Too Much Football

by ALLEN JACKSON

FOOTBALL is a complicated game, and the intense competition fostered by the business practices of big-time college football causes this complication to be increased. The result is that the players, if they wish to play the game at all, must spend more time on the gridiron than they bargained for. However, any spectator will tell you there are certain benefits connected with playing college football, such as being part of a school’s football tradition, learning fair play, having one’s character built, traveling to different parts of the country, and being glorious. All of these compensate the athlete for the loss of school time. But after having played four years at guard for the University of Michigan, which possesses the largest college football stadium in the world, I can see that the supposed benefits of big-time football are either grossly exaggerated or completely imaginary, and it seems to me that most of the enormous amount of time I spent on the gridiron was wasted.

One of the most harmful aspects of the highly organized and regimented athleticism which is the result of a college sport having become “big time” is that the spontaneity has been taken out of the sport. In professional athletics the individual player expects to devote his whole person to his game because his livelihood depends upon consistent, “professional” performance. But the college athlete is primarily a student, not a professional, and when he is forced into the overorganization and overperfection which the big-time game demands, he can no longer decide for himself whether he should study or play football on a particular day.

Probably few of the freshmen who try out for the team realize how much of their time will eventually be exacted by football. I remember discovering with dismay, as a freshman, that if I were to keep up with the rest of the men who were competing for positions on the varsity I would have to report for spring practice. Practicing football for six weeks during the warm and budding spring did not strike me as being either a glorious or a worth-while occupation, but I needed to do it during both my freshman and sophomore years if I was to get in the line-up. I was engaged in actual practice on the field for about twenty hours a week during the spring semester, and during the fall my working week was boosted to about twenty-eight hours. Of course this includes only the time actually spent on the field, and does not include such things as evening movies of the next week’s opponent, study time wasted because of fatigue, extra time demanded by game trips to other schools, and time spent in whirlpools and under heat lamps in the training room.

The four-year total actually spent on the field, counting three extra weeks of Rose Bowl practice, comes to about 1350 hours. Although it was hard for me to realize it at the sophomoric height of my athletic zeal, my reason now tells me that football is only a single, minor, and unacademic part of a college education, and that it should not be more important than other single parts of college — such as, for example, the study of history. At Michigan I took six courses in history, each of them meeting three times a week for fifteen weeks, and each requiring an average of two hours of study for each hour in class. The total number of hours here is 810, about half of the time that I spent on the gridiron.

Copyright 1951, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston 16, Mass. All rights reserved.

Of course many of the men on the Michigan team receive excellent grades despite their football playing. Last year the team average was higher than the school average, and the two players with the highest grades were an engineer and a premedical student. I But these very men have agreed with me that high grades do not mean satisfactory learning, and that football interferes with learning. Besides demanding that the student forgo concerts, visiting lecturers, and outside reading during the football semester, big-time football also requires students with heavy loads to take part of their courses in summer school, and to skimp and cram their way through the fall semester as best they can.

A significant little adage which circulates in Michigan athletic circles says in effect that there are three aspects of college life at Michigan — intellectual, social, and athlantic &emdash but that the student has time for only two. This idea can circulate only where athletics have become, or are thought to have become, as important as the academic work of the University. The student who plays football is expected to sacrifice his studies for the sake of the game, and he is very darkly frowned upon if he misses practice for the sake of his studies. When after one Saturday game I limped off the field with a twisted ankle, I knew that I would be expected to spend a good deal of Sunday in the training room taking treatment for the injury. But since Sunday was the only time that I was able to study for a coming examination, I stayed away from the training room. As a result the ankle stiffened and on the practice field I was made to feel guilty for the rest of the week. The coaches are aware that in theory studies come first, but they are also aware that, in a big-time league, if studies actually come first, second-rate teams are likely to be the result.

One of my teammates, a philosophy student who at the time played fourth string, possessed a scholarship which would have enabled him to study in Europe. However, if he made use of this scholarship he would be unable to return in time to play football the following season. He asked the coaches’ advice on this, hoping that they would tell him to go to Europe by all means, and come back and play for them when he was ready. But instead it. was hinted that if he stayed he might well get to the “top” the next season, whereas if he took the scholarship it was quite possible that someone else would have his place when he got back. These suggestions were further implemented by numerous long-distance telephone calls from alumni who were amazed that anyone should consider taking a trip to Europe when there was a chance he might make the Michigan team. So he stayed, and the next season played third string.

