Cornell Alumni News - eCommons@Cornell

Symposium:
What Happens to Football Players?
As Students
BY PROF. F. G. MARCHAM
When in November, 1945, the presidents
of Brown, Columbia, Cornell,
Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania,
Princeton, and Yale announced an
agreement to regulate the football relations
of their colleges, a Committee on
Eligibility was announced with the Cornell
member, Professor Frederick G.
Marcham, PhD '26, as its first chairman.
Duty of this committee was to formulate
and administer eligibility rules
for the group and pass on eligibility of
all players.
V^ΓTΉEN the Eligibility Committee
^* of the "Ivy League" began
work three years ago, one of the first
topics it studied was the academic
standing of football players in the universities
and colleges of our own informal
group. We knew the common
belief that football players are academically
sub-normal. And, while no one
had made a point of condeminng the
Ivy League in this respect, we wished
to learn whether, if such an attack
came, we could give a satisfactory
answer to it.
The complaint regarding the academic
achievements of football players
usually hinges on two allegations: that
if they have sufficient athletic skill,
they can gain admission to college despite
academic deficiencies; and that,
once in college, they are given preferred
treatment which enables them to
stay in good academic standing despite
their deficiencies. If these allegations
are true, college football players
should show up as a group standing
lower in academic performance than
the rest of the student body.
The Eligibility Committee has concerned
itself so far only with the standing
of football players in relation to the
total student body. Its records deal
with the years 1946-47 and 1947-48.
We have gathered from each of our
member universities and colleges the
facts concerning each player who won
his letter in football, and we are in a
position not only to say where a player
stood in relation to other students in
his university taking a course similar
to his, but we can make a rough comparison
between the academic standing
of, shall we say, Pennsylvania's football
team and Cornell's.
This over-all information the chairman
of the Eligibility Committee will
shortly release. Since I do not wish to
jump the gun on our chairman, Dean
Kenny of Brown, I shall confine myself
to the Cornell facts and figures as they
relate to the letter-men who were in
198
college during the second term of 1947-
48.
At that time, there were twentyfour
football letter-men of the preceding
season in the University, and they
were distributed eleven in Arts and
Sciences, two in the School of Industrial
& Labor Relations, and the remainder
in one or another of the
Schools of Engineering. Considered
College by College, the record is clear
to this extent: that the men in Arts
and Sciences found the going roughest.
None of them was in the top fifth
of the College, two were in the second
fifth, and five in the third fifth. The
record of the two men in Industrial &
Labor Relations was superb: one in
the top fifth and one in the second.
And the Engineers were not far behind,
with five in the top fifth, three
in the second, two in the third, and one
in the fourth. Thus our total stands as
follows: seven men gained places in the
first fifth of the whole University, five
in the second, seven in the third, three
in the fourth, and only two in the bottom
fifth. In terms of mere averages,
the letter-men stood well above the
norm of the total student body.
But the whole story is not told by
these figures. There is a part which
deals with the attitude of football
players toward their academic work.
If I were to tell this part of the story in
full, I would have to talk about individual
players and try to explain with
what seriousness, or lack of it, they
thought of themselves as students. I
do not know all of them intimately
enough to be able to do this. But I
know enough of them to be able to
make these remarks.
In that list of twenty-four men, I
see one who "busted out" at the end
of his first term. By the time he grad-
Professor Marcham Lectures to His
Class in English History
uated at the end of last spring term, he
had brought his cumulative average
to the point where he stood in the third
fifth of his College. I see another who,
though he met the admission requirements,
was not a promising student as
a Freshman. He stands in the second
fifth. I see mediocre students who
raised their standing substantially,
and I see a good student who climbed
into the top fifth. In the whole group,
there is only one of whom it can be
said that four years at Cornell did
nothing to imporove his standing as a
student.
To me, this part of the story is the
more interesting and the more important.
It would be a serious indictment
of college football if it could be
argued that men came to a great university
like Cornell and were so involved
and absorbed in football, perhaps
so exploited by the coaches, that
their promise as students withered
away. With us, the situation is just
the opposite. Our football players
grow in strength as students. As a
group, they compare favorably with
any other section of our undergraduate
body.
As Alumni
BY LAWRENCE ROBINSON
Lawrence Robinson, sports reporter
of the New York World-Telegram,
came to Ithaca for the Army football
game and talked with members of the
1939 Varsity team who came back for
a reunion and were pictured in our last
issue. The following story, headed
"Playing Football Isn't the Only Thing
That Happens to Stars," appeared in
the World-Telegram October 27. It is
reprinted by permission.
the 1939 Cornell foot-
R EMEMBER
ball team? That was the one that
went through undefeated to win the
Eastern (Lambert Trophy) title and
uphold Ivy League football above and
beyond normal expectation.
It ran over every rival it met, projected
Coach Carl Snavely to a pinnacle
in American football, and perked
up Eastern football immeasurably.
People claimed then that Snavely
virtually hired the team by giving
scholarships galore, easy courses, and
what have you. They insisted that if
they weren't recruited, at least they
were a bunch of guys who enjoyed an
Ithaca opportunity by virtue of gridiron
prowess.
What happens to such guys? It is
interesting to know that they have
been out ten years. Did they end up
as major or minor leaguers, meaning
gridiron bums, or what?
Perhaps that smart team isn't typical
of what happens to footballers, but
their post-graduate history is interesting.
They held a reunion at school last
week to see the Army game, and they
offer an absorbing slant. Here are
their current activities:
Cornell Alumni News