PRESIDENT HOPKINS SUGGESTS FOOTBALL MODIFICATIONS

The following letter from President Ernest M. Hopkins to Lemuel G. Hodgkins, President of the Dartmouth Athletic Council suggests a platform for the modification of football which has attracted widespread interest and in which all alumni will undoubtedly be interested:

I have been giving a good deal of thought for the last two or three years to the perplexing problems which are arising in connection with the college football situation. As cue who delights in intercollegiate football, I am desirous of seeing its values preserved. As one who fears the present tendencies, I would like to see the game freed from dangers which threaten it.

Sooner or later the question is going to arise among- the American colleges, with such insistence that it must be answered, whether the influence of the intercollegiate football game as an institution is greater than all else having to do with the American college. Already, when the occasional issue arises between the influence of the intercollegiate football relationship and the influence of the college purpose, defined in terms of education, there is the inclination on the part of some of our less perspicacious sports writers to inquire sarcastically what the colleges propose to do about it.

Nor do I criticize the attitude of these men, for theN administrations of the American colleges and universities have, up to date, spent most of their energies in deploring present conditions, and after this have recognized really only two alternatives, either a policy of laissezfaire with an occasional grumble from the college president or the college faculty, or else a policy of annihilation. Of course this latter is the simple and easy solution, but I think that it ignores the fact that intercollegiate sports, and intercollegiate football in particular, have certain vital values in a college community and that these could not well be spared without imparing the masculinity and virility which most of us want to feel to be typical of communities of college men.

However, there is loss to everybody involved in shutting our eyes to the changing conditions which surround the intercollegiate football game in the present day as compared with those which surrounded it originally. It seems to me that it would be to the advantage of those interested in intercollegiate athletics no less than to the advantage of those interested in other factors of college administration if we could contemplate what is and what is not true in regard to the present situation.

I do not labor under the delusion that any single college can radically transform the circumstances which attach to the intercollegiate football contest of the present day, but I do think that the individual colleges may find it desirable to study the situation, to analyze the conditions, and to arrive at conclusions as to what would be desirable, and what these colleges respectively would be willing to undertake if cooperative action should be secured.

I am therefore writing to you as the President of the Dartmouth Athletic Council and to Mr. Heneage, the Supervisor of Athletics, to ask if the Athletic Council will, at its convenience, give consideration to this matter, and to ask if the Council would be willing to seek conference with other committees in other colleges to determine if all things are as they best could be or whether there is the possibility of amendment and improvement.

The opinion is frequently expressed and widely held that intercollegiate football has lost its status as a sport for college men. It is argued that it has developed into an institution responsible to a constituencj' not largely interested in undergraduate advantage or in un- graduate pleasure.

It is asserted that the whole technique of development and control of this institution has passed out of the hands of undergraduates until their only opportunities either for participation or for self-expression in the game are as pawns upon the field or as dummies within the stands, playing according to rigid instructions or cheering at command.

It is, moreover, held by many that the magnitude of the enterprise and the complexity of the organization necessary to sustain this tend largely to distract the students' minds from and to dwarf their interest in the real function of football as a sport. At the same time, it is believed by many that the popular furore attached to the intercollegiate football contest creates a condition wherein, throughout the football season, .education is largely ignored within college and is as largely misinterpreted without it.

Personally, I believe that these beliefs and convictions are enough substantiated in present tendencies so that the colleges will be forced before long to consider them. If, however, I believed that such opinions in regard to the game were based on accomplished and unchangeable facts, I would move immediately for abolition of this form of athletics at Dartmouth. I do not so believe.

Nevertheless I do believe that the tendencies toward such conditions are more rapid than is commonly recognized, and I furthermore believe that intercollegiate football in consequence is in a more hazardous position than is generally supposed among its friends.

The administrations of the American colleges lack neither strength nor courage to take decisive action, if conviction definitely falls upon them that the time has arrived when such action is necessary.

