What About Spring Football Drills?

Humbly, with little more than a lone Crimson reporter watching, the tradition of spring football practice began at the University 72 years ago.

"The football squad was practising on Jarvis Field yesterday afternoon. The work consisted of kicking, tackling, and falling on the ball," the reporter noted in the Crimson of March 15, 1889. Big deal, the reporter must have thought to himself, looking at what is believed to be the first organized spring football practice anywhere.

Introduced by Harvard Captain Arthur J. Cumnock to increase team membership and to acquaint the players with the rudiments of the game, the first spring football program was by modern standards of a relaxed tenor, featuring a drop-kick "tournament" lasting from May 1 to May 28. The whole idea went over pretty well despite Crimson apathy, and one year later, in 1890, the spring football program was expanded to include not only a more intensified training for the players, but also a wrap-up game of two 20-minute halves.

It didn't take long for spring football practice to become a national habit. Today every major football conference (except the Ivy League) in the country has spring practice, 30 days of workouts for the players and coaches to work on whatever individual or team improvements they wish. Spring football practice in the Ivy League got in the way of the free-swinging, de-emphasizing administrative axe in 1952.

In the early 1950's, when the Ivy League was slowly but surely approaching league formalization and policy codification, a certain idea of football and athletic "sanity" crept into the minds of many Ivy administrators, then growing suspicious about the amount of emphasis placed on football.

One such administrator was Harvard's Dean Wilbur J. Bender '27, who said in February, 1950: "A college is not an annex to a football team." Asserting that "no college nowadays can have a consistently top-notch, big-time football team without buying it," Bender noted that a large number of colleges had succumbed to pressure from a certain type of alumnus, the "subway" alumni, coaches and other people whose main interest is sports.

"A little sanity is clearly needed to make football again an amateur college sport," Bender said. This means, he added, no more recruiting and subsidizing of players and organization of practice and schedules "so that they fit into academic needs rather than vice versa."

Bender's statements represent what was then the growing attitude of many Ivy League administrators, even though they were made at the time of the Great Depression of Harvard athletics -- after the Crimson had lost to Stanford, 44 to 0, in the first game of a miserable 1-8 season the fall before.

Numerous problems both in Harvard and Ivy football came to a head during those first few years in the 1950's. It was a time when revisions and decisions in the Ivy football and athletic programs were inevitable.

Then, at Yale in February, 1952, spring football was added to the list of troubles. Because of excessive pressures and demands imposed on them by head coach Herman Hickman, the Yale football players protested against the spring football program and complained to A. Whitney Griswold, who had been appointed as President of Yale only a short time before.

Aware that Hickman's stringent practice demands were depriving the players of freedom to pursue off-season academic and extra-curricular interests, Griswold decided to abolish spring practice at Yale. He announced the unilateral move to the seven other Ivy presidents at a meeting of the Ivy League Policy Committee.

Out of respect for Griswold's action, though in some cases with reluctance, the other presidents followed suit. On February 18, 1952, by a vote of six to two, the Policy Committee abolished spring football practice in the Ivy League. President Harold W. Dodds of Princeton explained the minority votes of Princeton and Cornell: "Although we are in favor of spring football practice, we will abide by the statement for Ivy group solidarity."

Undeniably, the initial act of abolishing spring practice in 1952, later entered in the formal Ivy League code of 1954, was a move of solidarity to provide more academic and extra-curricular freedom rather than to check football professionalism.

Several years later the abolition mistakenly became considered by observers as an explicit move to help create football "sanity"--the sacred term which today describes the strait jacket of the Ivy League which the Policy Committee does not dare to loosen. If the committee decides to reinstate spring football, for example, it will be accused of defeating its own purpose by inspiring football professionalism. Nevertheless, at the time of the abolition, "sanity" was aimed at inordinate recruitment and financial aid problems.

