred is another highly
expensive sport. Just how many mil
lions go into this sport alone would be
hazardous to attempt to compute. One
years says that all who follow it seri-
ously go broke. 1t burns up vast
tonnage of oats and hay and bales of
bills every year. There never was
horseman who went into that game
for profit who took anything out of it.
In spite of the sums that are spent
for sports do not think that we are
an extravagant nation in that regard.
Perhaps we spend more than our pro
rata for sport, as compared to other
countries, but it probably Is not so
much more when the general scale of
living is considered.
Our sports expenditure might be
offered as a refutation of the charge
that we are dour and serious money
chasing people. On the contrary, we
are spendthrifts for sports, or what we
consider sport.
The Million Dollar Gates.
WHILE the major part of Americas
w annual million dollar sport bill
can be charged to persons who
are active participants in sport, much
of it is spent by persons whose interest
is entirely vicarious. The majority of
the spectators at base ball and foot
ball games are not base ball players
or foot ball players.
The biggest gate" receipts for
sports anywhere in the world was at
100000 was taken in for the heavy
weight championship prizeflght be-
tween Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey.
OF that crowd very few were boxers
or persons who knew straight left
from a right uppercut.
This will invite the criticism that
Americans really are not sportsmen or