Personally, I delight in football, and officially I believe that under proper control it renders a desirable and a valuable service in undergraduate life. I do not want to see it exalted to its ruin by uncomprehending forces outside the college life nor do I want to see it stifled to its death by exasperated forces within. Therefore, I would like to see the virtues of intercollegiate football protected and its vices extirpated by friends of the game before its foes are given justification for demanding and accomplishing its death.

Some constructive suggestions are in order from some source. For months a few of us have discussed these matters and weighed one project against another, striving to find a plan which would do the college maximum good and would do football minimum harm. I might say that in these conferences men vitally interested in football, and most of them former players of it, have been largely represented.

At length, weighing the value of one proposition against another, we have arrived at a program which seems'to us to have merit. If there seems to be worth in the suggestion, possibly, as I have said, the Dartmouth Athletic Council could secure a conference among officials of some other colleges looking to the general question of whether anything ought to be done, and if so, what.

Specifically, I should like to have the Dartmouth Athletic Council, at some convenient time, give its consideration to the following proposals which represent a distillation from many different plans which have been put forward, here or there, at one time or another.

The plan which I would like definitely to submit is this : First, eligibility for participation in intercollegiate football on Varsity teams to be limited to men in their sophomore and junior years in college; Second, intercollegiate football contests in the major games of the schedule to be arranged on a reciprocal basis, by which each college should develop from the varsity squad two major teams, one of which should play at home, and the other of which should play on the rival's

home grounds ; Third, all coaching to be done by undergraduates, presumably by seniors who had acquired knowledge and experience during their participation in intercollegiate athletics previously.

I do not believe that the problem can be too greatly simplified. Any solution is going to have its difficulties and complications. There are a lot of difficulties and complications in the development of such a scheme as outlined but I have come to feel that its advantages far outweigh its disadvantages, that it would preserve the essential values which inhere in intercollegiate competition, and that it would rid us of many of the evils.

Watching the proposition sometimes intimately, as when I was graduate manager of athletics twenty-five years ago and since, I am convinced that there, is no particular detriment to educational standards nor to scholastic accomplishment inherent in a team's going away for a trip. The members of the team work without much more distraction on the trip than they would in their rooms in college. The disruption of work and the general disorganization of academic life come in the major and overwhelming significance of the single game and the concentration of interest upon ''the" team playing "the" game.

Restricting eligibility to sophomores and juniors would, in itself, open up the possibility of participation in intercollegiate sport to a considerably increased number of men. The ne- cessity of developing two teams, between whom there should be no distinction in rank, would further tend to bring a much larger number of men to an interest and active participation in the game. And this latter proposal would diminish the possibility of the public and the press from focussing their attention on a restricted group of men or upon individuals, and would aid and abet the tendency to attach importance to team play rather than to individual stars.

I think that we need to recognize likewise that acknowledgedly and desirably the interest of the non-college public without knowledge of what are primary functions of the college would be made less intense.

Moreover, though I hesitate to suggest the matter, various suggestions from various parts of the country have come to me during the last year which make me certain that the desire and possibly the attempt of the big betting pools to profit from college games is not as remote as it is indispensable that it should be.

From the point of view of the professional gambler, a large squad, a contest based on two teams playing two games, and the less known technique of undergraduate coaches would introduce hazards which I think would be rather beyond the interest of this crowd.

There are infinite details attached to the proposal the significance of which cannot be taken up in a written communication.

The arrangement would make athletics far more an undergraduate project and would tend to make football more largely a sport and less an ordeal.

I am convinced, from my own acquaintanceship with athletes, that the man who goes to college for an education and who is incidentally an athlete, oftentimes gets about as much of intercollegiate football as he wants by the end of his junior year.