A week before the ban was announced, when rumors and "inside-sources-revealed" articles in the Boston papers were forecasting the decision, Harvard coach Lloyd P. Jordan was quoted in the Crimson: "Cut out spring practice, and you know what you get? Recruitment."

The article noted: "But he (Jordan) sees--and it's hard to disagree -- that without honest spring workouts to enable development of latent, or 'rough' material, coaches will be forced to beat the bushes for finished talent. Your search will be for stars, instead of players. The resulting recruitment drive would shame even the Marines."

Perhaps Jordan was prophetic in predicting that more emphasis on recruiting would result from a spring practice ban, and perhaps his statements penetrate to the core of the much-criticized recruiting violations in the Ivy League. His remarks represent one of the strong oppositional arguments in the controversy over the Ivy spring practice ban.

Last month the controversy was nourished by the much-publicized poll conducted by the Yale Dally News. In that poll, 62 Yale football players on last year's undefeated championship team were asked if they, would like spring football practice; 55 of them said yes.

Several sports news commentators in the East trumpeted the results of the poll, and reminded the Ivy Policy Committee that to many observers the present ban on spring practice is outdated, sissy, and bush. While the player opinion was being amplified, however, a significant fact was neglected: 43 out of the 55 had favored spring drills only if they were limited to freshmen. One must realize that reinstatement or continned denial of Ivy spring football is not a simple black and white matter -- even among the players there is considerable disagreement.

At Harvard, a random poll taken recently showed that 65 per cent of the players favor spring practice.

Only among the eternal grand-standers, who would welcome any improvement devices for Ivy League football, and among the coaches, as one would expect, is opinion in favor of spring drills. Crimson coach John Yovicsin said recently that a mere reminder of the Ivy coaches' unanimous appeals to the Policy Committee in 1958 and in 1959 for spring practices serve as a sufficient statement of the attitude of the Ivy coaches on the matter.

Although a preponderance of administrators endorse the present ban, a few members of the Ivy committee have expressed considerable disagreement with it. Robert J. Kane, athletic director at Cornell, for example, said last November that the press had made the correct inference of his statement on the firing of football coach George K. (Lefty) James -- that it was a "backhanded slap at the Ivy League's no-spring practice rule."

(Kane had said in a prepared statement, "Lefty was a competent teacher given too little time to teach.") Asked for an explicit state- ment on his feelings on spring practice in the Ivy League, Kane answered, "Td love it ... crews practice all fail, don't they?"

What in particular disturbs those people opposed to the present ban is that under the present system, Ivy coaches are forced to pick their teams in a ridiculously short period of about two weeks. Pre-season drills in the Ivy League cannot begin before September 1, leaving approximately three weeks for the coach to condition the players and pick first and second teams on which to focus attention for the first game. And those players on the top of the heap by the first game usually stay there; the coach must dwell on refining team coordination once the season has begun.

Consequently, it is possible for some players to get the nod over others because of distant high school reputations and early season breaks rather than because of proven superiority. And because coaches must devote time to basic instruction such as tackling and blocking -- the bulk of which could be handled in the spring -- much of the time for scrimmages, which determine the team's ladder, is cut down. Ivy coaches, many of whom agree that the present system is in this sense unfair, argue that they have too little time to develop players and turn out top rate football teams.

Players who develop late -- especially sophomores in their first varsity season -- often waste away holding a dummy and awaiting next fall's pre-season practice for another chance. It is no surprise, then, that many sophomores and JV players on last year's squad would welcome the opportunity to gain additional instruction and to prove themselves during the spring.

Curiously, opinion among the first-stringers is split. Charlie Ravenel, the legend that needs no explanation, said, "In my senior year (last fall) I felt that I was finally coming around as a football player -- spring football would have certainly accelerated the process." Ravenel, who "would have loved the additional chance to improve (himself) and the team," said that he would have given up baseball to play spring football. Meanwhile, one wonders how much Ravenel could have improved....

