The Carnegie Report

...The Carnegie report has effectively summarized part of the answer...

...The public hopes the cheer-leader will be right but wants him, right or wrong...

...Many sincere, thoughtful and intelligent educators have tried hard to remove the moral taint from college sport...

...It became exceedingly bad form to hire athletes, or to countenance tangent forms of professionalism...

...It is impossible to expect that any college will, unless lavishly endowed, reject the oportunity to make that much money while other institutions stand ready to haul it in...

...and in this and all other departments of human activity, we are in favor of a living wage...

...If a team plays nine games before crowds averaging 70,-000, it means that 630,000 people have paid in nearly two million dollars during a season...

...Popular support has made football a real business proposition...

...He is promised an education, which he does not get...

...The veracity of the report is proved, indeed, by the comparative mildness of the charges now made...

...Several obliging mentors have even rigged out schedules designed to make the academic progress of the quarterback easy and delightful...

...We even think that the percentage of profit accruing to the individual player ought to be fairly high...

...We regret as much as anybody that American collegiate life, necessarily one of the firmest barriers against materialism and barbarous mentality, should be put to the expedient of dishonestly slipping a youngster some greenbacks after dark...

...More rarely does the athletic board itself establish a "scholarship fund" out of which the fullback takes his share...

...Almost everywhere some evidence was unearthed to show that, though subsidizing has been painted in various mimetic colors, it is still flourishing...

...But conferences and individual schools worked earnestly to reform the situation...

...Play the game, but play it in a fashion which is now the only possible fair fashion...

...Let the undergraduate understand that his team is getting paid in the same way as any hard worker is paid...

...It is interesting enough...

...The most that one can hope for is a practicable remedy which will release the undergraduate mind from the false pressure of shouting done on Saturday afternoons by 70,000 assembled throats...

...The glare of this limelight puts the student eye completely out of focus...

...More than one out of every nine students who played college football during a given year was injured seriously, cases of permanent damage to the body or mind being far from rare...

...Let the alumnus cease his private subsidies and tranquilly endure the fact that the route of athletic revenue is through the box-office...

...Of course it is a good thing that such facts, suspected by nearly everybody and well known to many, should be correlated in a document the authority of which is beyond question...

...When Yale looked at the newspaper and found that a team from Titmarsh College had appeared overnight and was making touchdowns at a furious pace, the inference in New Haven was naturally that somebody had been buying up huskies...

...Ten years ago, when competition between the colleges began to create a stir and larger crowds trekked to the stadiums, there was a great deal of resentful talk about the "hired halfbacks" of certain institutions...

...And even if the colleges did abandon competitive sport entirely, the public demand for games would have to be satisfied somehow...

...Sometimes payment is made in the form of a "scholarship...

...Visits were paid to 130 colleges and secondary schools, and only a handful of these hegiras were in vain...

...During four months of the year the athlete is out of the running, scholastically speaking...

...Many college officials know all this and are sorry...

...And if the governing bodies of our universities cannot succeed, what hope is there of improvement to come through a mere report...

...He deserves it...

...Intensify the situation by surrounding the whole football transaction with a veil of easily divined financial mystery, and you have a "moral influence" of an exceedingly curious kind...

...As a result, the colleges would keep on supplying the brand of sport which is now in demand, the moral tone of the whole business would be high, and there would exist no necessity for maneuvering a stellar tackle through courses which destiny in the first place had never intended he should take...

...Now what does the athlete, the real producer in this case, get out of it...

...But for the present nobody can quash the demand for competitive games, or even talk seriously of depriving the coach of his salary...

...He is so busy making money for his college that he is virtually without time to spend upon his own mind...

...It is unfair to accuse the athlete of being "an accessory to chicanery" when his share in the football boom is vital and his reward virtually nil...

...Why, we ask, would it not be wiser, and infinitely more honest, to stop this fruitless endeavor to keep college football untainted, and frankly, honestly and fairly pay the men who fight the battles of the gridiron...

...THE CARNEGIE REPORT IN SEVERAL important respects, the Carnegie Foundation's report on American college athletics is a little old-fashioned and lame...

...As a matter of fact, the problem must be approached from an entirely different point of view...

...One must be depressed, therefore, at the knowledge of how far a campaign for improvement has brought us...

...The student bodies of not a few institutions have been built up almost entirely through the prestige of winning teams...

...Besides this direct profit, immense revenues accrue in the form of advertising values...

...Usually he is shunted into the snap courses, so that there will be less worry on his part or the coach's...

...Concessions are turned over to needy athletes, who can then thrive on the proceeds from chewing gum, programs, laundry and incidentals...

...Beneficent alumni propel tips from around the corner...

...If the great conferences maintained their other rules-such as the three-year limit-and legislated that all moneys paid must come out of proceeds from games played, their example would render it virtually impossible to countenance violations of these standards...

...Bruised and mauled while clutching at a crown of glory (which lasts, on the average, two years beyond graduation) he takes chances with life and limb which fairly rival the ventures of the race-track...

...But every single effective protest they have tried to make has been answered by a decline in the student enrolment and a defection among the alumni...

...Add to this the general baneful effects of "intensive training" and long trips under great nervous strain, and you seriously damage the picture of young Apollo putting on new strength and beauty every minute...

...What the Carnegie report actually amounts to is a commentary on the results of this reform movement...

...What a dead language is Pindar to a youth concentrating upon a yell...

...Now and then a "loan" is engineered which the principals speedily forget...

...We believe this policy could, in time, do a lot for everybody-and incidentally for the college president, doomed to regret with a serious mien what he must essentially regard as very comic and exceedingly regrettable...

...The number of young men who received a college education with all expenses paid in exchange for a season of glory under a well-salaried coach is almost as large as the public thinks it is...

...There was a quantity of truth in the charge...

...His hero-worship takes a route divergent from all the hopes toward the fulfilment of which paternal checks are devoted...

...The intellectual damage done, however, is perhaps more important...

...The proceeds would merely be diverted to less worthy-and we shall add-less needy purses...

...It seems to us that the time has come to size up the situation practically...

...If he gets caught playing a game of summer baseball, his college presents him with a certificate of ineligibility, unframed...

...It is even impossible that when the team has rushed to the fray from the showers, conscience should make cowards of them all...

...Deduct all expenses, and you have a net profit of $500,000 annually...