Evening star., 1931-06-20

Blaming Sports Writers.
I'm the latest brochure, entitle(i Cur
rent Developments in American
College Sport" brought outAby the
Carnegie Foundation for the Ad-
vancement Of Teaching. it Is charged
that the sports pages are partly raspon-
sible for the overemphasis and SOME OF
the other evils which menace inta-col-
leRiate foot, ball. There Is nothing Spar-
ticularly- new In the arraignmept.
When the Association OF AmerAcan
College Professors FIRST started the icry
that fntercollegia teafoot ball was highly
overempl1asized the defense immediate
! ly was that the newspapers did 1t. The
newspapers did it because few colleAas
in the country are without public rte-
lationS counsel and q press bufeafu.
pleading for notice for their foot ball
team. Also every old grad who caFrAA s
red blood IN his veins and flask on hin;
hip to the big game feels that his coll
lege team could not be emphasized
enough.
The colleges themselves pleaded forI
the oyeremphaSis. and still are pleading
for it, some less vociferously than others
But some Of them are quite as anxious
for ballyhoo as the promoter Of any
professional team.
In a gentle way the authors Of the
foundations latest brochure, DR.. How
ard J. Savage, John T.. McGovern and
Harold Bentley indicate the attatude
which should be taken by the sports
pages toward intercollegiate sport. They
show how there might be less emphasis
In the same amount of space, but just
who would be interested in the kind
Of sports pages Of the sort indicated
is hard to say. -
The authors Of the brochure criticize
perhaps tllstly-the styles of various
sports writer's. Particularly they deplore
the use Of such terms as Fighting
Irish" and Roaring Tigers"
Nicknames Are Common.
A LII of the college foot ball teams,
n with the possible exception of Har-
ward, have accepted nicknameS.
l do not believe that these nicknames
sports writer's. On the contrary, ] be-
lieve that nearly all of them were in
vented by the colleges. At least they
have been acknowledged by the colleges
themselves. =,
Yale foot ball players, of course, are
bulldogs. They dosTIot resent this ap-
pellation. On the contrary, they ac-
knowledge it with the song that Is
heard in the Bowl every year, the bur-
den of which Is Bulldog, Bulldog,
Bow, Wow, Wow"
At Princeton, which is the lair of
the Tiger, as We read every November,
they have the Tiger Inn, which Is one
Of the most celebrated campus clubs.
Also there Is song which has the
line, when you heard the Tiger roar"
There are the Nittany Lions IN the
hills Of PennSyIvafliA and the plain
Lions Of Morningside' Heights. There
are the laundering Swedes of Mime
sofa. AS to this nom de g,ierre I do
not know whether or not it was wished
on the MinneSotafns, but ]. never heard
OF them resenting 1t.
In the South we read Of "the Golden
Tornado" which has not blown with.
any great velocity recently. Then
there Is the Crimson Tide" which
swept over far-hung gridirons. In the
Middle West we have the Fighting
Irish," which. of recent years has been
something Of q misnomer-not, Of
course, Is TO the tighting part, but as
to the Celticism Of the organizations
sent out. by Notre Dame.
Even the Army and Navy teams
break out as the Cadets and the Mid
dies and there has been no general or
der from either branch of the service
deplortng this usage.
Applied i to Base BAIL.
T HOPE that the urge TO abolish
i nicknaunes does not enter into pro-
fessional sport. otherwise the sports
pages will Be- rather duh reading.
Judge lands should fight any ten
denotes I'm this direction to the last
ditch. Otherwise we should be read
"Ths New York American Base Ball
Club beat the Boston American Club
yesterday by the. score OF 10 to o. The
most exciting occurrence of the game
was when George Herman Ruth, q
player who strikes the ball from the
left, struck 1t with such vehemence that
1t went outside Of the incloSure where
the game was taking place. The in
closure is known aS the New York
Stdium. .
After performing this feaE Mr. Ruth
trotted In leisurely fashion around the
paths until he reached q point called