From the Magazine Rack
University Daily Kansan
Page 3
Intercollegiate Athletics
Conclusion
In the state universities, now the chief supporters of inflated athletic programs, the intellectual life is the concern of a small group at best. The liberal arts college within the state university is often the most keen in its criticism of the university's athletic practices, but even within this college, faculty members hold widely differing views. Some genuinely enjoy the game. Others tolerate it as one among many human follies.
Many are creatures of habit, and being in the stadium on Saturday afternoons is not much different from being in the super market on Saturday mornings.
College and university faculties are singularly inept at doing anything about their problems. Academic protests against low salaries have been as numerous, and as futile, as those against athletics. Members of faculty senates, fierce exponents of democracy, inveigh against the fraternity and sorority system and then approve the appointment of one more assistant dean of student life to assist in inter-fraternity affairs. Cheating in the classroom, autocracy in the administration building, and an entangling bureaucracy throughout the campus are other problems which were long ago placed on the committee agenda and which have never been taken off.
The athletic departments have flummoxed the academicians by playing their kind of game. They have become research departments, amassing books and monographs, acquiring equipment, and graduating M.A.'s and Ph.D.'s. An academic department of any kind is as hard to dislodge as an ape from a tree. When it has stored up the fruits of research, it is invulnerable. On the playing field, coaches operate within a complex of scouts, spies, and spotter equiped with binoculars, field phones, and wrist radios. Off the field, they read monographs like "Two and Three Dimensional Slide Images Used with Tachistoscopic Training Techniques in Instructing Football Players in Defenses," or articles beginning, "Bat selection is a profundity of thought" are, of course, not uncommon to other academic periodicals, but no other journals are so lelemm and pious. Only in THE ATHLETIC JOURNAL, "America's First Coaching Magazine," is one likely to find the "Huddle Prayer," specially written for the Pop Warner Conference for Kiddie Football by Father Cavanaugh of Notre Dame, Rabbi Max Klein, and Norman Vincent Peale:
Grant us the strength, Dear Lord, to play
Grant us the strength, Dear Lord
This game with all our might;
And while we're doing it we pray
You'll keep us in your sight,
That we may never say or do
A thing that gives offense to you.
Friday. Dec. 2. 1960
The changing character of higher education also seems to be having an impact upon bit-time athletics. Columbia's president was reported in my local paper as telling his alumni, "I hope you may feel that some of the prestige Columbia has lost in football in these years has been offset by the award of four Nobel Prizes to Columbia men in the last three years and of another Nobel Prize this year to another Columbia College graduate." The chancellor of the University of Denver, Chester Alter, flatly predicted that the days of big-time football were numbered. California, a West Coast reporter wrote, is going Ivy League. And James L. Morrill, retiring president of Minnesota, defended a losing coach: "Athletic entertainment is not the primary purpose of the University of Minnesota or the justification for its existence."
--has made it necessary for the churches sponsoring the service to subsidize the project by paying approximately $30 each week.
This last remark from the Midwest, a region passionately attached to football, basketball, and funny papers, is a significant one. There is a logic in thinking that the Big Ten schools may before long de-emphasize. Universities like Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, and others have the physical facilities, the faculties, and can select the students which would make them primarily intellectual institutions. States are already seeing the wisdom and the economy of using the smaller public and private colleges as the general under-graduate college and of reserving the state university for a HIGHER education. The subordination of sports to intellect in the Big Ten would do much to restore sanity to college athletics.
--has made it necessary for the churches sponsoring the service to subsidize the project by paying approximately $30 each week.
The melancholy truth is that reached by Plato long ago. Man's glory is his reason, but it exists at the small end of the triangle. He carries with him "the heavy bear," and in the end as in the beginning, the beast will have him. Civilization is still a clearing in the jungle, and if apes gambol in the public square, one may be dismayed but should not be surprised.
If athletics do subside, it will not be because of moral indignation, and its decline will be attended by wailing and weeping and gnashing of teeth. If recognition of a changing attitude comes about, it will come slowly to the booster clubs, the athletic departments, and the newspapers. These groups have never been disturbed by the disparity between the shoddiness of athleticism and the high purposes of a university. They have preserved the myths of sport long after such myths have lost what small part of truth they may once have possessed.
(Excerpted from an article entitled "Head, Heart and Hand Outstretched: Intercollegiate Athletics," by Kenneth Eble. The article appeared in the Fall edition of the Columbia University Forum.)
Bochenski to Speak Tuesday at Forum
J. M. Bochenski, Rose Morgan Professor of Philosophy, will be the speaker at the Humanities Forum Tuesday at 7:30 in the Forum Room of the Union.
His talk is titled "Sociological Implications of the History of Logic."
This will be the last public speech to be given by Prof. Bocchenski before he leaves this month.
Choir to Present Concert Sunday
The University of Kansas Concert Choir, directed by Clayton Krehbiel, will present a formal concert at 3:30 p.m. Sunday in the University Theatre.
The choir will be assisted in a performance of Pacheibel's "Magnificat" by Norma Smith, Topeka senior, at the harpischord. Miss Smith is also a member of the choir.
Three sixteenth century Christmas motets will open the program. "Hodie Christus Natus Est" by Sweelinck, "O Magnum Mysterium" and "Ave Maria" by Victoria will be sung a cappella by the eighty member chorus.
The final two compositions are contemporary pieces. "Apostrophe to the Heavenly Hosts," was composed by Healey Willan, a Canadian composer. Ralph Vaughan Williams, an English artist wrote "Mass in G Minor."
Admission is free to the public.
Dean Gorton Attends Meeting at Capital
Thomas Gorton, dean of the School of Fine Arts, is attending a conference on national trends in chamber music today and tomorrow in Washington, D. C.
He is one of ten music leaders in the United States that were invited by the Coolidge Foundation to participate in the discussion session.
Dean Gorton will go to New York Monday for a national advisory music panel meeting.
SANTA IN DISGUISE—Lewis Hickok, an electrician for building and grounds, lends a hand in the decoration of the Christmas tree in the Strong Hall Rotunda. The white beard is a head start on the 1961 Centennial celebrations.
Church Buses May Be Stopped
The Rev. John Patton, director of the Westminster Center, said today the special Sunday bus service for University church goers may be discontinued.
He explained that the churches sponsoring the bus service had made a special arrangement with the bus line for a chartered bus each Sunday. The bus line was guaranteed a certain amount. This
Rev. Patton said there will be buses from 9:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Dec. 4 and 11.
"The usage will determine whether it's continued after Christmas," he said.
DO YOU HAVE ANY TALENT?
If you yourself, or a group of your friends have talent give it a try. Any talent welcome.
We are looking for anything humorous, satirical, entertaining, or talented - anything considered.
Tryouts for In-Between-the-Act Acts or with less gobbledygook - Acts that go on in-between the Fraternity-Sorority skits in ROCK CHALK-
TRYOUTS TUES., DEC. 6 and WED., DEC. 7
Finals: Thurs., Dec. 8
IF INTERESTED CALL MARK KNAPP - VI 2-1053
— You Must Call To Enter —