Griswold of Yale Calls Fans Cause Of Grid Emphasis

A Whitney Griswold urged that colleges "use common sense and eliminate the juvenile attitude towards intercollegiate athletics" in a general statement delivered yesterday on athletic policy.

In conjunction with his current program of de-emphasis for Yale football, Griswold attacked big-time intercollegiate athletics, and particularly football, for breaking down the primary educational function of colleges and universities.

Griswold defined the problem as a "shifting of the center of gravity from the participant to the spectator. Catering to spectator demands," he said, "has caused the double standard in the treatment of athletes and non-athletes and this has brought about the subterfuges and all the other abuses currently confronting the intercollegiate athletic world."

Agreement from Connecticut

President Victor L. Butterfield of Connecticut College also put forth similar proposals yesterday. He advocated greater intramural athletic programs, and the abolition of spring practice, which has been done by the Little Three as well as Yale.

Butterfield also proposed that colleges abolish long pre-season practices, abolish long trips, limit practice time, play teams only in the colleges' own class and group, and insist that athletes on scholarships remain in the top half of their class.