UNIVERSITY OF (Big Ten)

 

College of Letters and Science
. Office of the Dean 26 July 1940

Mire John Blackstone
Johnson County
Kansas
My dear Mre Blackstone:
This is to inform you that upon the nomination of
Assemblyman Julius Spearbraker
you will be exempt from the payment of the non-resident tuition
fee for the academic year 1940841, provided, of course, that your

scholarship is of such quality as to entitle you to registration
in the University.

Yours very truly,

: (Signed) O. Ce Spellbinder

Chairman, Committee on Legis. Scholarships
UNIVERSITY OF

 

» California

Board of Athletic Gontrol June 22, 1941

Mr. John Doe,
Osborn County,
Kansase

Dear Mre Doe:

I am sorry too delay answering your letter of sometime ago but
have been out of town for over ® month.

Your son has an enviable record in athletics and we at
are extremely interested in having him attend our school.

We have a few Alumni Scholarships that we give out to basketball
prospectse These Scholarships are submitted too the school by

& group of wealthy alumni. They include a boys room, board,
lautidry, tuition, fees, bookse All it costs the boy to attend

is for his spending money and clothes. If your son accepts one
of these scholarships he does not have too wait tables or do any
other work around the campuse This alumni board feels that if
the boy does a good job in this studies and basketball that is
about @ll he has time fore The alumni board wants the athlete
too fulfill three requirements in order too maintain this scholare
ship: = 1) Satisfy the Dean of Discipline, 2) Satisfy the Dean of
Studies, 3) Do a good job athletically. By the later I mean that
he has to be of some help to the squad.

I wish that you would heve your son fill out the enclosed applica~
tion blank and also send in a copy of his officiel transcript of
record, which has to go from one registrar to anothere I would
like to have the above information sent as soon as possible as

the time is drawing nearer to registration, which takes place on
the 16th of August to the 20th of Auguste

Thanking you kindly for your cooperation and with best wishes to
you and your son, I am

Sincerely,

(Signed) Richard Roe.

 
September 30, 1941

Dre Forrest Ce Allen
University of Kansas
Lawrence, Kansas

Dear Dre allen:
I am writing you about a boy who is enrolled here at the University.

He came in yesterday and told us that he had enrolled at

last year end has played in several freshman gamese That, of course,
makes him ineligible to play in our conference. We have a ruling
here in our: conference that if a boy has matriculated in any other
institution and has participated in one game he is ineligible to
participate in a Conference school.

I have followed this boy with a great deal of interest and picked
him up in an NYA camp in Tennessee. He is six feet, five inches
tall and weighs 188 pounds stripped. He comes from a family that is
very poor and he has no means of attending school whatever. Since
we have scholarships here in basketball we thopghb enough of his
ability to offer him a freshman scholarship. He has unusual ability
end I felt he would make us an outstanding center. He has played a
lot of ball and he is a boy of unusually fine habits. He passed our
entrance examinations here in good shape and I do not believe that
he would ever give you any trouble in regard to his studies.

Is there any way that you could use him at al11# Iam interested in
sending him to you as he requested me to write this letter and I also
feel that I would like to send you someone sometime that might do you
some goode Naturally, if this boy were eligible to play here I would
have kept hime I would appreciate hearing from you as he would be
interested in enrolling there the second semester. I understand

your register is closed for the first semester. -

Sincerely yours,

Basketball ‘Coache
cecum ae emma genteel eae na

COPY
September 30, 1941

Dr. Forrest C. Allen

Director of Physical gducation
University of Kansas

Lawrence, Kansas

Dear Dr. Allen,
I ex writing you about a boy who is enrolled here at the University.

He came in yesterday and told us that he head enrolled at TePole
last year &nd that he has played in several freshmen games. That,
of course, makes him ineligible to play in our conference. We have
a ruling here in our conference that if a boy has matrioulated in
any other institution and has participated in one game he is ineli-
gible to participate in a Southeastern Conference school.

I have followed this boy with a great deal of interest and picked
him up in an N.Y.A. camp in Tennessee. He is six feet, five inches
tall and weighs 188 pounds, stripped. He comes from a family

that is very poor and he has no means of attenting school whatever.
Since we have scholarships here in basketball we thought enough

of his ability to offer him a freshman scholarship. He has unusual
ability and I felt he would make us an outstanding center, He has
played a lot of ball and he is « boy of unusually fine habits. He
passed our entrance examinations here in good shape and I do not
believe that he would ever give you any trouble in regard te his —
studies. .