Another teammate of mine decided during his junior year to use his GI Bill to cultivate a longstanding desire to study the piano. He had already earned a varsity letter as a sophomore center on Michigan’s '48 National Championship team, and was looking forward to playing first string in his senior year, inasmuch as the man ahead of him was graduating. But during the following spring semester he became so engrossed in his piano playing that, although he still inlended to play football in the autumn, he decided not to turn out for spring practice. Consequently, when hr returned for practice in the fall of his senior year he was promptly and without explanation assigned to the fifth string. He was replaced by men who had practiced the previous spring and who because of this were evidently considered better gambles toward a winning combination.

The reasonable and sensible thing to do in such a situation would be to quit football because it was now obvious that he had fallen from favor and would never make the first team. But it is impossible to be sensible in the midst of people who are afflicted with football. Making what the fanatic football alumnus would call a courageous display of determination, he decided to try to win back his position, a decision which he now thinks foolish and wasteful. The result of his efforts was that by the end of the season he was still nothing more than a third-string center; and with the exception of two non-conference games and the waning, reserve-flooded minutes of the other games, he spent most of his time sitting on the bench.

2

WHILE examining the nature of big-time football it will be necessary for me at times to criticize the position of the coaches. I wish to make the point here that it is not the individual but the position with which I find fault, and that this position must be criticized because it is one of the major means through which big-time football accomplishes its distortion of the sporting spirit.

One of the ideas most thoroughly drummed into the heads of young Michigan football players is that it is a very valuable thing to be associated with Michigan football tradition. These men talk about Michigan’s record, the fine men who have played for Michigan, in a manner almost liturgical, and the implication is that such things happen only at Michigan. Although much of this talk is sincere it is nevertheless misguided; it ignores the fact that Michigan tradition means basically that Michigan has always won more games than it has lost, and it means to keep on doing so.

At Michigan to win is of utmost importance; fair play and sportsmanship are fine, but to win is of utmost importance. Judging from the loud noises I have heard from chauvinistic, unathletic alumni from other big football schools, the Michigan people are not unique in proclaiming a “We’re the best athletic philosophy. But thanks to Fielding H. Yost and his point-a-minute teams of 1901 through 1905, the Michigan alumni have a better record to boast of than do the alumni of most, other schools.

Yost was one of the first coaches to begin the custom of ensuring a winning record by encouraging large men to come to Michigan primarily to play football — a custom which is still zealously fostered. He was so successful in obtaining skillful players that between 1901 and 1905 his teams won 55 games in a row, and each year averaged 548 points to the opponents’ 8 points. Most of the old-time Michigan alums will tEll you that Fielding Yost was successful because He was ahead of His time as a coach, and this is certainly true. In pioneering player-recruitment and in consciously or unconsciously promoting a public acceptance of the idea that winning, and winning by a big score, is an end in itself, Yost acted in strict accordance with some of the most basic elements in modern football.

I do not quarrel with Yost’s winning record as such, but I do quarrel with the tendency in modern football to emphasize winning as an end in itself, and the tendency toward a “kick him when he’s down ” attitude which such an emphasis fosters. Such an attitude, it seems to me, was more evident than the good sportsman’s attitude? when yost’s teams consistently ran up scores like 128 to 0, 88 to 0, and 130 to 0 against little schools wilhout recruiting systems, such as Buffalo, West Virginia, and Ferris Institute. Such records, of course, are possible only when the public gives prestige to those who trample weak competition.

Whether big-time football distorts the values of the football-following public by its win emphasis or whether the public makes possible such emphasis by giving prestige to the teams which trample weak competition is a problem similar to the chicken and egg question. But. whatever the cause, the result is that teams which feel the need of strengthening their reputation do so by keeping their reserves on the bench and running up the score on the first weak opponent encountered.

When the 1947 Michigan team went to the Bose Bowl there was a difference of opinion, among football experts, over whether Michigan or Notre Dame had the greatest team in the world. This controversy probably had much to do with the fact that most of the Michigan first team was kept in the Rose Bowl game until the latter part of the fourth quarter, by which time it had run up a score of 49 to 0 on the weaker Southern California team. But even with this large accumulation of points there was almost a full team of Michigan reserve players who did not get into the game or who played for only a few seconds — the reason being, clearly, that if Southern Cal was prevented from scoring, the record would look much more impressive, and it would be obvious to the football experts that Michigan undoubtedly had the greatest team in the world.

