WHOSE JOB IS IT?

The Athletic Committee, meeting this evening for the presumable purpose of coming to a decision on the football coaching situation, faces a difficult task, made more difficult by the misplaced zeal of newspapermen and the equally misplaced advice of agitated alumni. Members of the team and undergraduates, the persons most intimately concerned with the problem, have been discreetly silent. They have shown a commendable willingness to allow the committee of experts appointed for the purpose to come to their decision unimpeded.

The newspapers have spoken, some of them with eight-column scare headlines. The alumni have spoken, roared, or whined their grievances. Alumni interest in undergraduate affairs is welcome and necessary, and football comes, or ought to come, under the head of undergraduate affairs, despite the efforts of alumni to take it under their protecting wings. Yet the sort of interest which witnesses two or three major setbacks and immediately demands a new coach can be nothing but harmful. It is poor sportsmanship and poorer policy.

There will always be critics whose only textbook is the scoreboard. There will always be people with a what's-the-matter-with-this-or-that complex. There will always be people with an inordinate desire to make themselves heard and usually their noise is inversely proportional to their knowledge. Harvard football has been unable to escape from this sort of interest, but the present committee will very properly ignore it.

Harvard football has had its flaws. Just what those flaws are and what means should be taken to remedy them are being considered by the proper authorities. The undergraduate body is awaiting their decision with confidence in their judgment.