Is there any way that you could use him at all? I am intewested in
sending him to you as he requested me to write this letter and I
also feel that I would like to send you someone sometime that might
do you some good. Naturally, if this boy were eligible to play
here I would have kept him. I would appreciate hearing from you

as he would be interested in enrolling there the second semester. I

understand your register has closed for the first semester.

Sincerely yours,
(copy)

October 2, 1941

Mr.
Basketball Coach —
University of

Dear Coach,

Thank you very much for sending me your letter regarding
the good basketball player who is {nelligivle to play in
your Conference,

I appreciate your kindness in writing, but since we have

out of state tuition, which is treble that of our local
tuition, there is no way that we have of handling such a
young mane We do not even have scholarships, nor dow have
luerative jobs that would enable him to make more than $20.00
a month.

fhe authorities here figure that that is all any boy can work
and still carry a full load of academic subjects.

I am sorry that this young man became ineligible for you by
playing one year at college.

Again thanking you and wishing you every success, I am

Very sincerely yours,

Director of Physical. Education and Recreation
FCA/pg Varsity Basketball Coach
(copy) October 4, 1941

Lt. Col. W.H. Browne, QMUC
110th QM Regiment

Camp Robinson, Arkansas
A.P.0. 35

Dear Brownie,

Your very lengthy epistle addressed to Frederick Ware, a carbon

copy of which has been sent to me, is hereby acknowledged. I also
enjoyed the postscrip, "A copy has been sent to the Doctor in his lair
at K.U." Iwas greatly interested in your activities and enjoyed the
description of your environment in Mansfield, La., which you have
given Fred Ware, our mutual friend. However, I feel that I should come
to the point and reply to your real reason for writing the message to
Fred.

i have tried to analyse carefully your arguments that you present

in your letter to Pred. First, I might say to you that I have spoken.
on two occasions to football men wherein the newspapers have seen fit
te give perhaps undue publicity. Last fall I spoke to the all-star
Kansas City, Kansas, high school football men where Rotary was their
host. This fail I spoke before the William Jewell College football
team and three hundred students at a “football kick-off" dinner rally.
I spoke to these boys directly and all the remarks that were made were.
prompted by a desire to present the true picture of “big time" football
as it is now being conducted in a great many of our American colleges,

I coached football, Brownie, perhaps before you played it, and I
believe I know the strong and the weak points of the game as I have
officiated and followed it closely ever since. The game as a morale
builder and as a builder of men has no equal. Cetainly I am not ex-
cepting basketball in this inclusion, But many sports at one time can
be fine, and then they can become so distorted that they can be utterly
ruined and useless instead of being a morale builder they can become

@ morale destroyer.

In my mind's eye I ran over a great mummber of former coaches and
present coaches, and have asked this question: Are these coaches' sons
playing football? I thought of Chet Brewer, who has a son at the Unive
ersity of Missouri, Henry Schulte, Bernie Bierman, Dana Bible, Major
Jones, Harold Browne, "Phog" Allen, Bill Hargiss, and a great host of
others. Now, I realize that neither your son nor Dana Bible's son are
old enough to be in a university, but I will watch with a great deal
of interest and see how many sons of coaches will play football in
college.

 
ad

The warp and woof of the average football player at the present time

is too rough end tough for the sons of coaches to compete against. Per-
haps I should have said that we would rather have a son of ours major

in a profession, and not in football as it is now conducted. True, there
are exceptions, but it is the rule thet I rather emphasise.

Regarding your statement concerning publicity, favorable or other~

wise, I want to assure you that I have never sold my face for a banana

- ad, or Grape-nuts, or ‘Luckies, or what-not. Nor have I endeavored to
keep my namewbefere the public unless I thought 1 had something to

pay. And ; ink definitely that I have something to say and will

continue to say it, not a6 basketball coach but as the head of the

department of Physical Education at the University of Kanses. (For your

information, Brownie, I have never drewn as much salery for coaching

‘basketbell as I have as director of athletics and physical education.)

 
 
 

Fi 1 Ti)

    

There are so many young fellows &hat are being misguided by the so-
called big shot coach in athletics that I think it is high time for
somebody to be at least half way honest with these youngsters. Stories
mey die naturel deaths, but fects never will. The fact that we have
conference rules whichare being broken more than they are being kept
is a fact and you know it.

