APOSTASY IN THE OLD DOMINION

Two days after the Cavaliers received their 65-0 defeat at the hands of Harvard the undergraduate paper at the University of Virginia brought out the Magna Carta of Professional Football reprinted else-where on this page. Coming immediately after Virginia's humiliation by a team whose foremost virtue has always been its emphasis upon amateurism, the editorial appears to be totally lacking in sincerity.

The bandwagon of amateur football has been wobbling dangerously of late, but few of its enemies have expressed the desire to topple it over in the crude manner of the undergraduates at Charlottesville. It is one thing to call a spade a spade, but quite another to show Virginia's complete lack of respect for the other side of the question. That university should realize that the remedy for a poor football team is to concentrate upon the development of a better one and not the attitude of many American schools who desire to have "the best team money can buy".

Harvard's victory should have done anything but bring defeatism to the Cavalier team. That very victory should have appeared as the complete vindication of a policy of amateurism rather than its death-knell. More than any other college has Harvard been tempted to take the easiest way out during its past years of defeat. Any success it has now must go down in the ledger to the credit of the belief that football can survive as a sport for the sake of sport.

With all of Macheth's lack of conviction the Virginia paper is trying to soften its blow by making a distinction between "athletic scholarships" and "money payments". There can be no such distinction in a world of reality. A woman can not be half a virgin.

In the stadium last Saturday Virginia was represented by players whose sense of fair play and sportsmanship did the University credit. It is disappointing that in the field of editorial opinion a precisely opposite attitude should prevail. In their desire to have a winning team at any price the undergraduates of Virginia have indicted amateurism for crimes it never could have committed, and their cry, instead of being a call to a better world of sport, is nothing but the last shriek of retreat.