Terry Lensner, last fall's team captain, favored spring practice, but added that he might oppose the idea if "the sacrifices to be made were academic rather than social."

Tackle Darwin Wile said that many players like himself crave for spring workouts of one sort or another -- "We work out anyway. It might as well be on football." Many players agreed that if the league is to be on a par with other conferences, spring football must be reinstated. Ivy football was called "out-rate," "sloppy," etc.

One player said, "The way a player votes on spring practice reflects his love for the game," adding, "those gays on the team who don't want spring football are just lazy jerks anyway."

The arguments endorsing the present ban point out the quality of Ivy teams such as last fall's undefeated Yale eleven and assert that Ivy football is not inferior; call the league's present system a healthy and necessary balance between academics; and note to the players the idea of spring football is not as simple as -- "The crews practice all fall, don't they?"

One Harvard player, for example, said that football is too grueling to be considered in the same light as year-round crew. Football, he continued, demands excessive nervous energy and constant imperviousness to injury.

Tackle Mike Sheridan opposed spring practice, although he felt that a reinstatement would improve the calibre of Ivy football. "Without spring football a player can -- and should -- take advantage of more free time for studying, pursuing private interests, -- even loafing if he wants."

Bert Messenbaugh and Eric Nelson, who also opposed spring practice, argued that the present football program is especially valuable to pre-med majors such as themselves. They praised the Ivy League for its "intellectual maturity" and "beautiful sense of compromise" in keeping the emphasis on football such that the player has a chance to pursue academic interests and careers.

There could be no such thing as "voluntary workouts" in the spring, several players who opposed spring practices noted, admitting that if they knew somebody was out for their position, they too would be compelled to prove their interest and ability by going out for spring ball--in most cases against their wills.

One player would not fall back on an overworked crutch and refused to call the spring relaxation he enjoys a "chance to study." Instead, he merely said, "I like to have my own time at my own disposal. If spring football were reinstated in the Ivy League, I would not play football at all." He called the accusations of lack of interest and laziness in football which relied on interest in spring football "high schoolish" and "immature fanaticism."

Also, many players feared that a reinstatement would lead to a tread-mill kind of situation in which football would overrun itself with pressures for athletic scholarships1

Introduced by Harvard Captain Arthur J. Cumnock to increase team membership and to acquaint the players with the rudiments of the game, the first spring football program was by modern standards of a relaxed tenor, featuring a drop-kick "tournament" lasting from May 1 to May 28. The whole idea went over pretty well despite Crimson apathy, and one year later, in 1890, the spring football program was expanded to include not only a more intensified training for the players, but also a wrap-up game of two 20-minute halves.

It didn't take long for spring football practice to become a national habit. Today every major football conference (except the Ivy League) in the country has spring practice, 30 days of workouts for the players and coaches to work on whatever individual or team improvements they wish. Spring football practice in the Ivy League got in the way of the free-swinging, de-emphasizing administrative axe in 1952.

In the early 1950's, when the Ivy League was slowly but surely approaching league formalization and policy codification, a certain idea of football and athletic "sanity" crept into the minds of many Ivy administrators, then growing suspicious about the amount of emphasis placed on football.

One such administrator was Harvard's Dean Wilbur J. Bender '27, who said in February, 1950: "A college is not an annex to a football team." Asserting that "no college nowadays can have a consistently top-notch, big-time football team without buying it," Bender noted that a large number of colleges had succumbed to pressure from a certain type of alumnus, the "subway" alumni, coaches and other people whose main interest is sports.

"A little sanity is clearly needed to make football again an amateur college sport," Bender said. This means, he added, no more recruiting and subsidizing of players and organization of practice and schedules "so that they fit into academic needs rather than vice versa."

Bender's statements represent what was then the growing attitude of many Ivy League administrators, even though they were made at the time of the Great Depression of Harvard athletics -- after the Crimson had lost to Stanford, 44 to 0, in the first game of a miserable 1-8 season the fall before.

