FOOTBALL SCHEDULES

The issuing of the 1933 football schedule today has served to reopen the entire question of Harvard football opponents. It calls for further comments on the CRIMSON's stand regarding the Army game and for criticism of the Faculty ruling which allows the team to play only one game away from home every year.

Army's eligibility ruling is the greatest practical argument against a Harvard-Army game. The story of this is well known. It is not for anyone to dictate to Army what its own eligibility standards should be, but it would certainly make for fairer rivalry if the nation's training school for young men would conform to the ruling which practically every college employs. The CRIMSON did not attempt to speak for the players, who would have to be consulted if any action were to be taken, not did it fail to realize that no such action could come before the expiration of four years. Even at that time Harvard will do nothing about Army's eligibility standards, since the athletic authorities only ask that Harvard's opponents live up to their own rules. But if unofficial criticism can bring Army to alter its position, then it is justified.

From the Harvard angle it is seen that all or any evils which crop up in the work of making a schedule are due to the rule which permits the team only one trip a year. Since Yale is played in New Haven every other year this means really one trip in two years. Colleges such as Dartmouth, Brown, and Holy Cross are willing to come to the Stadium every year because of financial reasons. Army is a welcome opponent, from the schedule-maker's point of view, because the cadets will come here three years to Harvard's going to West Point once. Practically any other large college insists on a home and home agreement.

Harvard's 1933 schedule contains no games on foreign fields, but that can hardly be called in as a justification of the rule. All other Harvard athletic teams are allowed two trips away per season; the crew goes to Red Top for three weeks; the rugby XV made four trips last year; the Glee Club and the Instrumental Clubs are both allowed more freedom.

To allow Harvard's football team two games away per season seems not only fair to the players, but it will also simplify the work of the athletic authorities. It is not necessary to schedule two foreign games every season, but at least it can be possible. Army would not have to be scheduled because it makes concessions. Harvard would be able to deal with Columbia, Cornell, Pennsylvania, Princeton, and others on an actual, not a theoretical, basis. In short, the revocation of the rule should make for fairness toward the football men, allow Harvard athletic officials to deal on a more equal basis with the College's athletic opponents, and remove a superfluous faculty restriction.