Weinberg Blasted

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In his recent letter to the CRIMSON, Mr. Weinberg has stated the effect of big time football on colleges. He then proposed a solution to the chronic Harvard problem of a losing team: play in a smaller league and, if necessary, abolish football at Harvard altogether. He implied that the only alternative to such de-emphasis is eventual commercialism, the evils of which are too well known to dwell upon.

I am in complete agreement with Mr. Weinberg in his opposition to buying a football team, but not in his theory that Harvard should de-emphasize soon to avoid commercialization. I am always suspicious of alternatives, of so-called "turning points"--they invariably exist more in the mind of an extremist than they do in reality. There can be no danger that Harvard football will become commercial when such a change would require revision of scholarship, admission, and academic policies which the University has strongly and consistently upheld.

Deprived of its value as a security measure to protect Harvard's academic integrity, Mr. Weinberg's proposal means de-emphasizing or eliminating football altogether in preference to supporting a losing team.

This I am against. I like football, and I like the Ivy League. To me it would be a sad thing if Harvard dropped the game entirely, and the compromise of small time ball . . . is repugnant.

So stay playing as you are, keep trying and something will break--if not sooner, then later. Keep playing in the league you belong in, where victory is purely a good thing to be taken without apology from an equal. You've got a couple of good sophomore backs in Clasby and Culver. Maybe next year you'll get a Houston to put up ahead of them, and you'll win four or five. But until you do, I'd sooner see you lose to Princeton by four touchdowns than beat Connecticut by one. Alan Lindsey '49