HUE AND CRY

Like "Ol' Man River" the game of football seems to be just rolling along in spite of the death notices which it receives from the press at stated intervals. The latest, and one of the best criticisms of the sport as it now exists in the American college world comes from the pen of John R. Tunis, himself a professional sports writer.

In an ingenious manner, Mr. Tunis has classified football into three periods, the Rah-Rah Stage, the age of Big Business, and the decadent period. Writing from an eastern point of view he sees the college man and the player of our Eastern universities gradually becoming less football conscious, while his midwestern brother is now struggling in the throes of footballitis in its most-malignant form. The condition in the east has reached the decadent stage, while in the mid-west the cloud of pessimism has not yet obscured the glory of football and all that it connotes. The explanation of this phenomenon seems to Mr. Tunis to be merely the fact that the student in the eastern college is more mature and grown-up than his western confrere.

The eastern undergraduate need not become too self-laudatory in his new found mental balance. It has been the constant stiffening of faculty requirements that has driven him into scholastic work to a degree undreamed of by a previous college generation. When it becomes necessary to devote the greater part of one's time to serious pursuits, then unstinted enthusiasm in football must decline.