The recent spewings in two Boston afternoon papers about Chip Gannon in particular and the Harvard football team in general, both of which met with speedy and heated denials from the persons concerned, are merely further exhibition of Hub sports writing that could be labelled most generously as "colorful." A more accurate appellation might be 'gossip-mongering," but that's not a pretty phrase.

This nauseating form of Journalism reaches its peak at this season of the year, after the football compaign is concluded and the multitude of All-DeWolfe Street elevens laid to rest in newspaper archives. Hockey and basketball, while sports of sufficient interest to please even the most greedy promoters, do not contain sufficient human interest to fill all the columns of the numerous pages Boston papers apparently feel must be devoted to sports. As a result, every last drop of blood must be squeezed out of the personalities in whom there is greater interest, and every rumor, gag, and warmed-over story told in bars and clubs finds its way into print.

The city of Boston is in even a more peculiar position, being situated in an area which takes its hockey very seriously, its basketball with a yawn and condescending "what's that?" One local morning paper, in fact, has never mentioned basketball in its columns--for reasons of its own, to be sure, but still leaving an emgarrassing gap in its columns that must be otherwise filled.

What Price Amateurism?

In a place such as New York, which invites the most obvious comparison, there is sufficient sporting activity all there is sufficient sporting activity all year round, and ample interest in all of them for the problem to be less crucial, but even Manhattan dailies, especially the tabloids, do not fall innocent of the charge. Nevertheless, it is surprising to find sheer hearsay and blatant speculation in Boston's so-called "family papers," the dailies which find their way into most living rooms, clubs, and even Harvard dining halls.

It is the afternoon papers to whom this charge is most applicable. The morning dallies need only recapitulate the games and events that have taken place the evening before, but the evening editions are called upon to interpret, angle and dress up the same information that has already appeared. The result is such incidents as the recent two items about Harvard, which caused bitterness and embarrassment, not to mention the fact that they were also unture or warped.

At the risk of being termed prissy, it might also be added that college athletes are presumably amateurs, and any investigation into the Cambridge situation is not likely to invalidate the claim. With professionals, an intense scrutiny into private lives, actions, statements and future plans might be condoned on the grounds that the pros take such probing as part of their livelihood--although that, too, is subject to debate. Collegiate performers, on the other hand, who are ostensibly on teams because they like to play, rather than as a means of supporting themselves, should be treated as such., Their sports activities are worthy of comment, but their private lives are strictly their own affair, except when valid claims of professionalism can be produced.

To Print or Not to Print

That is why doctors associated with the Varsity football team this fall allowed only the most general descriptions of injuries sustained by Harvard players to be published, causing complaints at times from every reporter who covered the squad. It seemed at the time that numerous meaty treatises on shoulder separations, inside ankle sprains and the like were verboten, but on sober post season reminiscence it doesn't seem to have made much difference. People still wrote "leg injury," and nobody seemed to care.

The solution to the whole problem, it would seem, is merely to abbreviate sports pages in off-season periods. To tell a veteran of the Tinker to Evers to Chance school that it is unnecessary to express himself when there is nothing to say--unless he possesses the imagination and ability of the New York Herald Tribune's Red Smith, who is probably the best working sports columnist of the day--may sound like heresy, but it's undoubtedly better than myopic gaves into an athletic crystal ball.