Harvard's Football System

Nevertheless, the acceptance by Yale and Princeton in the "Big Three" series of the system which means much convenience and added enjoyment to the spectators at those games, who are entirely alumni of the competing colleges, places Harvard football in a light not entirely tasteful to the students and alumni at Cambridge. If, as is maintained, the adoption of numbers for the convenience of alumni spectators does handicap an eleven, the Harvard team enters the contests with advantages which the others have foresworn.

If seems to simmer down to the fact that in present-day college athletics and in football particularly, the winning of victories has become more of a business than a sport. The detail in management; the minuteness of coaching necessary to the success of an eleven; the sometimes exaggerated publicity; secret practice, and the huge crowds attending the late season games have encroached on the old-time aim of college sport, which was the development of the undergraduate. The pendulum seems to have swung about as far that way as it will go. It is to be hoped that the swing the other way is to come in the near future.

Harvard's football "system" is thorough-going, but it would be well for some of these serious-faced young men to glance occasionally at the motto in the Bowl of the Stadium, which reads: "Dedicated to the joy of manly contest by the class of 1879." --Boston Transcript.