Record Proves Harvard Sports 'Decline' a Myth

It's a tried, true, and traditional fact that, as any collegiate sport becomes more and more popular with the public, commercialism and professionalism rear into and smear up the amateur picture.

Harvard clings to amateurism in all sports; its opponents often cut close to the letter of non-professionalism (as laid down by the National Collegiate Athletic Conference) without particularly worrying about the spirit of it. It follows, with one or two exceptions, that as spectator interest in particular sports declines in Cambridge, prospects, take a turn for the better.

This is why the newcomer to Cambridge may be surprised to find losing football teams, but championship squash and lacrosse squads; to see poor basketball but good swimming and track; to find. In fact, that hockey outdistances basketball as the popular winter sport. The notable exception to this spectator-slump sports-rise formula is, of course, the annually excellent Harvard crew, most popular and widely-followed of the spring teams--but this is simply explained. So far the New York bookmakers have shown no exceptional interest in who wins the Harvard-Yale crew race, and no school has been tempted to run out and buy a crew that can beat the Crimson eight.

Compete Traditionally

Focal point of the mythical "decline" of Harvard athletics has been the nation-wide tendency to judge a college's entire athletic picture by the record of its football team. Football coach Lloyd Jordan, formerly of Amherst, took this department over a year ago and launched into the tedious process of building for the future--trying to shape a team that can compete on the same level with its traditional opponents.

But the Crimson was at the lowest ebb. In its football history when Jordan moved in. It has fashioned, respectively, one-and-eight and one-and-seven records over the last two seasons. And Jordan himself realizes that the end of the drought is not within immediate sight.

Harvard came out of football practice last spring with a depth chart of sixteen lettermen, five other former varsity replacements, nine promising freshmen, and a half-dozen former jayvees. The line, and particularly defensive play, was woakened by graduation. The backfield is lighter and faster than a year ago, with promising sophomores Dick Clasby (behind Captain Carroll Lowenstein at tailback) and John Tulenko adding a little badly-needed speed.

Lopsided Losses

But all competition, excepting Springfield. Brown, and a badly-weakened Army, is at least as potent as last year--and 1950 saw the Crimson on the short end of a number of lopsided scores.

Football is still THE fall sport, and no overwhelming amount of adulation is paid to soccer (tied Brown for last place in the league of 1950) or cross-country, a fine competitive sport but nothing for the fans.

When the athletes move indoors for winter competition, however, Harvard annually finds itself on a healthy par with its opponents. The notable exception, of course, has been the futile attempts of Coach Norman Shepard's uncommercial basketball team to finish ahead of anyone except, surprisingly enough. Dartmouth. The Crimson's basketball fortunes are as low, at least as those of football, and have been so for some time: last year's record was eight wins against IS losses.

Basketball in New England is not quite so furiously competitive as it is in New York or the middle west. At least in Cambridge, a losing basketball team attracts nowhere near so much attention as a losing football, or even hockey, squad. No one bribes the Harvard quintet to lose games or "shave" points. No one has to.

Hockey Gets Emphasis

For some years now, various pressure groups within the University have been pushing for a Cambridge hockey rink for the Harvard's sextet's home contests. But indoor ice palaces are notoriously expensive. The home rink dream remains in a state of limbo, and the Crimson skaters continue to operate out of the Boston Arena.

A year ago Harvard added former Bruin star Cooney Weiland to its list of coaches, and Weiland has continued to develop good squads as well as interest local talent in the educational advantages of Harvard. His teams have performed strongly in the fast company of Brown, Boston University, and Boston College national playoff sextets.

Another fine Crimson coach with a more frustrating assignment is Hal Ulen, who for years has paddled about the pool in the Blockhouse (Indoor Athletic Building) attempting to whip a small group of outstanding swimmers into shape and spirit to furnish fairly decent competition for Bob Kiphuth's inhuman Yale machines.

