December, 1940 =

or widening the baskets or trimming up the backboard so that it looks like a back-—
drop for a follies act,

I do not think that any of those things put the finger on the trouble, This
suggestion came from my very good friend, Dr. Carlson, It was based on the assump-
tion that the coaches are not doing enough to help the officials, You have to have
officials, and if they are no good you have to improve them, No one else will, One
way to imvrove the officials is constantly to bring to their attention their errors
in officiating technique, the application of rules and their personal interpreta-
tion thereof, The time and the method of doing this in Dr. Carlson's suggestion
were unique, It did not call for the immediate calling of these mistakes to the
official's attention, I mean by “immediate" tearing down to the official's dress-
ing room as soon as that last whistle blows and telling the chap in well-chosen,
picturesque words just what you think of the way he officiated at the ball game,
Dr, Carlson's suggestion was to go home and get a nice cup of Ovaltine or something
and go to bed and sleep it off and get up the next morning and look out on the
light of a new day and then from that point of view think the situation over, and
then sit down and write a letter to the official, stick in a couple sheets of the
opposing team the previous night and the other carbon copy to the head of the offi-
ciels' association in that district, if there is one, or to the officials! commis-
sioner for the conference, if you have such a factotum, In that letter, dispas-
sionately and as unbiasedly as possible, tell that fellow where he was wrong,

It is Dr, Carlson's idea that if enough coaches do this, by the power and
impact of repetition you will gradually bring home to that official the points on
which he is weak, and that naturally he will adjust himself, he will check up on
himself, and discover that he has been wrong and try to do a better job, This may
be very idealistic, and Dr, Carlson may be attributing to the officials an intelli-
gence which they do not possess, I do not know, It may be that there is a great
deal of meat in what he says, but it is merely a suggestion and I think it is one
that is worthy of a little consideration,

IT understand that the method of most English lecturers in this country is
to come over here and hire a hall and get up on the stage and lambast the very dev-
il out of American habits and the American way of living and American skyscrapers
and subways and transportation, and it is the custom on those occasions of the Amer=
ican audiences who paid to hear them to get up and cheer and applaud wildly, where-
as if someone else gets up and tells the same audiences what a lovely country they
have and how nice and well-behaved and courteous they are and how enterprising and
scientific they are, the crowd yawns and goes home and says, "The guy is terrible,"

I do not want you to yawn and say, "The guy is terrible," so I will use the
English lecturer's technique and perhaps get a little personal and a little insult-
ing about coaches, It strikes me from long acquaintance with coaches (and I am not
mind you, speaking of them as a whole, but of the inevitable minority) that for
gentlemen, shall I say, in as highly paid a profession (I suppose that is out of
keeping here because I heard on the way over that a resolution is going to be pre-
sented to demand that all college coaches be given tenure on the faculty and first
rate salaries) there is an extreme amount of pettiness in your profession and that
some of the snide little tricks which I have encountered first-hand, that one coach
plays uvon another in the course of an intercollegiate basketball game, are nothing
short of -- well, they are just plum disgusting, Why any man holding an important
job in an important university will stoop to such tricks as inflating a ball that
is supposed to carry thirteen and one-half pounds to the point where the darn thing
sticks to the ceiling when it is thrown up I do not know, and I do not know why an-
other coach will only put eight points of air in that ball so that when it bounces
it hits you in the kmees, But I know first-hand of just such cases and those are
things that perhaps bring your entire profession into disrepute,