Your own Cy Sherman, the argosy of football hopes, in his colum
"prass Tacks", seyss

“the founders of football and ell college sports, for that matter,
gave thought only to the idea that athletics should be conducted
strictly on a basis of pure amateurism, but corrupting influences
unquestionably have been permitted to intrude their slimy presence,
thus to make a mockery of the amateur pretense.

“whe head professor of basketball at Kansas U, apparently prefers

to lop off the head of the chicken rather then exterminate its lice.
“That proposal conveys no appeal to this column, Football is a.
sport so wholesome, $0 desirable especially in a time of a national
crisis, as to merit a defini |

 
 

te place in the educational scheme.

“wow then, cen a tangible plan be worked out to save the gridiron
game from the fate which Frefes 0. Allen and others, too, have fore-
seen? The problem is one whieh this column passes to the heads of
the National Collegiate Athletic association, the body which has the —
means and methods in its hands, but in the past - more's the pity - it
has failed, either through insipidity or cowardice, to usel"

Cowardice is the word that should be used.

Certainly from as stalwart enthusiast for footballes Cy is, this is
ummistakably an open confession thet he and all other insiders know
the mockery that is now being practised under the guise of character
building in a mejor sport - especially when big time proselytors work.
o5-

Cy says that apparently we prefer to lop off the head of the chicken
rather than to de~louse it. Certainly I do not believe in lopping off
the head of such a fine sport as football. I merely pointed out to these
high school and college players that these coaches and the so-called
friends of football are the ones who are killing it, and the yelp that
the coaches emit shows that they lave been struck by missiles which
hit the mark.

When a gardener trims excessive branches from a grapevine he does it
to improve the fruit. Certainly you will not deny this, will you,
Brownie? By lepping off many of the football barnacles, football
could be saved. And so could basketball, for that matter. But the
wey it is going at the present ime causes people to wonder whether

the mon’who make money out of football will permit it to be saved.

May 7 make another observation? The, future crop of coaches in both
football and basketball will of necessity come from a group of men
who are outstanding inthe sport from the angle of technical skill.
This is their laboratory work to show that they are experts. These
men, by and large, are now athletes who awe receiving either their
board, room tuition, books, and so forth, or a large part of it, and
some are men who positively leave school with a larger bank account
than they entered with. How in the world can these great builders

of character challenge a boy to enroll in the university — by the
same and only method they know - that is the pay check.

These major spectacular sports are nothing but a rachet, or a business
racket tied to the tail of the university or college. The boy is maite

to feel that that is the most important thing in his existence, when

all of us know that it is not by any manner of means the most important.

it is important because it is an incentive which should drive him on to
the durable things of life, and that is the thing that he gets in the
classroom and in the contact with his fellows. But when he know that he is
nothing more than a paid professional, keeping from the general public

the truth of his status, then you and I both know that it is a racket.

I certainly have no quarrel with you when you say, “Football represents
so much of a spirit of a game where mental, physical, and emotional
expressions have e wholesome outlet that youth will demand, and have,
in one way or another." Again I say, let's have it in the right way,
and not in the way it is being ccnducted in the "big time". Again I
want to say that I do net wee. te kill football, but I want to point
to the boy who is p&sying it the danger of following wandering fires
lost in the quagmire.

Brownie, I have never worried much about ostracism. I find that I

make a few friends and lose a few, but when I characterize a group

of coaches as “beagle hounds out sniffing the bushes for athletes to

be given salaries for doing no work", I state correctly what I know

and what you know, Of course, some big time schools have someone

else to do their beagle-hounding for them, and they sit back as re-
spectable individuals while the dirty work is done by the less important
beagle hounds. Had I not talked to so many professors who tell me the
pressure they feel from the advance agent for so many of these flunking
athletes, then I might say that some of them might resent it. But I
‘know this game from all the intricacies as you do. And these professors
do not resent this snap course idea|because they know hew many of the
wise boys hunt for them,

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o4e

This part of your letter makes me laugh. “The coaching profession

is heartily in accord with the University Administrators controlling

the athletic situation to such an extent that the department is in

harmony with the aims and ideals of the institution of which it is

a part." What ideals do you speak of when there are certain assistant
athletic directors in large institutions who are paid for nothing else |
than to handle the athletes, definitely paying large sums of money to keep the
them in school so that they may be eligible for athletic teams? I say

that this is no part of an ideal.

I have coached 34 years and in my association with athletics and

with the coaches of these sports I find a growing tendency to spend more
but to cover up more skilfully. I have always tried to put more inte
physical education and athletics than I have gotten out of it, and I will
continue to do so, but my standard in dealing with these boys will be,

so far as possible, the standard that I use in dealing with my own sons.
Certainly I would not want my son to sell his academic birthright for a
mess of athletic pottéje such as is being peddled around by “big time"
promoting athletic coaches.

