Carnegie Report
"Bulletin 23" is the third publication of the Carnegie Foundation dealing with the subject of athletics. The first described athletic sports at some twenty American colleges and universities and depended almost exclusively upon printed materials. Its conclusions are set forth in the Twentieth Annual Report of the Foundation (1925). In 1927, Bulletin 18 of the Foundation was issued. It was prepared from information obtained by personal visits and dealt with games and sports at British schools and universities. Those interested in the subject of college sports should read that bulletin as an introduction to the present study of athletics in North American schools and colleges.
The present study was authorized by the trustees of the Foundation in 1926. It has been carried out by Dr. Howard J. Savage, member of the Staff, and author of the study on sports in British schools and universities. One athlete out of every seven engaged in intercollegiate competition is "subsidized" to a point bordering upon professionalism, says the report on "American College Athletics, " made public October 24th by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching after a survey which has consumed more than three and a half years and entailed visits to 130 colleges and secondary schools.
The granting of bounties to athletes for no other consideration than athletic ability, whether it be in the form of "athletic scholarships," "slush funds," supplied by loyal alumni and local tradesmen, or in the shape of sinecure campus jobs, constitutes "the darkest blot upon American college sport," the report asserts.
At the very root of the manifold defects of American college athletics, in the view of the authors of the report, are "two fundamental causes:" the commercialization of intercollegiate competition on the athletic field and "a negligent attitude toward the educational opportunity for which the American college exists."
"Bulletin 23," as the report is called, represents the first comprehensive study of American college athletic practices and their effect upon the minds, morals and physical well-being of undergraduates. The report purposely disclaims any attempt to rate institutions according to prevalance or absence of abuses, although the names of colleges, universities and preparatory schools are used freely as examples of specific practices.
Out of 112 educational institutions visited and studied specifically for traces of pro- fessionalism, only twenty-eight were listed as entirely free of subsidized athletes. Of the eastern and mid-western universities Yale, Cornell, Chicago, Illinois, Wesley an, Williams and the United States Military Academy were found free from professionalism.
The fact ithat even twenty-eight institutions were free of paid athletes, the report declared, disproves "the notion that intercollegiate competition is impossible or at least impracticable without subsidies."
In making public the report estimating the number of subsidized college athletes as one out of seven, Dr. Savage explained that this was "a modest, conservative figure." The number of subsidized players on first-class varsity football teams throughout the country probably would run as high as fifty per cent, he said.
The survey was authorized by the Foundation on January 8, 1926, after it had been requested by such bodies as the Association of American Colleges, the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools of the Southern States, the National Collegiate Athletic Association and many individuals interested in educational problems. Bulletin 23 was compiled by Dr. Howard J. Savage, staff member of the Foundation, and Harold W. Bentley, John T. McGovern and Dr. Dean F. Smiley, secretary of the American Student Health Association.
In conclusion the report sets forth "two prime needs of our college athletics—one particular and one general":
"The first is a change of values in a field that is sodden with the commercial and the material and the vested interests that these forces have created. Commercialism in college athletics must be diminished and college sport must rise to a point where it is esteemed primarily and sincerely for the opportunities it affords to mature youth under responsibility to exercise at once the body and the mind and to foster habits both of bodily health and of those high qualities of character which, until they are revealed in action, we accept on faith.
"The second need is more fundamental. The American college must renew within itself the force that will challenge the best intellectual capabilities of the undergraduate. Happily, this task is now engaging the attention of numerous college officers and teachers. Better still, the fact is becoming recognized that the granting of opportunity for the fulfillment of intellectual promise need not impair the socializing qualities of college sport. It is not necessary to 'include athletics in the curriculum' of the undergraduate or to legislate out of them their life and spirit in order to extract what educational values they promise in terms of courage, independent thinking, cooperation, initiative, habits of bodily activity and, above all, honesty in dealings between man and man. Whichever conception of the function of the American college, intellectual or socializing agency, be adopted, let only the chosen ideal be followed with sincerity and clear vision, and in the course of years our college sport will largely take care of itself."
THE SHAPING OP ATHLETIC POLICIES
The report defines the several groups conected with a college through ties of common loyalty and for whose benefit teams are maintained. "Many of the motives actuating the groups that embody these special interests are unselfish. Because those motives spring from the idealism and the loyalties which characterize men, and especially youths, the world over and which smolder but are not quenched under the advance of years, we should be the poorer without them. For one New England college Daniel Webster set them forth in enduring words. With Americans a passive college loyalty is not enough. True loyalty to a university must actuate to pride, and pride to activity. Nor must that activity be merely nominal. It must not stop with polite unessentials; it must dominate and control. Once the seeming necessity to control emerges, the conflict of the interests begins. Trustees, faculties, directors, alumni, townspeople, all, indeed, except the undergraduates, who might profit most by athletics, have expected, and in some instances demanded, that the shaping of athletic policies be entrusted at least in part to them.
