Switch to Soccer

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Whatever the merits or defects of our football, it surely is a local game. Not a single other country has adopted it, although it has been open to observation for about a hundred years. And other countries have adopted many American games (baseball, basketball, etc.), and now play them in all parts of the world, enthusiastically. In the single case of American football, might it not sometime dawn on us that all the rest of the world could be right and we wrong?

If Harvard now adopted soccer as a major sport in place of our football, it might follow a course of significant leadership. Soccer is now strikingly an international game, played between far distant points by countries, cities, and universities. We are the chief country that is not included and our devotion to American football is the reason. Soccer is fortunate in that the emphasis is on skill and team play by everyone rather than on professional organization of physical powers with one or two stars as in American college football.

If we change to soccer, we could do so for the sake of more times internationally, and greater world friendliness on this basis. Rather quickly, we could have the same crowds for soccer as we have now for football, and indeed a very great increase in team games for all students as well as older persons. There would be ample money to support the large stadiums and the expensive athletic departments. Also, there would be no sensitiveness on the possible charge that we were giving up a man's game for one of less vigor. In a word, it is a practical way to make a very sensible change. Harvard could have the leadership in what seems to be an inevitable development. Paul L. Sayre '16