NOT SO NEW AFTER ALL

Billy Laval, coach of the South Carolina University football team is having his halfbacks literally live with footballs in the hope that the costly fumbles that marred the "Gamecocks" contest with Clemson last week may not occur again. His ball carriers are carrying the ball to class, to meals, and to bed this week, so that they may become thoroughly familiar with its ovoid shape.

Carried to its ultimate and logical development, this idea would serve its purpose on other camp in other sports. Harvard's new crew coach-whoever he may be-may insist that his charges be joined in companionate marriage with their oars until the feel of the sweeps becomes an ingrained habit. Polo devotees may be forced to live, wine, and dine in the saddle, although some "softies" will no doubt feel that merely toting the mallet about will suffice to carry the horsemen to intercollegiate championships. Possibly, at some date not so far in the future, the steps of Sezer Hall at class time may be thronged with sweat-shirted students swinging baseball bats, tennis and squash rackets, javelins, 16-pound weights, lacrosse sticks, soccer balls, and chessmen.

When at Harvard's last mass meeting almost two years ago, one of the greatest ends ever to wear the Crimson described his Utopian ideal of Harvard undergraduates studying with a football in their hands, he forgot that the idea was not new. Coach Laval also probably did not realize that the fundamental idea of his cure for fumbling has long been in practice right here in Cambridge. For years, Harvard students have been juggling books and fountain pens, as they made their increasingly procarious way about the streets radiating from Harvard Square. Of course as Mr. Laval will no doubt find out for himself in relation to football-this constant living with books did not eliminate all scholastic fumbling, but it probably did promote a greater familiarity with things intellectual and help men on to their degrees.