President Eliot, in his annual report, dwells at considerable length upon college athletics. He takes an unfavorable view of their present condition and prospects, and suggests restrictions which we can not but believe would seriously injure the best interests of the students. His recommendation that public betting should be suppressed certainly deserves to be carried into effect; but his suggestion "that freshman intercollegiate contests should be discontinued" seems to have been made without regard for the opinions of those who have most thoroughly investigated the subject. Without intercollegiate contests the freshman teams would fall to the rank of other class teams, which draw out but a few men and give these only a slight amount of irregular practice. It would be doubtful, in fact, whether class teams could be maintained at all without the stimulus of a hard-working freshman team in need of practice and encouragement; but even if they were, the best freshman athletes would have small inducement to train and develope their abilities for later university teams. These facts were recognized by the faculty committee, appointed in 1888 to investigate athletics. They reported: "In view to the fact that these [freshman intercollegiate] contests stimulate the formation of class teams and bring forward athletic men who later enter university teams, the committee are unwilling to recommend total prohibition."

In another and more important matter the President has disregarded the advice of this committee. He recommends that "all practice should be at home and only with other organizations within the same college; that in each sport there should be one, two, or three intercollegiate contests, the interest of which should not be lessened by any inferior competitions either before or afterwards." This means that the university nine and eleven should have two or three matches a year with Yale. and no other games except with second and class teams. The reasons for this restriction are that the present training is too hard, that too few men participate in the sports and that "there is demanded of the candidates for the crews and nines an expenditure of time and strength which is inconsistent alike with the legitimate enjoyments and with the appropriate labors of student life." This, however, is directly contrary to the evidence of the committee who stated that "athletics do not seriously interfere with attendance on college courses," and further that the committee "have obtained positive evidence" and "are themselves surprised at the conclusiveness of the proof that, except in the freshman year, study is not interfered with by athletics." They go even farther than this. They say "Fully alive to the evils which are connected with athletic affairs, the committee are of the opinion that intercollegiate contests stimulate athletics, stimulate general exercise, and thus favorably affect the health and moral tone of the university." With such evidence in favor of intercollegiate contests, it would seem to us exceedingly bad policy to kill them as President Eliot's rules inevitably would. For without minor games outside of the college the university teams could not obtain sufficient practice to be any match for Yale teams, and the "one, two, or three intercollegiate contests" would become a mere farce. Moreover it would greatly decrease the interest of candidates to be shut off from the possibility of playing on a college team in some less important game, even if they were not chosen for the Yale games. The second nine and eleven would be especially effected by this restriction, and would probably soon have to be discontinued, and the old spirit of "indifference" would then spread to the class teams. We do not believe that President Eliot intended any such injury to athletics and the general welfare of the students, but we are convinced that his suggestions if adopted would inevitably have these evil effects.