60

Should College Athletes Be Paid?

Yes!—Says Forrest C. Allen
[Continued from page 22]

singing at funerals and collects a tidy sum
for singing in a church choir, and in ad-
dition gets credit toward graduation for
his singing in that choir?

No credit is given the athlete for par-
ticipating in daily two-hour practice drills
on the football field, or for playing in a
regularly scheduled contest. But if he
should go down town and play in any
competitive game with an outside team,
even without remuneration, he would
automatically become ineligible. If the
athlete should referee an intramural
game of any kind for the same amount
of money that the singer receives for his
hour’s work, the athlete immediately be-
comes a professional and is ineligible to
play. When playing for his school in an
intercollegiate. contest, he receives no
academic credit, but credit toward grad-
uation is given members of the band who
play between halves at the same game.

If you want to teach history or chem-
istry, you can carry the minimum load
the school requires and take as long as
you desire to complete the course. But
if you want to coach athletics and seek
to earn a varsity letter as a recommenda-
tion, you must possess 28 hours of aca-
demic credit the two preceding semesters.

It is just as logical to think that we
should have physical-education scholar-
ships as well as any other special scholar-
ships which are offered by alumni and

other beneficiaries. Coaching and physi-
cal education are professions, and the
sooner we have a newer and a better un-
derstanding of these moot points, the bet-
ter off all of us will be. Who can say
that from a great army of aspiring youth,
tingling with the love of contests and con-
quests, it is not possible to discover an-
other young Naismith, a Stagg, a Gulick,
or a MacKenzie? These men were all
poor boys. They struggled for their edu-
cation and they competed in athletics
when their parents frowned upon the pro-
fession they were to take up. Since those
days, physical education has been digni-
fied and edified, until now we have giants
of intellect as well as physique in the field
of physical education.

Again, is it not possible for the fine
young athlete to use his skills just as does
the student of art or music? It has been
said that the rhythm and the poise and
the timing of a superb athlete are art and
poetry 1n action. .

But life is full of paradoxes. With one
hand we give money to aid the physically
crippled, and with the other we give
boodle money to cripple mentally the
physically strong. It is easy to collect
$1,000 for a “slush fund” for certain sub-
rosa purposes, but impossible to collect
$100 for some legitimate activity.

No doubt you read some months ago
about the investigation the Pacific Coast

 

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Conference had instituted. It had hired
a former “G-man’”’ to assist in a survey of
financial support for athletes playing in
the Conference. If a G-man should inves-
tigate any other honorable, long-estab-
lished conference on obeying the present
rules of the conference as they are now
printed, his ndings would cause much
panic. The athletic situation is a mess.
Conferences are printing one rule, but
actually obeying another. This is com-
parable to the present international sit-
uation, when the world powers say we
must be prepared, we must protect our-
selves against the outlaws.

Colleges should take a page from the
State of New York in its educational
policy regarding high schools. All activi-
ties of the high schools, including all
forms of competitive athletics, are under
the direct control of the high-school ad-
ministration. There is no such thing as
an athletic association. If colleges would
abolish their athletic associations, with
their alumni and student boards, and if
the universities would handle athletic
funds the same as all other State-appro-
priated funds, then such bugbears as
high-priced coaches’ salaries and bits of
skullduggery such as diverting $10,000 or
more from advertising channels into a
“slush fund,” then much of the grief of
our present athletic catastrophe would be
done away with.

James Rowland Angell, when presi-
dent of Yale University, once made the
case for competitive sport groups when
he said:

We must believe in all sincerity, as I am sure
many of us do not, that physical education, in-
cluding competitive sports, is an essential part
of the obligation of the college and in no sense
a mere excrescence to be confided to the casual
outsider or to the transient apprentice. We
must recognize that it stands in the closest pos-
sible relation to moral education, which we often
Pronounce as one of the prime duties of the
college, if not, indeed, the very first. We must
believe unreservedly in sports for the whole
college community, and competitive group sports
as far as possible. If, then, physical education
in the largest sense is an intrinsic part of the
work of the college, why should there longer be
hesitation in recognizing that fact, and accept-
ing the full responsibilities: which go with it?

Why should there be, indeed? The
core of the whole question is, what is bet-
ter for youth? To answer, we must make
a choice. Shall we continue a system
that puts a premium on hypocrisy and
dishonesty, that encourages selfishness
and parisitism, that warps youth’s view
of life far out of line with the actual?
Or shall we teach our young men to be
realistic, to value their potential contribu-
tions as highly as the classics or chem-
istry student values his—and therefore to
expect and get equal recognition? The
choice, to me, seems obvious.

 

OCTOBER, 1938

Planting Pea
Our Back Yai

[Continued from page 39]

sovereignty. Some in the a
advance one or another relig
as a panacea for all interr
flicts. In other words, each
his own particular bias in re
whole world scene and, if h
all fluid, his strong opinior
to be modified.

What is actually happenir
public in general is gaining :
mation as to the problems
tional relations. It is a)
against strongly emotional pi
is giving intelligent thougt
lution of world problems
service and understanding
words, a world public opir
developed, an informed pv
which is of utmost signific:
is to be preserved. Wher
world around have come t
each other’s problems and I
a will for peace, then it wil
to sweep them emotionally

These Institutes are bu
fires against a world conflag:
are planting peace in our
where the common people
thus preparing the minds of
the day when they must le
calmly and tolerantly in
obstreperous neighbors.

Last season the Rotary C
nambool, Australia, held a
versity extension lectures on
subjects. Recently the Inter:
ice Committee of Rotary Dis
6 organized a series of me
laboration with the Associat
American Understanding,
some 35 public meetings on
Anglo-American relationshi
tary Club of Lima, Peru, an
Rotary Clubs in Canada ar
sponsor Institutes of Interna
-standing during the current
Inquiries about Institutes ha’
Clubs in New. Zealand, ¢
Europe, and South Americ:
munity Institute of Internal
standing which local Rota
initiating is, therefore, becc
and far-flung movement. It
the highways and byways
peoples of the world live <
bring them to understand
and thus, when their feet a
the broad road of goodwi
the more reasonably be expe
toward the goal of peace an
ized their deep yearnings fc