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V

THE COLLEGES AND THE OLYMPIC GAMES.

 

At the meeting of the N.C.A.A. Council held in New York last December the
relations between the colleges and the Olympic Association were discussed. Following
the Council meeting, an N.C.A.A. Olympic Committee was created to study the situation,
to make suggestions relative to contributions on the part of college men to the Olym-
pic Fund, and to take whatever steps seemed advisable toward furthering the interests,
especially, of the sports in which the colleges are particularly interested.

On February 15th and 16th the committee met in Chicago and discussed Olympic
finances and methods of assisting the next Olympic Committee in the organization and
promotion of the following Olympic sports- track and field, swimming, wrestling, and
the eight-oared crew.

It is well to review the growth and development of the Olympics from the
standpoint of the colleges and to call attention to certain developing factors. In the
first place, the United States is the only member of the International Olympic As socia-
tion in which the educational institutions are in a large sense the athletic units.

Here in America there are’ some thirty-three million individuals enrolled in the schools,
colleges and universities. In fact, there are more young people in attendance in our
institutions below college rank than there are in all the rest of the schools of simi-
lar character throughout the world; more young men and young women are enrolled in the
colleges and universities than are enrolled in all of the rest of the colleges of the
world, There are approximately sixteen thousand schools and one thousand institutions
above high school grade in which intereinstitutional athletic programs are sponsored and
promoted. Most of these institutions have athletic plants and facilities and employ
trained coaches, Naturally, then, the Olympic teams in the sports fostered by the
schools and colleges are largely composed of college trained athletes. In the February
Athletic Journal is an article prepared by T. N. Metcalf which shows that 99% of the
points won by the American track and field team in the recent Olympics in Berlin were
won by undergraduates or by recent college graduates who trained for the Olympics under
the guidance of their coaches on the college athletic fields.

The eight-oared crew is always composed exclusively of college undergrad-
uates, Further, the men who excel in Olympic swimming and wrestling are invariably
college trained men.

In short, the colleges are now the training ground for the Olympic champions
in the sports designated, This was not always true. There was a time when perhaps ‘
one-half of the members of the American Olympic track team were athletes who had never
attended college. The A.A.U. came into existence back in 1889 at which time school
and college athletics in this country were in their infancy. Beginning with the second
Olympic Games, the A.A.U. has pretty much controlled, officered and administered our
Olympic activities in the sports mentioned as well as in others, However, with the
educational institutions gradually growing in importance in athletics recognition has
been given them and this fact from time to time. Following the War, the Olympic Asso-.
ciation was created and the N.C.A.A. became a member of this Association. Some eight
years ago the Olympic Association constitution was revised, giving the N.C.A.A. more
voting strength than it previously had enjoyed. Today it is felt that the colleges
should assume more responsibility im the matter of financing the teams composed large-
ly of college men and should have larger responsibility in the management and control
of these four sports previously mentioned,

 

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