The Rite of Spring

Once the rabbit called spring practice has been bagged, one might as well keep him there. He's dead anyway.

He died in the Ivy League last spring, with praise from the advocates of de-emphasis, and with groans from coaches, and perhaps, a minority of players. It has yet to be demonstrated that the loss of spring practice has resulted in more injuries, worse games, or extended losses, even in the days of two platoon football.

The two-platoon system has left the game this year, and I hope, for good. But to argue that because the two platoon system is gone, more time will be required to instill the principles of survival in players is unnecessary. Coaches will now work with 11 players rather than with 44, and will have proportionately more time to spend with them each autumn; in addition, football fundamentals come more naturally to the few than to the many.

Conditioning, granted, is an important factor, yet most football men are adept at other spots as well; they could just as easily keep in shape, gain more enjoyment and bolster the college's entire athletic program by participating in othergames. Then, too, I have heard just as many groans in the tall, spring practice or no, after summers which all too many athletes spend getting out of condition.

After all, a logical extension of the argument "we want well rounded football players" would end in "we must have well rounded athletes." Football is now where it should be a one season sport. Since it is, aduntiedly, a pressure sport, highly commercialized, any measure, even as small as the abolition of spring drills, is a step toward the amateuristic goal all are agreed upon.

Spring practice's adherents might argue, with apparently more truth, that football has become so complicated a game that spring drilling is essential. This is absurd in my view, because the abolition of two platooning makes the sport less, not more, complex. Pennsylvania, spring practiceless, played an intricate game last year against well-drilled Notre Dame. The score was zero to zero.

Not a Chance

In point of fact, spring practice's faithful bally-hoo artists stand no chance of seeing their project reinstituted for a long time to come. Resurrections are not the easiest things to achieve, anyway, and the Ivy League Presidents, as well as the NCAA, realize just how silly they would appear, if after abolishing spring practice one year, they suddenly arouse it the next with attendant financial, personnel, and moral problems. After some years, the question of whether the game, the players and the spectators benefit from either method ought to be clear. At present, it is nothing more than a cloud of assumptions and unproved arguments.

Spring is, besides, the time for the voice of the turtle, the click of the horsehide, the plosh of oars, and the pleasant crunch of spikes on cinders.

It is not the time for the raucous cries of a quarterback, the groans of heavily-laden gentlemen smashing each other on hot May afternoons, and the dull grind and drill that is spring practice. Athletes at least receive rewards in intercollegiate competition in season; if spring practice's adherents were logical, they might suggest that Harvard play football against Yale in spring as well as fall.