THE ROTATING SCHEDULE

"Are the advantages to be gained from the rotating football schedule sufficient to offset the misunderstanding and the possible ill-feeling which may arise when football relations of 34 years' standing with another college are terminated?"

This is the question raised by the Brown Daily Herald on Harvard's new football policy of considering the Yale game as the only permanent one on her schedule. And the question, put in such a reasonable manner challenges an answer of equal sincerity.

The advantages of the rotating policy are not negligible. The emphasis on football is cut down by reducing the number of so-called "objective games"; Harvard's football schedule may be made more national in scope; and Harvard men in distant parts of the country may be favored with an occasional glimpse of their team without a long journey to Cambridge.

But there are also possible disadvantages: Games with new and powerful rivals are apt to assume in the minds of the undergraduate, the graduate, and the press even greater importance than the games held with long-standing rivals. A national, representative schedule may well lead to intersectional contests, with time-consuming trips, and all the other evils that go with "championships" and comparative scores. And the theory that graduates in distant states should occasionally be treated to a show of Harvard football in their back yard, is, to say the least, subject to abuse.

At the time when the rotating policy was decided upon, Harvard may be said to have had five traditional foes--Yale, Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth, and Holy Cross. The rotating policy has already caused two subtractions from this list. Other honored rivals may also be asked to step aside for a year or two. Or Harvard's rivals themselves may ask to be excused from playing under conditions which they have some cause to consider unstable.

Under the old system, Harvard, playing an eight-game season, had three dates, most of them early in the season, which were not regularly assigned. These, it would seem, allowed sufficient scope for the gaining of all the advantages offered under the rotating plan, except that late season games with redoubted foes were difficult to arrange. Still, nowadays, with a tendency to eliminate the "soft spots" from the gridiron campaign, the order in which the Crimson takes on its opponents is of less importance.

The CRIMSON cannot see that the rotating policy will add benefits in excess of its disadvantages to Harvard football. Admitting that it may be desirable to have some flexibility in the Harvard schedule, it would seem that the three or four dates supplied under the old system are sufficient.

Perhaps it is still too early to pass judgement upon a scheme which has not yet been fully worked out. In any case it will be impossible to abandon the new plan until the engagements undertaken under it have been discharged. Meanwhile, however, the Harvard athletic authorities might do well to pause before proceding on a course which at best seems fraught with dangers.