ronirle Sporting

Green

BILL LEISER

 

 

 

PHOG ALLEN WRITES

 

 

The Other day we pippdseet the option of some basketball
coaches who are~agitating for lifting the basket from 10 feet,
its present elevation above the floor, to 12 feet.

It was a labor of love, inasmuch as we are of medium height
and long have suffered from the elbows of tall goons in side-
walk crushes. The object of elevating the basket is to reduce
the physical advantage of 6 foot 6 guys whose only claim to athletic
glory is their freakish ability to drop the ball through the hoop from
close up.

Our humble piece won the eye of Dr. Forrest C. Allen of Kansas
who, although he was not present
at the birth of basketball in 1892,
has long been considered the god-
father and leading theorizer of the
game. :

“Phog” Allen was out here to
see the regional playoffs of the N.
C. A. A. on the Exposition grounds
and upon his journey home, took
pen in hand to scratch us a letter
on the stationery of the Union Pa-
cific club car between Ogden and
Omaha, en route to Lawrence, Kas. -

Although Dr. Allen got off some
profound suggestions to improve the
game, we were more impressed py
the quality of his penmanship. The eee
educator writes a beautiful Spen- HELEN VINSON
-cerian hand, the kind that illuminates high school diplomas, marriage
licenses and baptismal certificates with mated doves and branches of
palm trees around the border.

We expected the director of physical education of the University
of Kansas’ to write a legible hand at his desk, but what amazes us is
the steadiness of his venmanship aboard a train.
nK-

;) NO CHICKEN TRACKS ON HIS LETTER 1

 

 

Dr. Allen’s letter is free of hen’s feet, blots and oH thane
slips of the pen that characterize most letters written aboard a lurch-
ing train highballing through the steppes of Nebraska.

On our few excursions East we undertook to write letters home on
railroad stationery but soon desisted when we learned our jerky scrawl,
caused by the motion of the train, was intefpreted as evidence that
we were in our cups again.