You will understand, Brownie, that there are a let of descent coaches
and a lot of coaches that are not doing the things that I mention, but
there are a lot of "big time” coaches who are doing this and they are
doing it to the detriment of both football and basketball.

Doubtless you realize that before I said this thing I knew exactly

what a great number of individuals would say to me and about me. I said
it last fall and I said it again, so don't you realize that from my
first experience I could maturely judge what might come again? It was
not an emotional outburst, but it was a thing planned and studied,
debunking a lot of the junk that goes on in "big time” athletics.

You state that “coaches will put their shoulders to the wheel and

push in trying to eliminate the evils. . . You know bloomin well

that if the coaches wanted to meet this situation they could eliminate
and cure it over one season of play. But, you say, they are doing it.
How can I stop it? And in fact there are some coaches that I know of
who couldn't turn out a championship team unless they got better material
than the other coaches. Therefore, instead of working, they attempt to
buy the tean.

To show you that I was not spoofing you about football but that I

also meant basketball in this charge, I am sending you a carbon copy of
a letter that I received on October 2nd from a coach of national
reputation who has had nationally known teams. I am also sending you

a carbon copy of a letter that I wrote this coach. A boy who is 6 feet
8 inches tall and weighs 188 pounds, and who comes highly recommended by
an expert coach, might do some team good under the basket, you cannot
fail to admit. And doubtless you will say that these coaches are
character builders instead of athletic beagle hounds. This coach said,
"T picked him up". That is why I call him a beagle hound rather than
a bird doge
o5a

This boy in question has nothing. Me needs board, room, tuition,
books, clothes, spending money, medical expenses, and what have you.
If a coach does it for one he is forced to do it for the others. Then
multiply this amount that is necessary to take care of this boy by the
number of men on the first squad and you have the answer to the cost
of basketball.

Brownie, I have enough data to prove my points conclusively. Yu
and I both know a young star athlete from Kansas who matriculated at
Nebraska and was wet-nursed, hauled in taxicabs to his classes because
he would not walk to them, and implorations were made to him in a
most disgusting fashion just because he was anathlete. Tmme, his
ineligibility casued him not to play at Nebraska, but the disgusting
example set be this chap and by the people who endeavored to get

him eligible created a sickening stench among those who were on the
inside of such a situation, Similar situations have happened on the
compus of most every college in the United States that has tried to
keep such men eligibie only tor their athletic ability. There was no
other consideration involved in handling this young boy with strong
gastromnemius muscles who could peddle a ball forward. And still we
talk about ideals. The name was not a long one. The first letter is
Be

Thanking you for sending me this pleasant epistle to Fred, and
wishing you and the great Army of the United States Godspeed, I am

Sincerely yours,

Director of Physical Education and Recreation
FCA/AH Varsity Basketball and Baseball Coach
Enc.
(COPY) October 10, 1941

Lt. Col. W.H. Browne, QNC
110th QM Regiment

A.P 0+ 55

Camp Robinson, Arkansas

Dear Brownie,

I have a real good joke on myself and I want to pass it
on to you. Your letter arrived Saturday morning just
prior to the Kansas-Washington football game. I hurriedly
scanned over the first part of your letter and paid very
1ittlé attention to the first three paragraphs. Then I
read your fourth paragraph which starts out - "Now for the
real reason this message is written".

By overlooking the third paragraph and not answering it I
committed the greatest blunder of all my corresponding ex-
perience. In that paragraph you presented the very same
argument that I had presented to the students at William

Jewell - that these boys played football for the sheer fun

of tt, and that they do not have to have commercialized football
to play for the fun of it. And when it is commercialized the
bad features are added without the good onese

If I ever needed a friend to argue my point, you certainly
did it most emphatically and without any rebuttal. So,
Brownie, read your own paragraph again and see if that isn't
right in line with my argument, You said, "They are their
own officials, and the ball changes side with very little
other then a kidding dissent". Therefore, the college presidents
of America will see the educational value of play, and by
adjustments upon the state and by the students they will
develop an intramural system which will satisfy the play in=
stinets of the students without the big time stuff that is
not a part of the educational institutions.

Brownie, I surely do like your letter.

Very sincerely yours,

- Director of Physical Education and Recreation
FCA/pg Varsity Basketball Coach