Coach Knox Blames Automobiles, Parents, Prep Schools for "Spindle-Legged and Hollow-Chested" American Youth

"The automobile is the worst influence in college life today," declared Coach James L. Knox '98, who as coach of the second University football team for the past ten years, has trained Harvard athletes to meet the high standard of the University squad.

Apparently Coach Knox has little sympathy with the younger generation and its twentieth century mode of life. Terming them a "spindle-legged and hollow-chested" lot, he continues in his denunciation of the present "jazzworn" youth of America.

"Parents and preparatory schools are responsible for the frivolous, spindle-legged, hollow-chested physiques of the younger generation," he said, "No one should be allowed to have an automobile at college. Athletics should take the place of joy rides.

"Preparatory schools are not encouraging athletics in the proper way nowadays. There is too much of this 'sport for the sport's sake stuff.' That is a fundamentally twisted idea. Boys should be taught to play to win, not in any desperate unprincipled way, but by means of determination and fight. The boys who at prep school are not good enough to make the first squad are relegated to a club team where they play for the pleasure of the game. Thats all bosh! Let them get hurt a bit! It will do them lots of good.

"Parents are too anxious about their son's physical safety these days. Its all wrong, Preparatory schools should stress winning the game. Everybody should be forced to play and play hard and regularly.

"This idea of 'you men who are not good enough for the squad should come out and cheer your team to victory' is another mistake. How about making these onlookers practice and practice until they are good enough to make the team. Athletics is the only substitute for this continual dissipation. Everybody in college from Freshmen to Seniors should be compelled to play some strenuous muscle-building game. Then we'd begin see some improvement in this jazzworn generation."