Eight Eastern Football Teams to Play Benefit Tourneys; Harvard Stays Out

Hanover, N. H., Oct. 14--Eight colleges in the Eastern section of the country have signified their intention of taking part in two post-season football tournaments to be staged in New Haven and New York for the benefit of unemployment relief, according to an announcement released here tonight by E. K. Hall, a member of the national relief committee headed by Walter S. Gifford and chairman of the national Football Rules Committee.

The eight institutions who have gone together in this plan are Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Holy Cross, Princeton, Columbia, Pennsylvania, and Cornell. The tournaments, which will be held in the Yale Bowl on Saturday, December 5 and in the Yankee Stadium on Wednesday, December 9, will be in the nature of a round robin play. Four colleges will play at each place; there will be two twenty-minute games as a sort of preliminary after which the two winners will meet in another twenty-minute tussle. The four first named colleges will play at Yale, the others in New York.

Enter Under Protest

All of the institutions are entering the tournaments under protest, stating that it is over-commercialization of football, but they agree that the present crisis calls for the making of an exception. The entire plan is an outgrowth of the call issued yesterday by Owen D. Young, Chairman of the President's Committee on the Mobilization of Relief Resources, to all the colleges of the country asking them to play at least one game for charity. At a meeting in New York last Sunday the colleges involved agreed to the plan now adopted.

The announcement from Mr. Hall follows in full:

"Eight of the universities and colleges in the Northeast section of the country have requested me to announce a plan which they have worked out in response to the call on the colleges and schools in the United States made by Mr. Owen D. Young, Chairman of the President's Committee on Mobilization of Relief Resources. The colleges for which I am speaking are Yale, Brown, Holy Cross and Dartmouth in New England; and Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, and Pennsylvania in the Middle Atlantic States.

"Practically all, if not all, of these institutions are as a matter of fundamental and far reaching principle, definitely opposed to the playing of post- season and benefit games.

"It is their conviction that college football games for any kind of charity, no matter how worthy the cause, tend distinctly toward commercialism which is undoubtedly the greatest single man-ace of college sports today.

"They recognize, however, that the call of the President's representative in the time of national emergency opens up the question in an entirely different form and calls for its reconsideration from an entirely new point of view.

"Mr. Young's call found these colleges with their playing schedules completely filled and running in several cases into the Saturday following Thanksgiving. This made it extremely difficult for them to find either opponents or suitable dates for post-season games. Furthermore, as the athletic associations of practically all the colleges mentioned will come through the present college year with a deficit some of them with very heavy ones, it did not seem that setting aside the proceeds of a regularly scheduled game or a percentage of the proceeds of one or more such games offered a suitable or the most effective response to Mr. Young's call.

Work Out New Plan

"They have, accordingly, worked out the following plan, which is something entirely new in the history of American rugby football.

"The four New England colleges will play an elimination football tournament in the Yale Bowl on December 5, and the four Middle Atlantic colleges will play a similar elimination tournament in New York City December 9.

"Two teams will play a game of 20 minutes. The other two teams will immediately take the field and play another game of 20 minutes. After a suitable interval the winners will play the final game of 20 minutes, each team to be represented by a squad of not more than 25 players.

"The opponents for the preliminary game will be decided by lot. If either of the preliminary games results in a tie, the winner will be selected by a committee. Officials and ushers will be requested to volunteer their services. Yale is giving the use of her stadium free. The price of seats will be announced later, but it can be definitely stated at this time that there will be no seats at excessive prices and that there will be plenty of seats at moderate prices.

"The not proceeds of each tournament will be divided into four equal parts which will in turn be delivered to the respective presidents of the four participating colleges, and will be devoted to unemployment relief as the president of each college shall in his own discretion determine.