THE PRESS

We quote Mr. W. J. Bingham, who directs athletics at Harvard university and recently addressed the freshman class as follows:

During the year we shall engage in 375 intercollegiate games. The prestige of the college does not depend on any of these contests. No one will accuse you of having "poor-spirit" if you prefer to spend your Saturday afternoons in the library. No coach will urge you to play "for the glory of dear old Harvard."

We gather that if Harvard leads Michigan as the shades of night are falling over Soldiers field one Saturday this fall the credit will not be permitted in the remotest degree to attach to the university at Cambridge. The victory will merely be a sportsmanlike achievement of a group of young amateurs who happen to attend classes there and enjoy the exercise. Cheers, if any, will be for the good old game of football, without the whisper of a hint that Harvard is involved.

Recently the president of Notre Dame university made a portentous statement along the same line. He said that a good university could get along without any football team at all. But he spoiled it by adding, apparently as an afterthought, that a good football team generally went with a good university.

Harvard knows better. It knows that a good football team goes merely with the cash to hire the right coach and the alumni to send the right men. There is, we agree, no glory attached to that. When the Michigan team plays eleven boys who just happen to attend Harvard we shall eschew the Michigan locomotive and the skyrocket. Bue we shall keep our eyes open to see whether Barry Wood, with fourth down and goal to go, glances at his wrist watch and rushes off the field explaining: "Excuse me, please, I have a heavy bit of reading to do for economics and I'll have to run down to the library. The Grand Rapids Press.