sles

Speaking antithetically of Mark Antony's femous funeral
oration, permit me to say that "I came to praise feotball, not to bury
it."

Athletics in the American colleges are paradoxical. They are the
most severely criticized activity of collage life, and they are the oa
loved. They are iti -iaek nithinh aed take bhi en eo ome
gies of youth, and they are, when improperly administered, the most danger-
ous and discascd. They ere the most vulnerable activity of the American —
eollege life, and ty are one of the most vital. Perhaps it is because
we love them that we illtreat and punish them. The inherent Anglo-Saxon
leve of conquest and combat in the sports and games endangers the very
ebdject of its love. College students view athletics as an end in them
selves. College professors steeped in habits of mind-training and hard work
seo them largely as misspent effort. Werein are the wo extremes in over=-
valuation, - youth in an overvaluatim of athletics, and middle age in an
overveluation of academic training. These two extremes are still far apart.

The problem of the modern administrator is to find a middle ground.

Thirty-five years ago, when intercollegiate football was on trial be-
cause of physical dangers to the participants, the late Theodore Roosevelt,
ex-presiéent of the United States, saved the game for the good that he
thought it possessed. Today, with the game on trial again, this time bee
cause of alleged moral and spiritual dangers, there is need of another great
leader to point the way ahead. The gane should be lifted up and out of its
distortions into its truer plane of inspiration and effectiveness in college
life. In reality there is little of ‘serious pee with athleties in the
colleges themselves. The disease starts fron without, - among the men

whose interest is misguided. |
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