While Harvard battles UMass this weekend in the opening round of the NCAA baseball championships, a team which swept the Crimson in a double-header will be studying for exams since it did not receive a tournament bid. We can be sure that the Princeton team appreciates the extra study time, but when it finds that for the third straight year it has gotten short-changed the tradeoff seems less attractive.

The Tigers, after a slow start, rolled to a 22-7-1 record, including a 9-6, 11-2 sweep of EIBL champion Harvard at Cambridge. In District II they were 16-2. But an ECAC rule which forbids the selection of more than one team from the Eastern League denied Princeton a chance to be invited since Harvard had already gotten a spot. Among the four teams invited from Princeton's district is Seton Hall, a team which was 14-12.

"This is the third year in a row for us," Tiger captain Ray Huard said Wednesday night. "It hurts us more and more each year." Last spring Princeton was 14-2 in District II but could not go because Cornell was selected. This season's record meant that Princeton had produced 20-victory seasons back-to-back for the first time in the modern era. Pitcher Jack Hittson was 9-0, a Princeton record, and Huard hit five home runs, also a record. Both are seniors who've been on the team all three years that Princeton has been shafted. Harvard certainly didn't play great baseball May 8, but the Tigers' sweep must indicate something; no other team beat the Crimson twice in one day.

No Guts

Princeton is unhappy not only with the rule, but with District II's unwillingness to select the Tigers despite the rule. "Our district doesn't have the guts to pick us and then have the NCAA make the decision," Huard said. "Our district hasn't even contested it. We need a test case." The Tigers are at a further disadvantage because District II usually makes its selections after District I, so if District I picks an EIBL team, District II decides it cannot choose one. "We knew it would happen," Huard added.

Of course, Harvard almost got a bad deal, too. When the League finished in a near-tie, the EIBL bureaucrats decided to have Cornell and Harvard play off for the spot even though the Big Red did not agree to make up rained-out games with Army and Navy and had lost a doubleheader, 13-0, 5-0, to the Crimson in late April at Ithaca.

Nothing New

Such injustices are hardly now to college athletics. The NCAA, and its affiliate ECAC, have tied athletics into knots with their bags of rules, and in cases where rules have interfered with the pursuit of fairness, they have always stuck by their statutes. The most memorable recent case was the Jack Langer controversy at Yale. Since Langer played basketball in the Jewish Olympic Games in Israel-an event not sanctioned by the NCAA-he was not eligible to play for Yale his senior year. When Yale and Langer refused to comply all Yale teams were banned from NCAA tournaments for two years. Member colleges must find a way to prevent such manipulations by these power-hungry organizations which were established to aid intercollegiate competition.

It's bad enough that Princeton is ignored every year by the selection committee, but insult is added to injury when the District II championship games are played every year on Princeton's Finney Field while the Tigers watch.