Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/749

Rh athletic fields, and better playgrounds, have arisen to help on this good work.

As to the disadvantages of football, the sport is like everything else: it is subject to evils. The question is not whether there are evils attending the game, but whether the evils overbalance the good. I admit the evils, but I maintain that the evils have been exaggerated, and that they are not yet great enough to call for the abolition of the game.

Evil No. 1: Excessive time devoted to practice. This charge only applies to the last few weeks of preparation. The first weeks, two hours and a half for most of the players would be the maximum time. For the half-backs three hours would suffice for their maximum time. Part of this time, too, is consumed in going to and from the field or practice ground. Some of the players, more systematic than their fellows, do not consume even so much time. But in the last few weeks, varying in numbers according to the judgment of the captain and coaches of the year, more time is used, amounting, under the most exacting captain, to as many as five hours and a half a day for five weeks. I may add, however, that this exacting captain overdid the business, tired out his team, and suffered the humiliation of a defeat. The most successful captain whom I have known saved the time of his men all through the season, seldom giving them more than two hours' practice, and devoting only one week to hard practice. Five hours a day is too much time for a student to devote to any sport. So much time devoted to practice is not necessary for success. On the contrary, it interferes with success, so that this evil is bound to work its own cure. But, even granted that five and a half hours per day for five weeks were given to football practice, it does not follow that those are taken from study, or that, if the game of football were driven out of college, all the players would betake themselves to books. Some of them would give part of their time to study, but poor scholars of the team would still continue to be poor students. Indeed, it is my belief that they would be poorer scholars than before. When they are on the team the very necessity to economize their time compels these men to regular hours of work. When they cease to play football they waste their time. It has always been the result of my observation that though the good scholars of the team do better work in the winter and spring terms, the poor scholars at that time usually fall off in scholarship. But if football is a cause of poor scholarship, why is it that the cause is not uniform in its effects? If it were uniform in its effects all the players would be poor students. Yet the highest honor men are often members of teams. But it may be said that the introduction of football into college has affected the scholarship of the college in general unfavorably, even if it