Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/754

732 player, however fair-minded he may be, makes a good umpire. A man without experience as a player, but yet possessing a quick eye, a decisive will, and a knowledge of the rules of the game, might be a better umpire than the most famous player.

As to interference by the faculties in the way of measures limiting the game, I have already hinted at one, namely, the requiring a certificate of physical soundness for every candidate for athletic honors. I would also limit teams to undergraduates. This measure would bring the teams better under the control of faculty supervision, and would besides put a certain limit to competition. In the first place, the professional schools do not exercise a strict personal supervision over the students. They assume, and rightly, that a man who commences the study of a profession has begun the serious business of life, and is capable of directing his own time. He may be absent from every exercise of the school except the examinations. Passing those, he can still be a member of the school in good and regular standing. Such a student, when in competition for a place on the team with a member of the undergraduate department, who is held up to attendance on daily exercises, has a great advantage over him. His freedom from restraint exercises a pernicious influence on the man who is subject to restraint. Concert of action between the faculties of undergraduate departments and those of graduate and professional schools in the way of control of any sport is almost impossible from the very circumstances of the case.

Instead of appointing committees to act with the students in the regulation of the sports, a better way to control them would be the appointment of a director of athletics to a seat in the undergraduate faculty, who should be the medium of communication between the students and the instructors. Such a man ought to have the confidence of the students and be in sympathy with them. He ought also to be a gentleman and a scholar, a graduate of the college, and a man holding its best traditions of righteousness and scholarship sacred. Such a man would be alive to the responsibilities of both sides—of the scholarship side as represented by the instructors, and of the healthy boy side of student life. I would not have the mangementmanagement [sic] of athletics taken by him out of the hands of the students, but I would have him help them with advice and with instruction, too, if necessary. I would have him attend the practice games and the races, oversee the coaches and trainers, and watch the players and students. He could prevent, without recourse to "reporting to the faculty," repetitions of mistakes and follies on the part of the students. He could keep out bad men from the list of trainers. He could prevent many a promising lad from wrecking himself by making the excitement of college sport the be-all and end-all of his existence. By his