"THE TWO-SPORT RULE"

They have a regulation in the Southern Conference that might well be adopted by other sections. This is a rule limiting any college athlete to two major sports a year. Any student can play football in the fall and basketball in the winter. He can play football in the fall and baseball or track in the spring. But he can take part in only two major sports. The basic idea back of this regulation is sound. Two major sports within a given period of nine months are quite enough for any athletic student to face. To take part in three or four major sports is not only overworking an athlete physically, but in many cases it is leaving too little time for full and thorough concentration on his college work. It has been proved over and over again that all-around athletes taking part in three or four major sports have overburdened the heart for later years.

For example, Neil Snow, at Michigan, was a football, baseball and track star. He kept in hard training, facing keen competition, all through fall, winter and spring. Later he suddenly dropped dead after a hard squash racquets match before he was forty. And Neil Snow was one of the finest athletic specimens that ever happened in any university. He was six feet all, weighed 195 pounds and always looked to be in flawless condition. He was--up to an overworked heart.

Modern Examples

Barry Wood, of Harvard, is a star at football, hockey, baseball and tennis. This competitive list is too much to attempt in any one stretch of twelve months. Wood is allowing his system little or no chance to accumulate a nerve reserve. He is giving his heart action too much to carry.

Booth, of Yale, is a star at football, basketball and baseball. Here again he faces almost continuous competition from September to June. Somewhere in that period he needs a three months' rest from hard competition. It is hardly possible in either Wood's or Booth's case that the after effects will be disastrous. But for life after college work is over this amount of training and competition will not be helpful. The two-sport rule doesn't affect a majority of the students. Few of them go in for more than two sports. But for all that, it is a good, sound rule, devised for the good of the student who may be overambitious or overkeen along the lines of athletic play.

The Best System

The best system is for a student to take up one hard, rugged competitive sport that he won't use after college life is over--football, basketball, etc.

His next move should be to take up some such game as golf or tennis that will come in useful in later years, games that he will play through the greater part of his life. It seems to be a mistake to give all of one's time and attention to games that come to an end when one is twenty-one or twenty-two. --Grantland Rice in the N. Y. Herald Tribune.