Last year's shining light was sophomore Pete Dillingham, who gave up football for diving, won the Eastern Intercollegiate highboard competition, and placed in the nationals. With his help, Ulen's team swept over eight opponents, but might as well have dog-paddled as the Marshalls, Moores, and McLanes of Old Eli splashed by.

Brick Wall at End

As a result, Dartmouth has become more of a traditional-rival-to-beat than Yale. And future prospects look fine, except for the annual season-ending brick wall.

Among the lesser winter sports, wrestling fortunes blow hot and cold, but they have been blowing warmer of recent date. Captain-elect Johnny Lee climaxed a brilliant season last year by winning the 125-pound National A.A.U. title in Iowa. Although they also fall into the minor sport category, superior squash teams annually arise from the College courts, and last year's team rose as high as the national championship. The individual national champion of this non-spectator cross between tennis and handball was senior Henry Foster, third of a line of Harvard captain brothers, and the runner-up was sensational sophomore Charlie Ufford.

The one major sport with two seasons is track, winter and spring, and here again Yale has been the usual thorn in the Crimson's side. Another annual athletic truism is that Harvard's track teams improve considerably in the spring. Perhaps this is because of an increase of weight events in the warm weather version of the sport. Small, quiet Coach Jaakko Mikkola, a former Olympics javelin star, is a master at tutoring young and strong but untrained men in hurling the javelin, discuss, hammer, and shot.

Upset at Yale

Inexplicably, the track team is one of the most closely-knit and spirited groups of athletes at Harvard. Last spring it finished a good season with a stunning upset of the Eli rivals, and a strong '54 squad promises to supply some sprint and distance men to bolster the 1952 chances.

Sloshing into a Cambridge springtime, the sports fanatic finds more championship material. Bruce Munro still has a strong nucleus of players from the lacrosse squad that last year battled its way to the somewhat nebulous eastern championship. And anyone who tells a Harvard fan that the Crimson crew is not the best in the nation will hear the following argument ...

In faltering in the Compton Cup race (loss to Princeton) and the Eastern sprint championships (second to Yale, easy conquest of Princeton), the Crimson crew displayed none of the exceptionally fine form it had shown in practice timings. The oarsmen lived up to their promise by upsetting Penn and Navy for the Adams Cup (Harvard's tenth straight) and later by breaking the two-mile record on Lake Cayuga.

No Justification

No old crew man in Cambridge could honestly see any justification for favoring Yale over Harvard in their annual race at New London. And, indeed, the Crimson eight easily outrowed the Elis over a gruelling four-mile stretch of the Thames, while Harvard's jayvee, freshman, and combination crews made it a clean sweep. And Yale had already once defeated Wisconsin, winner of the national Poughkeepsie Regatta at Marietta, Q.E.D.

Now that great crew coach Tom Bolles, a magician at shaking up crewmen to find the right combination, has moved upstairs to replace William J. Bingham '16 as Harvard's Director of Athletics, national regatta eyes will be on his successor, former freshman coach Harvey Love. Next spring could tell the story of whether or not Love can match Bolles' wizardry, for it is an established fact that he has the top material to work with.

Finally, with collegiate baseball notoriously uninteresting to the general public--and thus no inspiration to proselytization--Stuffy McInnis turns out some Harvard nines that, depending on the pitching, can show well against the best of competitors.

Graduation has riddled the Harvard squad down the all-important middle, but a fair 1951 bench, plus a couple of remaining outstanding pitchers, can enable McInnis' team to attain a respectable standing in the ten-team Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League next spring. Harvard consistently holds its own in this as well as other strictly amateur sports, and has sent its small share of players into professional baseball.

Take all this as a roundup of a fairly, agreeable sports picture, toss in a world's champion (Dick Button) and a national junior champion (Dudley Richards) figure skater, then multiply the record of an amateur football team by a hundred, and it adds up to a decline in Harvard athletics. That's the formula today.The Cambridge crew beat the Crimson by 1 1/2 lengths on the Charles last April, but the Harvard varsity eight came back to lead a clean sweep over Yale at the end of June.