One Harvard player, for example, said that football is too grueling to be considered in the same light as year-round crew. Football, he continued, demands excessive nervous energy and constant imperviousness to injury.
Tackle Mike Sheridan opposed spring practice, although he felt that a reinstatement would improve the calibre of Ivy football. "Without spring football a player can -- and should -- take advantage of more free time for studying, pursuing private interests, -- even loafing if he wants."
Bert Messenbaugh and Eric Nelson, who also opposed spring practice, argued that the present football program is especially valuable to pre-med majors such as themselves. They praised the Ivy League for its "intellectual maturity" and "beautiful sense of compromise" in keeping the emphasis on football such that the player has a chance to pursue academic interests and careers.
There could be no such thing as "voluntary workouts" in the spring, several players who opposed spring practices noted, admitting that if they knew somebody was out for their position, they too would be compelled to prove their interest and ability by going out for spring ball--in most cases against their wills.
One player would not fall back on an overworked crutch and refused to call the spring relaxation he enjoys a "chance to study." Instead, he merely said, "I like to have my own time at my own disposal. If spring football were reinstated in the Ivy League, I would not play football at all." He called the accusations of lack of interest and laziness in football which relied on interest in spring football "high schoolish" and "immature fanaticism."
Also, many players feared that a reinstatement would lead to a tread-mill kind of situation in which football would overrun itself with pressures for athletic scholarships