Numerous problems both in Harvard and Ivy football came to a head during those first few years in the 1950's. It was a time when revisions and decisions in the Ivy football and athletic programs were inevitable.

Then, at Yale in February, 1952, spring football was added to the list of troubles. Because of excessive pressures and demands imposed on them by head coach Herman Hickman, the Yale football players protested against the spring football program and complained to A. Whitney Griswold, who had been appointed as President of Yale only a short time before.

Aware that Hickman's stringent practice demands were depriving the players of freedom to pursue off-season academic and extra-curricular interests, Griswold decided to abolish spring practice at Yale. He announced the unilateral move to the seven other Ivy presidents at a meeting of the Ivy League Policy Committee.

Out of respect for Griswold's action, though in some cases with reluctance, the other presidents followed suit. On February 18, 1952, by a vote of six to two, the Policy Committee abolished spring football practice in the Ivy League. President Harold W. Dodds of Princeton explained the minority votes of Princeton and Cornell: "Although we are in favor of spring football practice, we will abide by the statement for Ivy group solidarity."

Undeniably, the initial act of abolishing spring practice in 1952, later entered in the formal Ivy League code of 1954, was a move of solidarity to provide more academic and extra-curricular freedom rather than to check football professionalism.

Several years later the abolition mistakenly became considered by observers as an explicit move to help create football "sanity"--the sacred term which today describes the strait jacket of the Ivy League which the Policy Committee does not dare to loosen. If the committee decides to reinstate spring football, for example, it will be accused of defeating its own purpose by inspiring football professionalism. Nevertheless, at the time of the abolition, "sanity" was aimed at inordinate recruitment and financial aid problems.

A week before the ban was announced, when rumors and "inside-sources-revealed" articles in the Boston papers were forecasting the decision, Harvard coach Lloyd P. Jordan was quoted in the Crimson: "Cut out spring practice, and you know what you get? Recruitment."

The article noted: "But he (Jordan) sees--and it's hard to disagree -- that without honest spring workouts to enable development of latent, or 'rough' material, coaches will be forced to beat the bushes for finished talent. Your search will be for stars, instead of players. The resulting recruitment drive would shame even the Marines."

Perhaps Jordan was prophetic in predicting that more emphasis on recruiting would result from a spring practice ban, and perhaps his statements penetrate to the core of the much-criticized recruiting violations in the Ivy League. His remarks represent one of the strong oppositional arguments in the controversy over the Ivy spring practice ban.

Last month the controversy was nourished by the much-publicized poll conducted by the Yale Dally News. In that poll, 62 Yale football players on last year's undefeated championship team were asked if they, would like spring football practice; 55 of them said yes.

Several sports news commentators in the East trumpeted the results of the poll, and reminded the Ivy Policy Committee that to many observers the present ban on spring practice is outdated, sissy, and bush. While the player opinion was being amplified, however, a significant fact was neglected: 43 out of the 55 had favored spring drills only if they were limited to freshmen. One must realize that reinstatement or continned denial of Ivy spring football is not a simple black and white matter -- even among the players there is considerable disagreement.

At Harvard, a random poll taken recently showed that 65 per cent of the players favor spring practice.

Only among the eternal grand-standers, who would welcome any improvement devices for Ivy League football, and among the coaches, as one would expect, is opinion in favor of spring drills. Crimson coach John Yovicsin said recently that a mere reminder of the Ivy coaches' unanimous appeals to the Policy Committee in 1958 and in 1959 for spring practices serve as a sufficient statement of the attitude of the Ivy coaches on the matter.

Although a preponderance of administrators endorse the present ban, a few members of the Ivy committee have expressed considerable disagreement with it. Robert J. Kane, athletic director at Cornell, for example, said last November that the press had made the correct inference of his statement on the firing of football coach George K. (Lefty) James -- that it was a "backhanded slap at the Ivy League's no-spring practice rule."