"These facts are reflected in the various forms of athletic control which exist in the colleges and universities of the study. The most popular single type of board embodies a balanced representation of various groups, for example, the faculty, alumni, and undergraduates, each equally, to the number of two, three, or four members, It is, of course, obvious that in such a body the persistence or the strength of character of an older or more expert member may easily dominate. Several instances (Allegheny, Dartmouth, Pennsylvania State College, University of Pennyslvania) illustrate absolute alumni control."
PHYSICAL PROVISION
"It is a pleasure to record that a number of colleges and universities have made for the physicians and others charged with the physical welfare of undergraduates a provision that seems to be adequate. At Chicago, Dartmouth, Oberlin, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale the doctors' offices and equipment appear to be of the best. At Harvard, ingenuity, resourcefulness, and a leaning toward scientific research have combined to place the accommodations provided for the field physician and the medical adviser among those most productive of good, not alone for 'varsity contestants but also for all men engaged in athletics."
SCHOOLBOYS "SHOP ABOUND"
Concerning Secondary School Athletes the report says: That the practice of recruiting has induced schoolboys to "shop around," offering their services on the football field, baseball diamond, basketball court, and track to "the highest bidder."
That of the thousands of instances of recruiting and subsidizing reported, alumni were responsible for 30 per cent, college administrators for 8 per cent and athletic officers in 50 per cent, and that "correspondence" leads all other methods of establishing contacts with promising athletes.
That only from 18 to 25 per cent of the students in the institutions considered in the survey engage in intercollegiate athletics, although the number participating in intramural athletics runs between 50 and 63 per cent.
RECRUITING
The chapter dealing with "The Recruiting and Subsidizing of Athletes" has provoked much comment. Recruiting is defined as "the solicitation of school athletes with a view to inducing them to attend a college or university." In its manifestations it may range "from rare and occasional contacts" made or directed by an individual in the athletic association, as at Chicago University, University of Colorado, Cornell and Washington State College, to "an intensively organized, sometimes subtle system that may utilize or coordinate numbers of agents on or off the campus." This latter system, "which gives to recruiting its most insidious form," is typical of the methods in use at Michigan, Northwestern, Oglethorpe, Southern California and Wisconsin, says the report.
Soliciting and bidding for athletes is "especially keen," the report asserts, "in the midwest and South and on the Pacific Coast," while in the Rocky Mountain Conference, "the practice, although not general, is spreading. " It is "less strenuous in the Southwest, and with one or two exceptions in New England, than it is in the other Eastern and Middle Atlantic States."
Several institutions, the report says, have not yielded to the temptation to obtain a winning team by recruiting methods. These institutions include Bowdoin, Lehigh, Massachusetts Agricultural, Middlebury, Trinity, Tufts, Tulane, College of Wooster, Emory, Reed and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Occasional instances of acts of individuals officially connected with Amherst, Chicago, University of Colorado, Cornell, Oberlin and Vanderbilt were not considered sufficient to place those institutions in the category of colleges where recruiting is an established practice.
According to the report, at some institutions "the amount and nature of correspond- ence demand that a member of the athletic staff or a coach out of season shall attend to the letters of prospective athletes, and in some cases the files contain literally hundreds of letters to or about promising schoolboy athletes scattered over a very wide area (Brown, Dartmouth, Montana State College, New York University, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin)."
The report states that, "A common misconception touching the personal recruiting of athletes for intercollegiate competition is that most of the work is done by alumni. The facts of our inquiry prove conclusively that this is not the case. Of one hundred and twelve colleges and universities visited, at only a little over thirty per cent was recruiting conducted by alumni. In slightly over half of the cases it was an affair of the athletic departments, and in eight per cent it rested upon administrative, executive, or academic officers. This apportionment of the responsibility for recruiting takes into account all activities of organizations, groups, or individuals concerning whom information has been sufficient to justify conclusions. In this particular, then, alumni are scarcely so black as they have been painted.
"In a majority of the cases in which alumni recruit, the consent of the athletic department or the institution may amount to cooperation. The part played by correspondents and alumni secretaries has been indicated. The usual form of cooperation is that in which the athletic department directs the alumni in establishing contacts with prospective athletes. Alumni may be urged to cooperate with recruiting agents in the field by facilitating personal introductions and interviews.
"Their aid is often enlisted in offering hospitality of various sorts to high school athletes. Alumni dinners, whether held at the university or at a distance, annually or as special gatherings in honor of victorious teams, are a fruitful source of contacts (Brown, Dartmouth, Rutgers)."
The report defines a subsidy as "any assistance, favor, gift, award, scholarship or concession, direct or indirect, which advantages an athlete because of his athletic ability or reputation and which sets him apart from his fellows in the undergraduate body."
