p. 16 | ATHLETICISM A MENACE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Mar 1, 1905

ATHLETICISM A MENACE.

PRESIDENT WHEELER, of the University of California, has sounded a warning which the students of high schools and colleges would do well to heed. He says that, while athletics has brought much good health and confidence of strength to the college students, there is a danger that "monsters of professionalism and not healthy men will be the output of our athletic fields." He likens the football games between college teams to the sports of the Philistines over their captured Samson, and says, "This calling of Samsons, that they may make sport for us, is pretty poor use to make of a college man." President Eliot, of Harvard, in his annual report, also takes up the football game. Speaking of its detrimental influence upon the life of the young college man, he says:

The game of football has become seriously injurious to national academic life in American schools and colleges, and it is time the public, especially the educated public, should understand and take earnest consideration of the objections to this game. Some of the lesser objections to the game are its extreme publicity, the large proportion of injuries among the players, absorption of undergraduates' minds for two months, and a disproportionate exaltation of the football hero in the college world. The crude and vociferous criticism, blame, and praise which fall to the lot of a football player can be of no possible advantage to any young man at the opening of active life. On the contrary, they keep before him an untrustworthy and unwholesome standard of public approval or disapproval.

It is earnestly to be hoped that the words of these educators, who certainly know whereof they speak, will be given due consideration in the colleges of the land.