(Kane had said in a prepared statement, "Lefty was a competent teacher given too little time to teach.") Asked for an explicit state- ment on his feelings on spring practice in the Ivy League, Kane answered, "Td love it ... crews practice all fail, don't they?"

What in particular disturbs those people opposed to the present ban is that under the present system, Ivy coaches are forced to pick their teams in a ridiculously short period of about two weeks. Pre-season drills in the Ivy League cannot begin before September 1, leaving approximately three weeks for the coach to condition the players and pick first and second teams on which to focus attention for the first game. And those players on the top of the heap by the first game usually stay there; the coach must dwell on refining team coordination once the season has begun.

Consequently, it is possible for some players to get the nod over others because of distant high school reputations and early season breaks rather than because of proven superiority. And because coaches must devote time to basic instruction such as tackling and blocking -- the bulk of which could be handled in the spring -- much of the time for scrimmages, which determine the team's ladder, is cut down. Ivy coaches, many of whom agree that the present system is in this sense unfair, argue that they have too little time to develop players and turn out top rate football teams.

Players who develop late -- especially sophomores in their first varsity season -- often waste away holding a dummy and awaiting next fall's pre-season practice for another chance. It is no surprise, then, that many sophomores and JV players on last year's squad would welcome the opportunity to gain additional instruction and to prove themselves during the spring.

Curiously, opinion among the first-stringers is split. Charlie Ravenel, the legend that needs no explanation, said, "In my senior year (last fall) I felt that I was finally coming around as a football player -- spring football would have certainly accelerated the process." Ravenel, who "would have loved the additional chance to improve (himself) and the team," said that he would have given up baseball to play spring football. Meanwhile, one wonders how much Ravenel could have improved....

Terry Lensner, last fall's team captain, favored spring practice, but added that he might oppose the idea if "the sacrifices to be made were academic rather than social."

Tackle Darwin Wile said that many players like himself crave for spring workouts of one sort or another -- "We work out anyway. It might as well be on football." Many players agreed that if the league is to be on a par with other conferences, spring football must be reinstated. Ivy football was called "out-rate," "sloppy," etc.

One player said, "The way a player votes on spring practice reflects his love for the game," adding, "those gays on the team who don't want spring football are just lazy jerks anyway."

The arguments endorsing the present ban point out the quality of Ivy teams such as last fall's undefeated Yale eleven and assert that Ivy football is not inferior; call the league's present system a healthy and necessary balance between academics; and note to the players the idea of spring football is not as simple as -- "The crews practice all fall, don't they?"

One Harvard player, for example, said that football is too grueling to be considered in the same light as year-round crew. Football, he continued, demands excessive nervous energy and constant imperviousness to injury.

Tackle Mike Sheridan opposed spring practice, although he felt that a reinstatement would improve the calibre of Ivy football. "Without spring football a player can -- and should -- take advantage of more free time for studying, pursuing private interests, -- even loafing if he wants."

Bert Messenbaugh and Eric Nelson, who also opposed spring practice, argued that the present football program is especially valuable to pre-med majors such as themselves. They praised the Ivy League for its "intellectual maturity" and "beautiful sense of compromise" in keeping the emphasis on football such that the player has a chance to pursue academic interests and careers.

There could be no such thing as "voluntary workouts" in the spring, several players who opposed spring practices noted, admitting that if they knew somebody was out for their position, they too would be compelled to prove their interest and ability by going out for spring ball--in most cases against their wills.

One player would not fall back on an overworked crutch and refused to call the spring relaxation he enjoys a "chance to study." Instead, he merely said, "I like to have my own time at my own disposal. If spring football were reinstated in the Ivy League, I would not play football at all." He called the accusations of lack of interest and laziness in football which relied on interest in spring football "high schoolish" and "immature fanaticism."

Also, many players feared that a reinstatement would lead to a tread-mill kind of situation in which football would overrun itself with pressures for athletic scholarships1