The statement that football is not enjoyed by the majority of its players, an opinion expressed by George Owen Jr. '23 in a recent article in the Independent Magazine, is heartily corroborated by Morton Henry Prince '75, rusher on Captain Ellis' 1874 football team which defeated McGill University 3 to 0.

Mr. Prince's article, published in the issue of the Alumni Bulletin which makes its appearance today, upholds one side of the discussion occasioned by Owen's unexpected statement. Several other letters received at the Bulletin office have been fully as favorable to Owen's point of view. Mr. Prince's article is printed in full below.

"At last the cat is out of the bag, and George Owen, the famous Harvard football star, has let it out in an article in the current issue of the Independent, reproduced in the Harvard Bulletin and other publications. He gives it as his frank opinion 'that the majority of college football players do not enjoy playing the game. There are, of course, a certain number of exceptions, but these are the men, I think, who would enjoy any fight.' But for the majority of players 'capacity for enjoyment of the game as a game is in many instances completely lost. It is only after the season is over that he can look back with any pleasure on what he has been through and then the feeling of pleasure is commensurate largely on the degree of the team's success. In almost any sport you can suffer reverses and not feel that the world is coming to an end, but not in football.'

Compared New With Old Game

"I have been for a long time interested in this and other questions connected with the modern game of football and have made systematic observations and inquiries of football players, and I came to the same conclusions that George Owen has come to. I was rash enough to incorporate these and other comments on the modern game as compared with the game as originally played at Harvard and in England in my account of the history of football in the Harvard H' Book, but I was requested to cut all this out on the ground, although it was said to be admittedly true, that football was running the gamut of sufficiently severe criticism, and not to incite it further; and so, not to be 'nasty', I cut it out.

Finds Few Enjoyed Football

"In my inquiries, which included one captain of Yale team, I only found two who were playing, or had played, the game, who said that they enjoyed it; and these two were old 'grads'.

"The question whether or not the player enjoys the game as a game is not as easy to find an answer to as might seem at first sight. Undoubtedly George Owen's statement will be contested by many players. The Boston Herald has interviewed live former football stars and found only one, Charlie Brickley, who substantially agreed with Owen.

But Owen did not write of football saws he wrote of the majority of players, which is quite a different matter. Undoubtedly the majority of stars, those who excel, who can beat their fellows at the game, enjoy it; but that involves the personal factor what is known as 'individual psychology'. Stars are in a class by themselves. It is whether the majority enjoy the game that is the important point.

"In Love With Our Memories"

"As every psychologist knows, one cannot rely upon unanalyzed, unexamined memories. Undoubtedly the memories of many old players when looking back in retrospect are those of enjoyment of the game; but what they really are in love with are their memories, which are enjoyable, while the original experiences may not have been enjoyable at all.

"It is the same thing as when one has been through some frightful anxious adventure, like a shipwreck at sea, or a lucky escape from the charge of a lion while game hunting; the original experience was far from enjoyable, but when looking back in retrospect one enjoys, has even a thrill, in recalling the adventure, although at the time one may have been almost frantic with anxiety or fear. We are in love with our memories though the original experiences were far from lovable. The same principle applies to pleasurable football memories.

"The only way of obtaining reliable data is to catechizes the players at the time they are engaged in playing the game and even then such are the fallacies due to the well-known principles of rationalizing and compensating, that a very precise questionnaire by experts is necessary to elicit reliable facts. Too much feeling enters into the question to settle if off hand by superficial questioning. The best test is behavior.

Football An Unpopular Pastime

"Why, if the majority of players enjoy playing the game, do they not play it amongst themselves, without being on college teams? Why do not college undergraduates, and even young graduates go out of an afternoon and play the game by themselves, with or without being organized as a team, and under their own leadership? That is the way in tennis, and baseball, and other sports, and used to be the custom with football, even when there were no intercollegiate football matches. And that was the way in hockey when young graduates used to play organized teams until the extra-mural game got into the hands of professionals, forcing amateurs to drop out.