At any rate, I think that the proposed plan would make the senior year of the college football players a very different thing from what it is at the present time, and that the man who was really possessed of a dominating desire for an education could pick up the threads of his previous work and capitalize the efforts of his previous three years to an extent which has not been possible before. At the same time, I think that for a great mass of the undergraduates the lure of the following the team into the opponent's territory would be considerably weakened by the reciprocal arrangements by which teams played coincidentally at home and abroad. Likewise, I am certain that the interest attaching to the whole proposition would be rationalized enough by such a proposition so that gradually the emphasis placed upon the single game would be diminished.

No one, I imagine, would argue that any college is entirely immune from the dangers incidental to the proselyting of athletes as such by graduates here and there. My own belief is that the athletically-minded alumnus would find considerably less interest attached to sending a preparatory school star on to his own college if this man were to be but one of the greatly enlarged group which would be participating in intercollegiate athletics. It seems to me that the whole tendency of the plan would be to guarantee to all of us a little more definitely that participation in college sport would be more completely restricted to college students incidentally playing football than to perpetuate a condition wherein at every college there are at least a few men who are in spirit simply athletes incidentally attending college.

The proposal as made has very little of originality in it, and it has been largely and very gradually developed by friendly associates, most of whom are former football players. Various phases of the project have been considered, and perhaps are being considered, now by various college groups in various parts of the country. Meanwhile, however, in any of these groups every recommendation which finally gets through to serious consideration is likely to be emasculated, and to temporize with conditions as a whole, while it deals almost invariably with details rather than with major issues.

I believe that such a constructive plan as this could be made rather convincing in its presentation to the respective alumni bodies, and I think that it would be given the approval and endorsement of the really big and important men who are dealing with sports in the public press.

If it were possible for one college to try it out alone and find out whether it was of major significance or not, I should be willing to have Dartmouth made the experimental laboratory and to accept the opprobrium or commendation which might eventually result from having instituted it.

Clearly, however, it cannot have any hopes of success except upon the basis of being tried out by a considerable number of colleges whoshould adopt the plan coincidentally and cooperatively, and who should be willing to give it the interest and support to perfect it and to make it impressive.

Those of us who have been considering it have been going over the schedule of a limited number of colleges in the east and we believe that without any formal organization the plan could be carried through if a group, say, including Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Princeton, Pennsylvania, Brown, and Dartmouth should agree as individual colleges to accept the general specifications.

The question upon which I should like the consideration of the Dartmouth Athletic Council is whether there is enough in this general proposition to merit a conference upon the subject between the Council and officers of the Administration or whether it would be felt that the proposal involved so complete a change of the existing status that it would be uwise even to take it under consideration.

In view of existing college alignments, it might be better for leadership in a movement to revise the status of intercollegiate football to be assumed by some other college than Dartmouth or by some other group than any in which Dartmouth is represented. If so, the Athletic Council could of.course await the time when the proposals of some other institution should be put forward.

For the clarifying of our own minds, I have felt, however, that it would be advantageous to take some specific set of proposals and to make them a subject of discussion. I do not underestimate the difficulties or the complications involved in the scheme which I have outlined. As I have said before I do not think that the problem is susceptible to any simple solution.

I would, however, like to see the colleges accept the responsibility of discussing and, if advisable adopting one constructive plan or another in the attempt to solve their own difficulties, and with the purpose of commanding the confidence of the public in regard to their own good faith.

Most of us in college administration have been calling public attention to the dangers inherent in the present situation. We most of us probably recognize weaknesses and hazards which we have not said very much about, but which gravely affect the whole atmosphere of undergraduate life.

I submit the above outlined scheme, which valued friends have largely worked out, as the best solution that occurs to me. I do not argue, however, for consideration to be given to this plan exclusively.

What principally I want is a diagnosis on the part of a group of experts interested in the subject of intercollegiate athletics which shall show whether the ills ascribed to the present situation are largely figments of the imagination or whether they are real and deserve early treatment. May I delegate responsibility for securing this to the Dartmouth Athletic Council? I am Yours very truly, (Signed) ERNEST M. HOPKINS.