Letters

Big Green Memories

To THE EDITOR:

Allow me to tell you that your football article makes the October 1955 issue a collectible item for all old Dartmouth men. While my memory does not quite include the 1881 team, I did as a child see Billy Odlin when he captained the Phillips Academy teams in 1884. and 1885, and I remember him as coach after he graduated from Dartmouth. His first season produced a 16-0 victory over Exeter.

The laced canvas, unpadded suits, the knitted toques, the V formation all were a part of my early memories. Though I do not approve of any except small bets, I did win through backing Dartmouth in the 1903 game with Harvard.

If you will consult a brochure by my classmate, Clarence G. McDavitt, you will come to believe that Walter Camp did not. as Bankart says, originally pick the All-American players.

Natick, Mass.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Mr. McDavitt, through careful research, has established that the AllAmerican selections were originated by Caspar Whitney, part owner of Week's Sport, a New York publication of the early '9os. An account of his findings appeared in the 1900 class column last month.

Little to Cheer About

To THE EDITOR

I am ashamed of Dartmouth football. In fact I have even lost some of my pride in being a Dartmouth man in the last few years due to the sorry exhibitions put on by Dartmouth football teams. I was brought up and even weaned on the exploits of the great Dartmouth teams of yesteryear and my father and uncles, all loyal Green, took me with great pride and enthusiasm to see the exploits of the Dooleys, MacPhails, Lanes, Oberlanders and Marsters. That pride and enthusiasm was infectious and I could hardly wait until I got a look at Hanover. The look lasted four years and that was the era of Mutt Ray, Johnny Handrahan, Bob MacLeod, and Bill Hutchinson, to mention but a few, and the Big Green could stand up with any team in the country.

Then something happened, there was the screaming about overemphasis on football, and whenever a fellow turned up on campus who looked as if he might be able to carry a pigskin he was pushed aside and the accent was on the "intellectual, well-rounded personality." I went back to Hanover a couple of times and watched shaven undergrads with clean shirts and ties going to classes. I thought I was in the Yale Quad or Harvard Yard. ...

I have traveled around quite a bit in the last six years and I've met a lot of alumni from various sections. One thing I keep hearing is "We sent up a couple of swell boys, both football stars and excellent in their studies, but the College turned them down." Why? What has the College against athletes, especially football stars? What is wrong with giving a scholarship to a fellow who can play football, work for his board, and keep up his studies? Dartmouth never abused the athletic scholarship. Seems to me it would be a good lesson to the schools who major in football above everything to be beaten by a school like Dartmouth who lives by the rules (and I don't mean that no-spring-training rule that ought to be thrown out with the butterfly chasers). I believe it can be done and that would be a helluva lot better and braver than the current technique of hiding behind Ivy League walls and criticizing every one who likes a winner in football.

Palm Beach, Fla.

Athletes Needed

To THE EDITOR

Two years ago, at the close of another disastrous football season, you were good enough to publish a letter of mine castigating the present setup in Dartmouth major athletics. I stated that football was a morale and revenue builder as well as a public relations medium for the College rather than a simple game like rec squash, and that despite our excellent coaching staff, Dartmouth could never produce a winner even in Ivy League competition without earnest and enthusiastic recruiting. I further stated that if the powers that be would not accept these simple facts, the best plan was to stop subjecting our young students to six or seven physical and scoreboard beatings each fall, quit the Ivy League and seek minor-league levels.

As a result I was berated by a large segment of our alumni. One starry-eyed gentleman of the Class of '32 in particular denounced me on the basis of my not realizing that the true function of a college was to educate. I hadn't discussed the function of a college at all, if memory serves, but simply that of a college football team, for whose function see the paragraph above.

This gentleman's solution, by the way, was to drop intercollegiate football altogether. Sadly enough, at this point I am inclined to agree with him. ...

All in all, any alumnus who believes that we can compete with any school without recruiting and subsidization is very likely also in favor of the honor system in international affairs, scrapping of atomic weapons and the like. Our present expedients of dispensing with the services of one of the top coaches in the country and the hiring of a capable but certainly less experienced replacement certainly haven't helped the picture one iota, and won't unless we get a dozen capable players.

We now have, I believe, twenty freshman scholarships in amounts up to $2000 per year to be awarded on the basis of a Rhodes Scholarship. The first recipients of these awards are now sophomores, and as far as I know not one of them is a major sports candidate. Isn't it stretching things a little too far not to come up with even one crack athlete in a group of men picked on this basis? ...

Let's face it, our present major sports athletes are probably splendid young gentlemen, but if we are to participate in ANY intercollegiate sports, we must find a few score splendid young gentlemen who are also vulgarly proficient at athletics. And above all, let's not start a "Scuttle Coach Blackman" movement, as Paul Brown, George Halas and 'lvy Williamson together couldn't produce a team capable of even winning half its games without subsidized athletes.

Los Angeles, Calif.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The foregoing two letters are printed in the interests of free expression of alumni opinion. We do not believe that the facts of the 1955 season justify either letter, and we predict that as the Ivy League goes into formal operation the Dartmouth football team will give alumni plenty of cause for continuing the pride they should have in the team's steady improvement and heads-up play, especially in the late-season games.