Every Saturday, the "greatest football games in the East" flick across the stage of the Pilgrim Theatre. For eighty-five cents you can take in the whole proceedings.

Last weekend, for instance, Theatre Network Television, which promotes the broadcasts, sent over the Princeton-Navy game. The management of the Pilgrim apparently didn't have much better luck than local proprietors of stadiums in drawing a crowd for a ball game. Most of the audience, which sat sullenly in its seats nibbling popcorn, seemed to favor Princeton. A good many were Nassau expatriates doing graduate work here. Sailors attended in scattered clumps and watched the proceedings with mixed feelings. Service pride demanded that they cheer for their future officers most of the time but when things went awry for Annapolis they weren't terribly sorry. After all, officers are officers.

According to athletic directors all over the country, TV is wrecking football by keeping crowds away from the playing fields. After watching the show at the Pilgrim, I think they should start looking for some less superficial reason. Watching players maul each other on a screen isn't the same as sitting in the stands. All the pageantry was out of it--the girls in plaid dresses, the band uniforms, the colors, the requests for shots from the bottle. There was little cheering and such as there was lacked gusto. I've never gone along with those who consider football merely a spectator sport. Participating in all the insane hoopla, before, during, and after the game is easily as exhilarating as watching the actual contest. The telecasters did manage to get some of the noise across to the audience but it had as little zip as the sounds that come over in any football broadcast.

Power Falls

Even if the watcher cared not a whit for football atmosphere, he still probably wouldn't have a very good time. Last Saturday during a particularly thrilling series of plays in which Princeton moved threateningly into Navy territory, the screen blanked out. Later the audience was told the power at Annapolis had temporarily failed but by the time the theatre received the image again, the ball had gone over to Navy and nobody in the theatre was quite sure how.

For any coach who wants to scout without travelling for hundreds of miles, the big telecasts are just fine. In the limited scope of a television camera, line play is much easier to watch. On the other hand, the lack of contrast in the blacks and whites on the screen makes the ball very hard to follow and quite impossible to follow when a tricky play fools the cameramen into focusing on the wrong parts of the field. The Princeton and Navy offenses managed to do this pretty often.

The game itself was a rather disquieting experience. Princeton won, 24 to 20 by virtue of superior place-kicking. Tail-back Dick Kazmaier passed for all three of Princeton's touchdowns. It looks like a tough autumn.