DARTMOUTH ELEVEN STILL ATTRACTS ATTENTION
In an article on "College Sports: Their Cost and Worth," which appeared in The SaturdayEvening Post of March 13, Forrest Crissey writes: I have picked on Dartmouth to speak for college football of the pure and undefiled brand, because its team has known only one defeat in three seasons and the scholarship of its players has been as brilliant and distinguished as their tactics on the field.
Dartmouth in 1924, was able to put on the field a team with every man playing in his regular position—no man under the second team— and every one of them a Phi Beta Kappa man. As to the 1925 team at least four men were of Phi Beta Kappa rating and one man, Captain Parker, was a Rhodes scholar. Jess B. Hawley, who has been Dartmouth's football coach for three successive seasons, made this confession to me:
"Men without college associations and the college viewpoint will fall for that suggestion because it involves wider opportunities to see the game and also because what you term post graduate professional football would give them a sentimental interest in that sort of football which it now lacks.
"But all the same, professional football organized along college lines would be extremely detrimental, as I see it. Of course Red Grange is responsible for throwing this question into high dramatic relief. However, it should be remembered that Red is one of 10,000—a phenomenon —and his temptation was equally extraordinary. But the spirit of it is all wrong— contrary to every high motive which makes amateur sport the fine constructive force that it is.
"I shall never forget a dinner at which I put this problem up to the Dartmouth team. Our stars had a line of tempting offers of easy money, but they turned them down instantly, without a dissenting voice. This has happened with respect to the stars of every team I have coached. Did they make a material sacrifice of sure money for high ideals? At the moment it seemed as if this might be so, but I believe it has not and will not work out that way in the long run. Virtually every one of them was picked for a good start in business or professional life because of the qualities which made him a star player in his position in the field-loyalty to his school, his associates and the interests of clean and uncommercialized sport; courage, decision and resourcefulness in emergencies; ability to do intelligent teamwork; the capacity to subordinate his immediate comfort, convenience and pleasure to worthy end. Then the clean and abstemious living which always precedes and goes with a place on a college team isn't an inconsequential part in a sound preparation for a life career.
"This has happened right along in connection with Dartmouth football stars and, I have every reason to believe, also with those of other colleges and universities. Some alumnus has reached out for this man and that before his graduation and offered him a business or professional connection which any young man at the threshold of his life career might well covet.
"One big Eastern business man, for example, came to me named two of our stars and said, 'I want those young men in our organization. They've demonstrated on the field that they have the qualities I need in my business.' As a result they began at salaries which many young men work years to get. This happens so often to football stars that it is not a novelty. This kind of financial reward for valor on the football field is legitimate. To my sense it is the only really legitimate one.
"The real value of college sports is in character building, in the training of the mental faculties and in building up sound bodies and right habits of living, not in a man for a career as a public entertainer. This country has a big heritage in its ideals of amateur sports and in what boys and young men develop in living up to them. Anything which detracts from or tends to undermine those ideals—and professionalism in sports certainly comes under that head—is not a good or a wholesome thing for the youth or the educational institutions of this country."
