The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-08-10
GRIFFITH, BIG 10 COMMISSIONER
 GIVES HIS VIEWS

Chicago, Aug. 10-There will be plenty of college football on the home front this fall despite pall- bearers who rave been carrying the game around in a coffin. looking for some place to bury a body that is very much alive and kicking.
 This opinion was expressed today by Major John L. Griffith, com missioner Of athletics for the Vest ern conference, who refused to be- come alarmed over recently publish ed reports that 189 colleges have given up football for the duration
 Major Griffith estimated that more than 30 percent of the colleges which played football in 194l will have teams operating this fall many of them with stronger squads as the result of enrolment of ser vice men with gridiron experience He based his estimate on figures that indicate 1000 colleges senior and junior institutions had teams in 194l.
 "As soon as the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, we knew that college football would operate under a handicap for the duration," Major Griffith recalled, but we were just as sure that 1t would survive in a majority of schools. We were just as sure that some schools would have to abandon the port.
 Analysis
 teTN1a v,,n Is at ,yiv,n ~,, iv, kHDca schools where football has always been popular sport, where player power was always available and particularly where the game had the support of the college admin ttration. It has been dropped, in many instances, by schools who might well have been induced to abandon the sport in peacetimes Others of course, dropped football because they saw no way to con- tinue.
 Tt has been pointed out in some cases," Major Griffith continued, that schools which have aban- doned football have done so to in tensify intramural activities with the purpose of providing physical fit- ness opportunities for more stu. dents That may be a very valid reason, but the fact remains that schools which are continuing with fotoball have also expanded their lntIamural srorts, and should have more enthusiastic on-campus sports with the stimaplus of intercollegiate competition.
 Major Griffith said the only valid excuse for football in wartime lies in its training values. He pointed to indisputable evidence that the rough-and-tumble gridiron sport gives prospective members of the armed forces a basic braining-phy- sically and emotionally-found in no other sport or exercise. The game too, is made available to men in the armed forces for the same basic training reasons, he said.
 Morale Builder
 There are by-products, too of this physical training through foot ball which are valuable to coun- try at war;" Major Griffith added Other spectator sports have proved a real stimulus to morale on the home front and have provided en- tertaining reading and discussion for men on the battlefronts. Foot ball, which filled this role last fall will do the same job in 1943.
 Football Is still very much alive and kicking. It's doing real war job. It will survive despite the Ssllbearers who have been try ing to arrange its funeral. It's health is being watched by the best doctors in the world - the America npublic which will insist the game continue, school administrators who are SUD- porting the game more than ever because of itstraining
 because of Its training values, and leaders of military and naval forces who chorus. Send us more of those football players"