CAREFREE ATHLETICS

In the annual report of the Carnegie Foundation, a portion of which appears elsewhere in these columns, occurs significant comment on English athletics, especially where they contrast sharply with the features of athletic systems in American Universities. The most impressive aspect of the matter lies in the fact that, though there are in England many of the openings for commercialism into which American institutions have fallen the tendencies have not appreciably advanced.

For Oxford and Cambridge have a rivalry of considerable longer standing than that between Harvard and Yale, a rivalry that draws athletes from the college competitions of each University and places them of late, under paid coaches. The British public has come to manifest some interest in the contests and the most spectacular matches are played where the best crowds can be drawn. Rugby football, moreover, as the most popular sport, has frequently accumulated surplus funds which have been distributed, as with football in America, to nourish less fortunate games. In each college, there is a central control for athletics, and attempts have been made in the universities as a whole to combine all athletic activities in one organization.

But despite these things, there are no such enigmas as scouting problems Contests which draw huge crowds come, not every weekend, but at long intervals like festivals and vacations. They are occasions, not common occurances. Paid coaches, likewise, are rather the exception than the rule. Even a paid coach works largely through the team captain. The captain, being an undergraduate and to other things, only a peer of his subordinates on the team is a much less despotic ruler than the average coach. Where coaches are not paid, those of college teams and sometimes those of university teams also they are men closely associated with the students, either dons or recent "blues", men booked to rather for friendly advice than imperative command.

The contrast is clear with one added point. As in America, so at Oxford and Cambridge, athletics are countenanced by the authorities, but they are not, as in America, either given largely to the direction of sporting interests or taken officially under the wing of the authorities. They are supervised much as the individual students are supervised, namely, by men interested in them. The faculty members interested are men who in their other capacities live among the students eat with them, and are friends and advisers.

It can well be said, then, not that the tutorial system--it is never twice the same--but that the tutorial idea places a restraint upon the conduct of athletics in Oxford and in Cambridge that is wanting in America. Men direct athletics who are concerned about scholarship. They make of athletics a part of education. They are teachers more than coaches. Yet this explanation does not directly point to the solution of American problems. Here too the voluntary coach was the first preceptor in sport. The lure of big profits and large fame--characteristically American lines--proved stronger than ever they could abroad. American problems will be solved rather by a revision of emphasis than a change of system. But comparisons point the way.