Who's Pure?
It's a curious fact that almost everyone believes that colleges, reputable in other respects, actually subsidize athletes to make their presence in college available for football, track, or baseball teams. And yet in the thirty years that this accusation has been going on there has not been one really noteworthy case in which an athlete of one of the leading eastern colleges either confessed to being subsidized or was forced to a confession by overpowering evidence. And it is curious too that almost every college believes that its rivals are not too free of the practice no matter how "pure" they may feel themselves to be. The recent college vacation period was marked by several "bombshells," the statement by Cornell that athletic subsidies or scholarships were necessary to winning teams, the action of the National Student Federation in favoring the open subsidy of athletes and the statements by W. J. Bingham of Harvard that that institution in a sports way was definitely in the amateur field.
Why is it that one hears so much talk of this kind and yet never comes face to face with a single instance? A Carnegie commission may find athletes holding desirable jobs in colleges but yet they also find nonathletes holding jobs that are often more desirable. The question is raised about athletes subsidized by alumni and alumni association scholarships, and yet one finds that by far the greater number of such recipients of alumni scholarships and favors are non-athletes. What is proved here? Does anybody even mention the number of really fine athletes that are refused admission to standard eastern colleges every year because of lack of scholarship? Does one ever hear of the really accomplished athletes dropped from college because of lack of ability in scholastic lines? Newspapers won't tell such facts but professors will. Does anyone ever hear of the numerous cases of athletes in reputable institutions who are never able to participate in collegiate sports because of being constantly on probation? There are plenty of such cases.
Most of this talk about "professionalized athletics" in reputable colleges is largely poppycock. If such exists it is in direct contradiction to the aims of every branch of the college, the administration, faculty, and the students themselves. And with the wide-awake, more or less sophisticated, uneasy-with-the-times group of students, favors handed out to athletes would be seen to be unjust and would be scored at once. There is the greatest gap in the world between professional and amateur athletics; and no matter how well professional teams may play or how skilful they may be, there is always in the back of the mind of the spectator the feeling that "money makes the mare go." But from the beginnings of sport, and with distinct danger of attack for being "idealistic" in such a statement, there have been few things more desirable in life than the laurel awarded for victory in sports for sports sake. Those who have followed college sports for many years know of the great and painstaking efforts to keep these sports in the amateur field. Everything has operated against such efforts, desire to emulate professional teams, desire to make money, desire to combat in various Rose Bowls, and yet college and school athletics along with the Olympic games represent today the finest phases of American sports.