Following is a list of the only institutions studied where no evidence of subsidizing was found:
Bates Bowdoin Carleton Chicago Cornell University Dalhousie Emory Illinois Laval McGill Marquette Massachusetts Agricultural College Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ottawa Queen's Reed Rochester University of Sas- katchewan Toronto Trinity Tufts Tulane United States Military Academy University of Virginia Wesleyan Williams College of Wooster Yale
"In this list," the report declares, "stand colleges and universities of all sizes, sections of the continent, conferences and unions. At some the temptations to subsidize are less strong than at others. At some there has been subsidizing in the past. Of any one it is impossible to say that there will be no subsidizing in the future. Possibly also at the time of the field visit subsidizing existed without being discovered, but in our inquiry an apparent absence of subsidizing inevitably occasioned the closest scrutiny. Whatever may be the rights and wrongs of athletic subsidies, the conditions encountered at this group of institutions, especially at those enjoying keen intercollegiate competition, should encourage those who feel that subsidies ought to be eliminated from American college athletics."
"Of all jobs, legitimate or illegitimate, that are filled by athletes, waiting on table has proved to be the most convenient and satisfactory to the athletes employed. At training tables (Colorado, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, Haskell, Pennsylvania, Yale) numbers of waiterships are usually available for 'varsity athletes or promising freshmen. In some instances these are so administered as to provide legitimate employment for athletes; in others they are clearly subsidies. For example, when they are divided without prejudice between athletes and non-athletes, or awarded to any needy student regardless of his athletic prominence, they can scarcely be regarded as subsidies.
"Hence, athletes at a number of universities have been subsidized under the guise of sporting goods salesmen (Dartmouth, Drake, Texas, University of Washington, Wyoming) ..."
At Brown, Denver, Northwestern, Purdue and Wisconsin, says the report, "a more specialized development" is found. There a member of the athletic staff or some other individual has had little to do but recruit and subsidize athletes. Freshman coaches are employed similarly in off seasons at Alabama, Colgate, Dartmouth and to some extent at Columbia.
Some of the many ways in which groups or individuals among alumni assist athletes, especially in conjunction with other agencies, have been set forth. A little apart from these practices stands the over-enthusiastic alumnus, who, aroused by competition for athletes on behalf of rival colleges, is led on his own initiative to match or to exceed these inducements by assisting promising schoolboys, from two or three to ten in number, to attend his own Alma Mater (Dartmouth, University of lowa, Pennsylvania, Southern California, Stanford). In no case studied were qualities other than athletic prominence apparently so important a consideration in the minds of the men who gave the assistance. Challenged in this traffic, the alumnus usually replies that he has a perfect right thus to help young men if he chooses. The fallacies of this position are outlined in Chapter XII. For the present it should be noted that much has been done (Dartmouth), and much more can be done, by genuine efforts to eliminate this independent type of subsidizing.
"This practice in some particulars associates itself with a rather more far-sighted effort on the part of alumni. In the East, relations have been established between certain private preparatory schools on the one hand and certain colleges and universities on the other, whereby athletes, varying in number from one to as many as twenty, have been wholly or partly maintained at the schools until they are ready for college (Brown, Carnegie Institute of Technology, Dartmouth, Dickinson, Lafayette, New York University, Pittsburgh, Princeton, Syracuse, Washington and Jefferson). Those most frequently responsible for the arrangement, which, whether old or new, is predicated upon mutual good will and a supposed advantage to both college and school, are alumni, headmasters, and coaches. The actual basis of operations may be a number of free places or scholarships in a school to which alumni as individuals or as groups may appoint athletes of promise, or merely a working understanding under which boys are induced to enter the school on such especially favorable financial conditions as the school coach or headmaster is able to arrange. In a few instances, the athlete's school expenses have been paid from a college athletic slush fund. It is only fair to state that rumors of similar subsidizing on behalf of certain other institutions have not been substantiated by the present inquiry."
In connection with the large numbers of "Athletic scholarships" at many institutions, the report makes this interesting observation:
"No single factor has contributed more directly to the use of athletic scholarships in American colleges than the second qualification set by the will of Cecil Rhodes for recipients of the Oxford scholarships that bear his name. Certain American institutions Dartmouth, Rutgers and Swarthmore, for examples—award scholarships upon what is termed an all-around basis, including, besides scholastic excellence, qualities of 'leadership,' interest in undergraduate activities, usually physical vigor, and, perhaps, value to the student body. Obviously all of these qualifications except the first point in the direction of athletic ability. When, in awards, intellectual achievement is underrated, and qualities of character and 'leadership,' thereby are given undue emphasis, an 'all-round scholarship' is in reality granted on the basis of athletic skill and attainment. Examination of academic records of such scholarship holders usually bears out this view."
