A great nuisance of those days was caused by the long and frequent 

 meetings of the Faculty, which, for lack of efficient organisation, were 

 needlessly burdensome. When, on a previous page, I said that, in my 

 career as a member of the Faculty, I was far from feeUng assured that 

 I had not done more harm than good, I had particularly in mind the 

 problems of athletics and of the clubs. I can see now that often I 

 espoused the wrong side of a question and that the conservatives, 

 toward whom I had slightly contemptuous feelings, were often more 

 nearly right. This is not because I, in my turn, have grown old and 

 reactionary, but is an expression of an opinion which is held by nearly 

 all who are in a position to judge. The overshadowing importance 

 which intercollegiate athletics have gained is a great anomaly and mis- 

 fortune. I witnessed every stage in the growth of that importance and, 

 in my small way, helped it along. I fully appreciate the great good 

 that the organised sports have done in our college life and would 

 not restore pre-athletic conditions, even if I could. 



When I first attended Faculty meetings, in January 1881, there was 

 no committee on athletics and shortly after that date (I don't remem- 

 ber just when) a "Committee on Outdoor Sports" was appointed, with 

 Professor Sloane as chairman. I was made a member of this committee 

 and remained on it till 1912, when I asked to be excused from committee 

 work. The only athletic fixtures of that earlier time were the football 

 games with Yale and Harvard, the former played on the Polo Grounds 

 in New York, the latter alternately at Princeton and Cambridge. Public 

 interest in these games was continually stimulated by the newspapers, 

 and the alumni attached an importance to them which increased stead- 

 ily until they unblushingly rated athletic success above scholarly achieve- 

 ment, which seems an astonishing perversion. The taproot of most of 

 the evils which afflict intercollegiate athletics in America is newspaper 

 notoriety and I am convinced that, if it were possible to make and 

 enforce a law restricting the public report of any game or race to a 

 single line of small type, which should give only the score, without men- 

 tioning the names of contestants, these evils would speedily disappear. 



That the undergraduate should put so false a value on athletic vic- 

 tories is not surprising, when one considers what he reads in the papers, 

 what he hears from his family and friends, the alumni and the coaches. 

 The motto: "Win; fairly, if you can, but win!," has led to every kind 

 of lying and cheating, professionalism more or less successfully con- 

 cealed, the holding out of illegitimate inducements to promising school- 

 boys; in short, to the abuses which have scandalised the world. In not 



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