And so the truth about Harvard's amateur football status has finally been revealed, a truth more sordid than any which fancy could have projected. Not content with hiring professional players like any other normal college, she has resorted to illegal methods staggering because of their very insolence.
A Harvard senior, one of those rare personages who occasionally turn up to confound the "how many steps are there on your front porch see you don't know although you climb them every day" dictum of modern psychologists, recently sat in his room, desperately put to pass the time between 1:45 o'clock and 1:55 o'clock when he could amble off to a class. Idly he eyed the cover of the October 1 Saturday Evening Post, which depicted a night football game; and idly he began to count the yard-lines on the grid-iron there displayed. There were only ninety-five yards. In irritation, he counted them again, this time more carefully. There were still only ninety-five yards. With terrible intensity, he made a final count. Ninety-five yards.
Immediately he dashed off a letter, addressed to Mr. Benjamin Franklin, in care of the Saturday Evening Post. In it he demanded a confession of the dark designs behind this hoax which flaunted itself before the unsuspecting eyes of ten million American innocents.
The answer has come, and with it an expose of Harvard football.
"Dear Sir: Fact is, Dick Harlow asked us to shorten the field to ninety-five yards in the hope that his men could get somewhere against Yale at that length. Sincerely, the Editors."
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The Playgoer