3

THE prestige which the college football business has succeeded in gaining for schools with winning records often produces an unsavory bigotry which goes beyond ordinary pride among both the players and students from a big football school. At Michigan one of those bigotry-fostering, tradition-conscious pre-game speeches which were impressive to sophomores but tiresome to seniors was to this effect: The men whom we were about to play would be battling Michigan; they would as a result be intimidated; and we should take advantage of this fine opportunity to dominate them. As a psychological device this idea was probably useful in giving confidence to sophomore players — but whether it worked or not, the point is that good sportsmen do not emphasize the use of their grandfathers’ reputations to intimidate an opponent.

“When Michigan loses, someone has to pay.”I heard the first of many repetitions of this illogical idea in 1949 when Michigan’s 25-game winning streak was decisively broken by Army. Since then I have heard it repeated with dogged monotony by the coaches after each Michigan loss, including Michigan’s loss to Michigan State last fall. During the practice week following this game I personally counted forty-three repetitions of the slogan. This one slogan symbolizes to me the perversion of the sporting spirit which has been produced by bigtime football. The slogan not only implies that Michigan shouldn’t have lost, but it also suggests that the loss was caused by something wrong somewhere — perhaps something shady on the part of the other team.

The point of view suggested by this slogan becomes positively unchristian in its implication that revenge will be sought at the expense of next week’s opponent. This desire for revenge is doubly evil in that it cannot be directed at the people who seem to have inflicted the injury but must be spent upon the first, innocent victim who happens along. But the brass-tack meaning of “When Michigan loses, someone has to pay" is simply that since Michigan prestige and Michigan gate receipts depend upon a spectacular winning record, a lost game must be counteracted, if possible, with a larger than usual winning score the following Saturday. And the slogan is successful in arousing these attitudes. Many of the players continue to deify the coaches long after they should have outgrown this, and to them everything said on the field is gospel. Those who do not care for much of what goes on are in the game too deep to get out, and if they wish to stay on the team they must close their minds to reason and allow themselves to be directed.

I do not wish to imply that the players are actually taught unfair tactics at Michigan: this is certainly not true. But the Michigan coaches find it necessary to emphasize winning to a much greater degree than is natural or reasonable, and in a game like football this sort of emphasis is bound to lead to unsportsmanlike conduct. Indeed, the feeling that it is terribly necessary to win is so strong, and the resultant feeling of relief after having won a game is so pronounced, that if any questionable tactics have been used by Michigan men during the game they are merely laughed off.

Virtually all of my teammates on last year’s squad were very clean players, but the atmosphere of big football often turned team spirit into mob spirit when the group as a whole accepted actions which to the individual would seem unsportsmanlike. One of the key players on last year’s team was noted for his feats in the boxing ring and for his quick temper. When on Monday afternoons the team would watch movies of the preceding Saturday’s game, this player would occasionally be seen landing a seemingly accidental left-hook on an opposing player’s chin. Of course the movies of any football game are likely to show up actions which appear to be underhanded; but the point here is that such actions — especially by the hotheaded boxer — would invariably strike the coaches as funny, and they would run the play over again in slow motion so that everyone could see and laugh.

The assembled players took their cues from the coaches and also laughed heartily to see such fun. Then, a few plays later on the screen, the coaches would solemnly draw our attention to the fact that the other team was “gang tackling,”and that we would have to look for just “this sort of thing from our next week’s opponent because it was that kind of team. Michigan’s maize and blue players are not encouraged to “gang tackle” of course; they are simply ordered to cover the opposing ball-carrier with “a blanket of blue.”

4

ANOTHER bromide which the big-time football votaries like to administer to promising young athletes is that there is something wonderful about being part of the “team spirit” found in big-name teams. Human beings have long since proved themselves social animals, and it seems reasonable that they should enjoy team games. But big football has perverted the team spirit as well as the sporting spirit.

In the first place the competition for individual positions on big teams is altogether too stiff, and this does more to break down than to build up team spirit. The bigness of the game, the publicity and prestige which go along with a first-team position, and the large number of grim and intense young athletes who are drawn to the gridiron by these abnormalities cause a spirit of internecine conflict to be as much in evidence as esprit de corps.

Besides this, the increasing specialization demanded by big-time football does nothing toward engendering social cohesion on the team. The compulsion to win generated by the game’s big-business aspect demands that the individual players become precise and accurate in their various specialties to a degree unnatural in college athletics. On the Michigan practice field the ends, backs, and linemen all spend much of their time in separate corners of the field, performing their various specialties with monotonous repetition. During the week there are only one or two hour-long scrimmages, on the average, and the rest of the time is devoted to various forms of dummy practice, running of signals, and practicing specialties. All of this is necessary to produce a winning team in a big-time league, but it is not much fun. Any sport which requires a week’s practice of specialties for each sixty-minute game has become too mechanized to allow the spontaneous sort of team spirit which would seem to be the special value of college football.

