HAA Presents . . .

The HAA, as everyone knows, faces some nasty problems. How long will the Band, the pennants, pretty girls, the airplanes, lure students into Soldiers Field Saturday afternoons? Will it have to lower the admission price, or start slipping some of it to players! Both solutions are distasteful. But, some say, there is one other way out, if the HAA will take it: de-emphasis of the football games, emphasis of the goal-post riots.

Last Saturday showed the way. Forming around the north goalposts after the game, a corps of Harvard undergraduates fought off mass assaults and battering rams for an hour and fifteen minutes, well into the cocktail hour. Their stand climaxed two seasons of development; the Crimson cheering section has gradually emerged as the finest defensive squad in the East.

Here is a sport without flaw, approaching at last--the ideal of student participation. It combines the virtues of team spirit, rivalry, and upperclass exercise. There is no better training in sportsmanship than an Ivy League goal-post riot, run on strict gentleman's rules. Above all, it has spectator appeal with no taint of professionalism.

Goal-post rallies plus extended Band concerts could make the strongest bill the HAA has had in years. The game could be run off, say, about noon, so the field would be clear when the gates opened. The cheerleaders would have room to tumble. The Band would play to a full house again. As the goal-posts wavered, up and down, yardcops and men with dates could sit back and watch a cast of thousands. The HAA would be back in business.