Penalty Too Light for Rough Work

Editor Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

The status of modern university football administration has not as yet acquired that ethical development whereby we are warranted in accepting it as having arrived at that exalted state which admits that no further acquisition is essential to its betterment along lines of clean, honorable and manly encounter.

The various modifications, changes, etc., that have practically made the sport another institution have not up to the present time been of sufficient import as to thoroughly impress the players with the high value of observing under all conditions a strict adherence to playing square, fair, straight football.

For illustration, let us take the Yale-Princeton game. One of the teams had worked the ball down to its opponents' five-yard line with a sure chance of a touchdown, when one of the players held in the line. The ball went back fifteen yards and the chance to score was gone. Did this funny business pay whereby one member's rank foolishness spoiled the chance of a much-desired victory?

Did this team's member gain anything for his college or eleven by deliberately breaking a fundamental rule and thus losing a well-earned victory that could have been secured? Do the coaches and team members ever intelligently take into consideration what it costs to lose a championship game by trying unfair methods?

Well, the cost and loss is this:

All the time, energy and expense of a training season is made void. The loss of victory and prestige and the loss to the undergraduates of their hard-earned cash is wiped out.

The penalty of a loss of 15 yards is but a mild administration of justice. The player who essays this trick and is caught should be immediately taken from the game and disgraced from the team. He has by his methods put in jeopardy, the victory so dear to the hearts of the undergraduates and alumni. The hard work and efforts of his team-mates he would neutralize and the expenditure of the monies to meet the heavy expenses of the team would be considered as nought. B. A. Jessup.   --Brooklyn Daily Eagle.