THIS SUSPENSE IS AWFUL

The latest of the many suggestions for the panacea which is to keep college athletics free from any taint of professionalism is a board of control for Harvard, Yale and Princeton. We have said so much of late (but so have a lot of other people) about college athletics--and particularly about intercollegiate football--that we hesitate to devote any more space to it. This, however, we hope will be the last for some time to come.

We do not agree with the "Yale News" that a board of control is necessary or advisable. Such a board would defeat its own purpose by further emphasizing the over organization of football. A conference between representatives of the three colleges could very easily accomplish all that is essential and it could do it quickly. We believe that the following steps are necessary: (1) Abolish Walter Camp's and all other "All-American" mythical teams; cut down all publicity as much as possible; (2) Abolish all "summer" or pre-college term practice; (3) Abolish all advertising, of any intentional sort, of intercollegiate contests; (4) Eliminate as much as possible intersectional contests--so far as this is compatible with playing, opponents of equal strength. The matter of subsifized athletes, clean playing, professional coaching, and the so-called "tramp" athlete, are not problems which can be successfully dealt with by rule; no college need have any of these if it does not so choose.

And then there is the question of the student bodies. The means of insuring good sportsmanship and strict amateur standing in college athletics is not through compulsion of any sort, but through the education of college public opinion. When every college man realizes that the game itself, and not its result, is the really important thing in sport, there will be no fear of professionalism or anything like it. The prevalent idea that it is a positive disgrace to lose a game is what is largely responsible for most of the present difficulty, and when it gives way to the feeling that it is worse than a disgrace to behave in a manner which could possibly be construed as unsportsmanlike or ungentlemanly, the troubles which so cloud the horizon now will disappear of themselves and the era of sport for sport's sake and not for trophy will set in.