By George Daley

(Of The New York World)

Perplexing questions in college football are not confined to educators and executives of seats of learning as brought up to date and injected with new and unexpected force by President Ernest M. Hopkins of Dartmouth College in this quiet off season for a sport which grips so tenaciously in the fall. His drastic suggestions for a complete reorganization of the game for the purpose of removing what some pretend to call a menace to academic achievement and what others insist is an unwholesome commercializing influence have aroused instant controversy over a widely extended area. Sides are being taken with a combativeness which shows the deep concern of the opposing factions and the wide variant as to the aims and purposes of football in its relations not only to the undergraduates but alumni life of college men. There are at least three other groups in addition to the one made up of Presidents, Deans, faculty representatives and trustees. These other groups may be listed as follows: Alumni, coaches and self-appointed critics. Each group has its own perplexing questions to worry over. In ' view of the fact that those in each, being unable to agree, are divided among themselves, it is not surprising that any question involving the whole leads to so much bewilderment, confusion and even embarrassment.

While the questions of so much moment to the various groups are different they are closely related in the main. They all hinge on the amazing popularity and desirability of the game. Few want it abolished but a good many profess to see the need of certain reforms which will relieve what is called overemphasis and other attendant evils. The main questions puzzling the four groups may be itemized as follows : First the educators—-How to keep the tail from wagging the dog; how to make the game conform with the higher principles of education and how to control proselyting, recruiting, overemphasis and commercialization without alienating certain alumni, cooling their loyalties and losing high advertising values.

Now for the others: Second, the alumniHow to cover up recruiting and what amounts to the purchase of material required for a winning team to the end that they may provide nourishment for loyalties, encourage rivalries, rejoice in victories, boast a little and pander to their pride without being caught and without antagonizing the academic side. Third, the coaches—How to satisfy those of the alumni who demand victory at any cost or the head of the coach and to satisfy at the same time the administrative forces which constantly impose restrictions in the way of scholastic requirements and make hampering rules against recruiting and the like. Fourth, the self-appointed critics, and in this group may be included devotees of the game with no direct college connection and sport writers—How to get tickets for the big games and how to reconcile the conflicting ideas and theories of the radicals with the conservatives, the idealists with the practical, the high-principled with the low-principled.

In plain unvarnished words there is a deal of hypocrisy among some faculty representatives who preach loudly against the evils of football, demanding reforms the while, and then for the sake of the much desired publicity, blind themselves to the very evils in their own midst which they would have others exorcise. Dr. Hopkins is not one of these. He has said publicly more than once in the last few years what a valuable service he considers football renders in undergraduate life. He has admitted, too, that he delights in it and now steps forward because, as he puts it, he wants to see its virtues protected and its vices extirpated by friends before its foes find justification for demanding its death. This indicates that he feels the need for some action, even though he says frankly that his chief purpose in reviving the question at this time is to get a diagnosis from a group of experts "which shall show whether the ilis ascribed to the present situation are largely figments of the imagination or whether they are real and deserve early treatment."

Much has been accomplished in the last ten years toward better control of intercollegiate athletics through faculty supervision, and many of the evils which beset football in particular have been corrected or in any case minimized without any violent estrangement of alumni interest and loyalty. This work can be continued to even further ends if college administrations have the strength and courage to take decisive action in the face of the quite natural desire for the free advertising which a winning team brings. Any attempt, however, to control public interest or fetter youthful enthusiasms would be wasted effort. The revolutionary suggestions of Dr. Hopkins to limit varsity play to sophomores and juniors to develop two varsity elevens, the one to play away and the other at home on the same day, to divide interest and prevent the journeying about of undergraduates and to confine the coaching to seniors would tend, in my opinion, to stifle football, the very thing Dr. Hopkins says he wants to avoid.

These suggestions have been characterized as Utopian, absurd, ludicrous, ill-judged, ridiculous, irrational and even monstrous by some of those to whom I have talked in the past two days. They are none of these but, with full respect for anything advanced by Dr. Hopkins, who is known for his interest in the sport side of college activities, it is my feeling that such radical changes are quite unnecessary and certainly would be destructive to the kind of football which so many of us have learned to love and to 'expect. Three years are all too short as it is, in such a restricted season to develop players for such an intricate game, even with expert teaching. Cutting off one year and limiting the teaching to inexperienced undergraduates would soon reduce football to a minor sport.

Professional football would thrive on this depreciation of the college game. Many seniors barred on their own campus, would turn to the pros with avidity, at the sacrifice in many cases of their degrees. The money to support other sports would have to be sought elsewhere. The huge stadiums would rot away from disuse. Football does suffer from certain ills but they are not incurable and, in my opinion, the highly exaggerated dangers therefrom are largely figments of the imagination of those who fly from ghosts.