DRINKING AT FOOTBALL GAMES

HERE is a sense of futility connected with the discussion of

football problems at this particular time of year. From early in
September until after Thanksgiving, the air is filled with punts,
publicity and plaudits; from Thanksgiving until the middle of
December, the football banquet, with its weather-beaten oratory is
perpetrated; and then during the waning days of the year, after the
tumult and the shouting cease, the reformers take the middle of the
stage to view with alarm “certain trends” which are about to anni-
hilate this national sport. They snap the padlock on the barn door
after the horse, or better, the team and sometimes the coach, have
been stolen. If we really wish to improve conditions it might be well
to have the convention of the National Collegiate Athletic Associ-
ation, the Football Coaches Dinner, the Sportsmanship Brotherhood
Luncheon, and the rest, immediately after Labor Day when a new
football season is just in the offing, and not at a time when the
jerseys have been put away in moth balls, and the bottles have been
swept out of the stadium. But for the fact that this particular meet-
ing is turning the spotlight away from the gridiron where the fewest
of the evils of football exist to the stands where most of the evils
are located, it would indeed be useless to say anything; but here is
at least an opportunity to place responsibility where it belongs.

Lovers of football are becoming increasingly concerned over the
attitude of that growing minority among the spectators who under
artificial stimulus make the game unpleasant for their neighbors, and
even invade the field and interfere with the progress of the game. It
may not be softness which causes many people to say, “I would
rather stay home and listen to a game over the radio than to see it.”
It well may be that one can get a better idea of the plays and pro-
gress of the game when undisturbed by the raucous and imbecile
shouts of some bibulous enthusiast who is crowding against him.
And by the way, when Jonathan Swift said, “That whoever could
make two ears of corn or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot
of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of man-
kind, and do more essential service to his country, then the whole
race of politicians put together”, he omitted from his commendation