FURTHER TRENDS IN SUBSIDIZED ATELE?ICS
Dre Forrest C. Allen
University of Kansas.

Speaking antithetically of Mark Antony's famous funeral
oration, permit me to say that "I came to praise football, not to bury
ite" :

Athletics in the American colleges are paradoxical. They are

the most severely criticized activity of college life, and they are the

most lovede They are the most rational channel into which to direct the

energies of youth, and they are, when improperly administered, the most
dangerous and diseasede They are the most vulnerable activity of. the
American college life, and they are one of the m@ést vital. Perhaps it
is because “6 love them that we illetreat and punish them. The inherent
Anglo-Saxon love of conquest and combat in the sports and games endangers
the very object of its lovee. College students view athletics as an si
in themselvese College professors steeped in habits of mind-training and
hard work see them largely as misspent efforte Herein are the two extremes
in over-evaluation = youth in an over-evaluation ab athistios, and middle
age in an over-evaluation of academic traininge These two extremes are
still far apart. The problem of the modern administrator is to find a
middle grounde

Thirty-five years ago, when intercollegiate football was on
trial because of physical dangers to the participants, the late Theodore
Roosevelt, ex-President of the United States, saved the game for the good
that he thought it possessed. Today, with the game on trial again, this
time because of alleged moral and spiritual dangers, there is need of
another great leader to point the way aheade The game should be lifted
up and out of its distortions into its truer plane of inspiration and

effectiveness in college lifee In reality there is little of serious