22:

at least one eye half open admits that there is some
proselytizing in the present picture—but no one does
anything about it, anything helpful. But something
needs doing because this malignant lesion, this hypo-
critical parcelling out of sinecure jobs, is devitalizing
many of our best athletes. Surreptitiously pay a boy
more to play football in college than he can earn on the
outside in honest employment and you leave a scar on
him which he'll carry far beyond the campus halls. Hav-
ing grown used to the feel of this so-called “easy money”
during his days of eligibility, he often turns to profes-
sional football when his college days are over. You have,
in fact, only to study the roster of the professional foot-
ball leagues of the United States and note the players’
college affiliations to get a clue as to where proselytizing
is practiced.

Now you can’t bet rid of this great straight-faced sub-
terfuge by talking about it. That has been tried. I
doubt if you can get rid of it at all. But you can dignify
it—by recognition. You can bring it out into the fresh
air of public intelligence, agree on principles, establish a
few simple, businesslike procedures—and so achieve
scrupulous honesty in the athletic department of an in-
stitution dedicated to honest thinking, the college.

Talking, I have just said, has been tried. Three years
ago the Committee on Student
Group Life drew up some Stand-
ards of Athletic Eligibility. The
National Association of State
Universities endorsed them. Ar-
ticle III of these Standards pro-
vides that:

The faculty committee on eligi-
bility shall, in advance of compe-
tition, require of each candidate for
competition in any sport a detailed
statement in writing of the
amounts and sources of his finan-
cial earnings and income received,
or to be received during the college
year and the previous Summer,
from others than those upon whom
he is naturally dependent for sup-
port. In case any question arises
with regard to the implication of
this statement, the matter shall be
referred to the executive committee of the conference for de-
cision.

If the above unfair discriminatory regulation does not
produce mass perjury, then pass judgment upon the fol-
lowing edict from the same Standards of Athletic Eligt-
bility:

Every candidate for an athletic team must, ster a careful
explanation of all the eligibility regulations and their impli-
cations of honor, by the faculty committee on athletics, de-
clare orally to the committee and in writing upon his honor
his eligibility or ineligibility under each separate regulation.
Each member of the athletic staff, physical-education depart-

. ment, athletic council, and faculty committee on athletics
shall upon his honor in writing certify his own adherence
to all the athletic regulations and to the best of his knowledge

   

THE ROTARIAN

the eligibility or ineligibility of every member of the team
that represents the institution.

There is no admission or confession here stated that
the majority of athletes are receiving secret subsidies, but
the very tone of this act immediately gives it the spirit
of the inquisition, and then the crime results in getting
caught. This scheme above mentioned was in operation
a decade ago concerning Summer baseball for collegians,
and it failed dismally. It is working no better today.

Open, honest subsidy is the only answer. But by sub-
sidizing I do not mean the hiring of athletes merely for
playing ability, at a salary based on skill. We have that
sort of thing now in the tramp athlete, the youth who
seeks to barter his physical prowess not in exchange for
an earnestly desired education, but only for an attractive

- monetary consideration. I am vehemently opposed to

him and his kind, as, I am certain, most college coaches
are. I am irrevocably against professionalism of this sort
or any other in college athletics!

But if subsidizing means “to furnish aid with a sub-
sidy,” or to give the athlete an even break with other
students, then my answer is Yes! And why not?

Today is the age of subsidizing. James Bryant Co-
nant, president of Harvard, stated recently that Harvard
would subsidize the best young brains of the United
States at his institution. Students pre-
paring for law, medicine, engineering,
the ministry, and all the professions
have been and are subsidized through
scholarships and fellowships. Why
exclude physical education and ath-
letics? “Without discrimination for
or against the athlete” has long been
the slogan of the present purity col-
legiate eligibility rules committee.
There has been much talk but little
action to shift that principle into gear.

-Byron (“Whizzer”) White, superb
football player from Colorado, is to be
subsidized in England with a Rhodes
Scholarship. Yet if the English prac-
tice of: subsidizing Rhodes Scholars
were applied to our American college
athletes, all would be declared ineligi-
ble by our own eligibility committees.
One of the requirements of the Rhodes Scholarship is, in
fact, that the applicant be outstanding in at least one
sport. English education, in other words, encourages
physical skill, while American education looks upon that
kind of skill with suspicion.

The athlete, I repeat, is already and many times dis-
criminated against. Just why should the finger of sus-
picion be pointed at a healthy, husky American boy be-
cause he wants to play a game in which he excels? Why
should he be hailed into an academic court, lectured to, and
caused to sign papers and also to declare orally that he
is without stain of professional guilt any more than the
rotund and dapper campus luminary with a Carusoan
voice who sells his music talent [Continued on page 60]

Photo: International News
aang TET

OCTOBER, 1938

 

Should
No!

=—Says Jo

Commissioner of Ai

ce means b;

them a few sports fans.
the college football stad:
is, they happen to kno
cial “deal” with a “nice
ism? Don’t look for it
Such people like to be
college athletes who reac
without pay for their y
Bobby Jones, greatest gc
in the word’s best sense-
their minds snap shut .
But perhaps they do sc
the rest of us on guard
what about that amateur
our colleges? Ought it!
Whether to pay or no
question mainly peculia
exclusively so. The (
stemmed the fine belief
too, at one time or anotl