1953–54 Volume 78 No 1–5 - Phi Delta Theta Scroll Archive

178 THE SCROLL of Phi Delta Theta for January, 1954
reasonable doubt, "He teaches dirty football."
In the whole country there probably
aren't half a dozen such traitors to sportsmanship.
Every team from time to time will
have an individual who either forgets himself
in the heat of play or who deliberately
plays dirty, but there aren't many and there
are ways of handling those who do. Most of
the "incidents" we hear about are more or
less accidental; a normally clean player just
loses his head. Consistent offenders, individuals
or schools, should be made to conform
or quit the game.
4. Danger—Any sport based on bodily contact
will have a certain amount of danger
involved, especially minor injuries. But in
terms of fatalitits and lasting injuries I
doubt that football is anywhere near as
dangerous as driving a car on Bayshore
Highway.
Surely, many of us who have played football
will for the rest of our lives have a few
creaky joints, front teeth that might not be
our own, and possibly an extra lump on our
noses. But in my case (and I'm no exception),
I'm sure that the lessons learned in
sportsmanship, teamwork, self-denial, and
plain old hard work will more than compensate
for the physical ailments we may
have incurred.
Football did plenty for me. My father
died when I was little, and I had to help
support my mother. If it hadn't been for
football I wouldn't have been able to go to
coUege at all, and there >are hundreds of
other guys in America who can tell you
pretty much the same story.
A few fall in the "athletic bum" class;
they went to college to play football, not to
get an education. But most of us played football
so we could go to college. At Stanford
and at a surprising number of other schools,
considering all the propaganda, you have to
have the grades to get in and you have to do
the work to stay in. Coaches and interested
alumni will help out in the matter of finding
jobs, but that's as far as it goes.
I don't care how good a football player
you are, Stanford will toss you right out if
you don't keep up your grades, and I think
this is right. I've met a few men from those
"football schools" who rode the gravy train
all through school and never cracked a book.
They had it so easy that they threw away
the things that were most valuable, and
they came out of school still boys instead of
men. As they mature they see what they've
lost, and believe me they regret it.
Thank goodness these fellows are in the
minority, and that most schools, as Stanford,
make their athletes come up to the same
standards as the rest of the student body.
The few schools that don't can be handled
without killing footbaU.
I regret now that I left school to go into
pro ball a year before I got my degree; the
pull of that long green stuff was just too
much. I always intended to come back and
finish, but I was drafted two weeks after
Pearl Harbor and it was a pretty long war.
Anyhow, you can't blame football, or Stanford
either; it was my own fault. As long as
I was at Stanford I was governed by the
same rules as everyone else.
Professional football, I've found, is a lot
rougher than the college brand. It's bound
to be when your bread and butter depend
on your flattening the other guy. Most of us
stick within the rules, but there's a higher
percentage of guys who deliberately play
it dirty. Just check the injury list some
time.
Pro ball is a spectacle that draws the
crowds, and as long as it makes money it'll
have it own niche in American life. But
college footbaU isn't just a spectacle, it's an
institution important far beyond its status
as a mere sport. It has a few bad points,
created by a very small minority. Let's go
after those bad points instead of attacking
the entire institution.
As far as I'm concerned the good derived
from football outweighs the few evils by a
tremendous margin.
The General Council of * A G will hold a business meeting at the Conrad Hilton Hotel in
Chicago on January 23-24 at the call of Pres. George S. Ward.