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Kansan’s Super-Duper Sports .

| League and League of Nations

By BILL CUNNINGHAM ss
It’s amazing how faithfully and how often the world of
sport mirrors democracy in all its perfections and its problems.

|Maybe it’s one with what some analysts have. claimed about:

religions—that a deity resembles-his worshippers both’ in
physical appearance and in mental and moral attributes, that
he is, in fact, but an idealization of themselves. aad
“You. touch heaven,” wrote Novalis, “when you lay your.
hand upon a human. body,” meaning, undoubtedly, that. part.
of diyine intelligence is represented within ourselves and that”
most of our attempts to. comprehend.a life beyond are, con-—
sciously or subsconsciously, idealizations of the only life we
know. - Poe is es a ea ashe
Maybe sport, team sport, is idealization, too. Certainly
it has all the primary attributes—fairness, courage, honesty,
gallantry. It calls for co-operation, co-ordination, discipline, .
sacrifice for an ideal, and some more, and still, true to the
fashion of life in a democracy, it runs into confusion and fail->
ure through whang-brained handling. There are’ those who
are perpetually trying to straighten this out with.one resound-
ing suggestion or another, but, up to date, they’ve got no-
where, just as those trying to do the same things with nations
have got nowhere. = = ee
And they’ve failed for precisely the same reasons. Note
the perfect parallels. A,
HE MEANS TO BE HEARD. Sere
Nationally, we’re thinking again in terms of a League of
Nations. Various politicians and publicists have broached the ©
subject boldly or cautiously, depending upon their professional .
safety or their ventral vis viva: . Mr. Willkie. has sounded his
A. Minnesota’s young governor, Stassen, now newly in the
Navy and. saying he intends to stay there, has gone all the
way in two magazine articles. Minor prophets have sug>.
gested that Mr. Roosevelt sees the chance. to become the~
most powerful and historical temporal figure this planet’ has”
ever produced through changing from President of the United.
States to President of the World. Et cetera. be aS ree
_ And just to show you how things go, in terms of the con-—
stant parallel, out in the currently flood-bound corn patch
of Kansas, the mighty voice of Dr. F.C. (Phog) Allen, veteran .
athletic director and basketball coach of the University of -
Kansas, is suddenly lifted across all the weary miles between

|demanding a League of Intercollegiate Athletic Conferences.

Dr. Allen is a. first-class basketball coach and a self-start- .
ing Cicero slightly crossed with klaxon. No long-eared, shoe’
box-nosed, bush-tailed nightingale indigenous to the native
vicinage and born to tug a plow can out-sing the Dr. when.
he really gets going. The crows flap their ebon wings and
head wildly for neighboring Missouri, while the rabbits are
drowned by the thousands trying to make it in terror across
Rattlesnake River when he lifts those snoring tones. The
man shakes the ground... 2 io Ok fete te

Noting, evidently, where every form. of economic sky

-|writer from thé womb-to-tomb boys to the Virginia feed-the-_

world Zolivas are feverishly blue-printing the great post-war

paradise, the Dr. hitches up his britches, takes a running start.

and throws his weight against an autocephalous situation ©
existing in the campus sporting sphere. His idea is that he-
might as well brew up a little post-war paradise, too. = +45

 

 

~ Instead of approximately 118 college conferences and