The Whole Man has returned to football. Now that substitutions have been strictly re-limited, industrialized specialization has left the gridiron and real sport has come back. Two-platooning may have enabled more men to participate in the game, but it certainly did not give more of them a chance to play football. Imagine baseball with separate hitting and fielding teams, and you get an exaggerated idea of what unlimited substitution was doing to football.
It's true that the little man will no longer find so many open positions. What of it? An occasional Albie Booth notwithstanding, college football is not a game for lightweights, any more than basketball is a game for shrimps. These are the facts, "unsporting" as they may seem.
The new rule will once again force coaches to teach football--total football. Proficiency in all phases of a particular game is, after all, a desirable target for any athlete.
One mid-Western coach, however, objected to the change because, "now we'll have to start re-training the specialists." This was an unusual comment. Even with unlimited substitution, most good coaches drilled offensive players in defensive tactics, and vice versa. What the mid-Westerner objected to, in other words, was having to return to sound coaching practices.
Whether the rule will, as advertised, "de-commercialize" football, is questionable. Those schools which have been buying specialists are unlikely to refrain from competition for all-around players. Limited substitution's main value lies in the way it re-emphasises balanced football as a sport, and the physical benefits to be derived therefrom. More than ever, conditioning will be an essential to football success.
Realization of this has provoked a mild advocacy of the re-establishment of spring practice. Because the Ivy League considers spring drills to be a more blatant form of commercialism than $4.80 admissions, this movement is slightly surprising.
The Ivy League presidents will, though, debate this issue in their forthcoming meeting. Although most of the group still considers football as a fall sport only, two considerations seem to dictate the prompt re-authorization of spring workous.
First, the new stress on well-conditioned players demands that more time be allotted to shape up a squad. As Lloyd Jordan has frequently remarked: "There is only one conditioner for football. Football."
Second, despite the fact that coaches have trained men in the fundamentals of the "other" platoon, very few players today are totally competent two-way operatives. The situation--here at least--is not so bad as in the mid-West. But a system which has been geared to produce specialists cannot be expected to turn out football players under the same limited practice conditions.
The coaches have generally lined up on opposite sides--small college coaches favoring the abolition of the multi-team system--big college still for it. Strangely enough, from what quotes have appeared in the press recently, it would seem that their wards are not much worried, however. The man who was supposed to benefit most from the two-platoon system, the player, in many cases favors the one-way ticket.
