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PURTHER TRENDS IN SUBSIDIZED ATHLETICS
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
it."

Athletics in the American colleges are paradoxical. They are
the most severely oriticizsed activity of college life, and they are the
most loved. They axe the most rational chamel into which to direct the
energies of youth, and they are, when improperly administered, the most
dangerous and diseased. ‘They are the most vulnerable activity of the
Anorioan college life, and they are one of the most vital. Perhaps it
is because we love them that wo ill-treat and punish them. The inherent
Anglo-Saxon love of conquest and combat in the sports and games endangers
the very object of its love. College students view athletics as an end
in themselves. College professors steeped in habits of mind-training and
herd work see them largely as miaspent effort, Herein are the two extremes
in over~evaluation ~. youth in an over-evaluation of athletios, and middle
age in an over-evaluation of academic training. These two extremes are
| 0422 far apart. The problem of the modern administrator is to find
middle ground,

Thirty-five yoars ago, when intercollegiate football] was on
trial because of physical dangers to the partioipants, 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 apiritual dangers, there is need of
another great leader to point the way ahead. The game should be lifted
up and out of its distortions inte its truer plane of inspiration and
effectiveness in college life. In reality there is little of serious