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The Conant - Bingham Athletic Endowment Fund is going to pay the bills of all Harvard sports--starting a quarter-century from now. Until that time the athletic department will have to wrestle with a difficult problem. Their departmental income, due to declining football gate receipts, this year has been slashed to the tune of $40,000. No one can tell how long this downward trend may continue.

J.V. basketball and hockey are already gone, and other major and minor sports may soon be lopped off in the budget-balancing campaign. The H.A.A. has no choice; it must tighten its belt or get caught with its pants down. Alumni donations to the Endowment Fund are dribbling in pretty slowly. A play-for-pay football team would mop up the red ink in the ledger, but there's more chance of John Harvard's statue crawling under its pedestal than of this means being adopted. Last night's Crimson Network seminar of Harvard and B.C. footballers, though, came through with a workable idea.

When the Harvard team is idle or playing away from Cambridge, the Soldiers Field Stadium stands empty. Boston College, meanwhile, may be turning people away at the Red Sox ball park. The B.C. Eagles could arrange their schedule so that their big games would come on days when the Stadium is vacant and then pay Bill Bingham the same cut of the gate which Tom Yawkey has been getting. This would be a sounder solution of B.C.'s problem than the proposed Boston municipal stadium, "The Beanbowl." Harvard, too, would gain. Without any increased emphasis on the brawny side of college life, the H.A.A. could get a golden nest-egg to tide the athletics program through the lean days ahead.