The Key West Citizen

WHAT ABOUT FOOTBALL?

Thoughtful educators, leaders of college and university life, are beginning to talk out about the football situation. They are being joined, occasionally, by sports writers and coaches.

What is the complaint? Simply that football has become so important that the effort to secure players for the eleven becomes the supreme interest and activity of the institution, its backers and the alumni. It is that prowess on the gridiron becomes so important that good players, regardless of their lack of intellect, are "feather-bedded" through their classes.

Obviously, the conclusion is apparent to students, who become cynical of the ideals proclaimed by those who are supposed to instruct them.

There is evidently something to the complaints. Grantland Rice, a well-known writer on sports, recently said that professional coaches "told me that certain colleges were paying more for their stars than the professional teams could offer."

Jack Neely, coach at Rice Institute, has publicly stated his disgust with the present status of recruiting and subsidization.

"Pop" Warner, one of the respected celebrities of football, was recently quoted: "Subsidies for college players have developed to a point at which they cannot be curbed."

Dr. Paul F. Douglas, President of American University, Washington, declares "The modern college football player is a human slave, caught in the biggest black-market operation in the history of higher education."

There can be little doubt in the minds of those who keep up with the colleges and universities of the nation but that football, despite its popularity and its possibilities, has become something of an educational Frankenstein. How it can be curbed without losing some rather definite values is a question, but it is interesting to know that intelligent thinkers, in the field of education, are asking the question.