(The Crimson invites all men in the University to submit signed communications of timely interest. It assumes no responsibility, however, for sentiments expressed under this head and reserves the right to excluded any whose publication would be palpably inappropriate.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

In regard to your editorial Friday, in which you took a stand against the importance of football in college, I should like to day that I think your six points were badly chosen and that you are seeking the wrong remedy for what I fail to see is such a great evil anyway. Lack of space prevents me from going very deeply into my arguments, but I am willing to go into any of them more fully at your request.

As to shortening the season, I will pass over the fact tat it would not allow the team enough time to develop to its full capacity. It would mean playing five games where now we play eight with the result that there would only be two games before Princeton in which to try out new material, give men experience and confidence and get them working together, and pick a team. The Princeton game would lose its importance and would be merely an ordinary mid-season game, while our friendly rivalry would only exist with Yale. However, looking upon it from the practical side it would mean about one hundred thousand less people (a low estimate when one realizes such games as Penn State, Centre, and Georgia, which drew capacity crowds last year, would have to be cut out) would pay entrance, and when we consider that seats average two dollars apiece and that the Athletic Association supports practically all other sports on football earnings barely breaking even at the end of the year, it takes no great genius to figure out that either the H. A. A. would either run $200,000 annually in the hole (an obvious impossibility), or else we would have to give up most of our minor sports and class teams in order to put University teams on the field.

About intersectional contests it is a matter of opinion. There is no doubt as to the stimulus they gave to athletics in other parts of the country, a stimulus that twenty years ago all colleges sought with all their might, and which we still carry out here with compulsory physical training for Freshmen; and intercourse between colleges of different sections, besides serving to unite them, helps destroy the ideas of Harvard snobs and dudes. This was never illustrated better than at the time of the California trip two years ago when the west discovered what Harvard is really like. If intersectional games are only players occasionally they are a good thing--the trouble comes when they are overdone.

As to a committee to supervise eligibility, it is absolutely unnecessary. At Harvard, and I suppose at Yale and Princeton, eligibility cards are made out by all players covering all the points you mentioned, and it is regarded as a point of honor in each college to see that they are lived up to. Your method is like having a man appoint a committee to look after the virtue of his wife.

In regard to the entrance examinations for transfer students, it is entirely an academically question and should be dealt with other than in connection with football. Football should not be made to set the standards of education.

Your next suggestion of not allowing a coach on the bench is ridiculous when you stop to think of the responsibility it would place on the captain who has all he can do to run the game on the field as it is. He would have to be thinking continually of who to substitute and when besides watching for what men are playing badly. In a year like next when the captain is quarterback it would be almost impossible. Further more, as long as coaches are graduates, as they all are here, why should they not tell a player on the sidelines how to meet a situation, as long as they do not direct the play or speak to a man while on the field, both of which are against the rules and are never done at Harvard. Besides, the coaches from the stands could size up the situation just as well as from the bench, and give instructions to a team between the halves.

As to organized scouting, do you realize what it is? As conditions now exist everything is entirely understood between colleges, everything is entirely above board. We send tickets for scouts to other colleges and they do the same to us. If this is stopped nothing will prevent graduates from sending back information informally, and where now it entails nothing but the best of feeling, there would be suspicion and misunderstandings which would not add to the best interests of the game.

To sum up my points, I do not think you attack the problem from the right side. The game in itself is fine. It is developed to its full capacity just as is crew, hockey, baseball, track, and every other support. It has stimulated interest in all sports for all men such as was never dared to even hope for a generation ago. The trouble lies not with the men who play it but with those who do not--those who are so largely influenced by newspapers. If less space was given to football, if the daily papers treated is like other college sports, it would not attract the attention that it does, and would not now be the "momentous" question you make it out.

The limitation of publication and a cessation of all this "get back at Yale" talk, so prevalent in the papers, could easily be accomplished. I know most of the sport writers well enough to appreciate their goodwill to the game and to the college and that they are willing to serve its best interest. Those who would not comply could be forced into it by excluding them from the press box and the field, which-could easily be done, until they would be brought to agreement by the power of competition. This general line could be followed by you and the Yale and Princeton papers by making football relatively less important to other college activities. I firmly believe more could be accomplished this way for it is the newspapers which stir up public opinion, and it is the newspapers which have made this mountain out of what virtually is a molehill.

March 25, 1922.  EUGENE REYNAL '24