Everyone has seen football teams gather in the center of the field just before the opening kickoff for a last-minute handshake, and this sight, plus the stock sport page photographs of men on the bench who art “trying just as hard as the men in the game,” seems to indicate that team spirit is an actual and worth-while reality in big-time football. I should like to state plainly and emphatically that much of the huddled handshaking and bench emotion is artificial. The players know that in order to win it is necessary to get “worked up” for the game, whether they feel like it or not. Also, the bigness and complexity of modern football produces a decrease in team homogeneity and a corresponding decrease in spontaneity. The players sense that they will be less effective without such homogeneity, and they attempt to regain this feeling on the practice field and in the big game by an artificial emphasis upon such devices as the pregame handshake and the bench chatter.

My first experience with the automaton spirit which big-time coaches often find it necessary to enforce in order to make their teams efficient winning machines was when, as a freshman, I was used as a human dummy to test the proficiency of the ‘47 Rose Bowl varsity. Occasionally, when one of my freshman or reserve teammates would be laid out by the businesslike efficiency of the varsity, in such a way that play could not be resumed until the field was cleared, the coaches would promote big-time football’s party-line attitude toward such a situation by reciting this slogan: “Well, move the ball or move the body.” The varsity players, tickled by such wit, would then move the ball to an uncluttered part of the field and resume play.

When I became a varsity player I began to notice other evidences that big-time football cannot afford to depend upon spontaneous team spirit. At the training table on the Friday night before a game the Michigan players were expected to show that they were in the process of “storing it up” for the next day’s contest by eating their meal with a quiet intensity which precluded laughter or any evidence of high spirits. Probably there were a few players who actually fell a sort of judgment-day taciturnity, but for many of the players it was an artificially imposed atmosphere, and bad for the digestion. If, as often happened, some of the lighter hearts would forget for a moment that they were supposed to be grim on Friday evenings, there would be ominous and foreboding looks from the coaches’ table — and if the unwholesome gaiety persisted, the coaches would silence it by uttering with gloomy irony, “We hope you’ll all be this happy tomorrow night.”

Another instance in which the Michigan players had an attitude externally imposed upon them will serve also to exemplify the pernicious effect which big-time football has had upon the reputations of schools which sponsor big-name teams. A few days before we started on our Rose Bowl journey we were summoned for an orientation lecture, a surprising amount of which was devoted to our table manners and general deportment while in Pasadena. It seemed that many of the teams which had in the past gone to the Rose Bowl had been guilty of ungentlemanly conduct — one team, we were told, had been fond of throwing bread rolls the length of a table in the hotel dining room and flipping squares of butter against the ceiling, where they stuck. But Michigan, we were told, did not do that sort of thing. Although it was good to hear that Michigan did not do that sort of thing, neither I nor my teammates had ever been in the habit of throwing butter at the ceilings of plush hotels, and we wondered why we were being so energetically told to act in a normal manner.

The reason was that the big-time football system has unconsciously superimposed a mercenary stereotype upon the college football player, and people often expect a visiting football team to be rowdy; because of this, the coaches were at pains to impress us with lurid examples, of questionable authenticity, of how not to act. In Pasadena we conducted ourselves with a normal amount of gentility — neither better nor worse than the average of the teams which preceded us, a waitress told me. But the Michigan players heard themselves complimented profusely on their conduct.

The point of all this is that when an entire athletic group, like college football players, has such a reputation that players who conduct themselves with ordinary grace are looked upon as above average, there is something wrong with the system. Moreover, schools which sponsor big-name teams, and so associate themselves with this bad reputation, subtly lose prestige in the eyes of the general public. Big-time football has promoted a syllogism something like this: football players are something less than students; therefore, universities which sponsor big football teams, though famous, are something less than universities.

5

IN ORDER to exhibit one of big-time football’s most unscrupulous practices, I shall have to explain the nature and function of the “red shirts,” as they are called at Michigan. The generally used term is “cannon fodder.” Because modern football is such a complicated game, the head coaches are able to attend to only the first two or three teams, called “blues” at Michigan. However, it is necessary to have at least two more teams, the red shirts, against whom the blues can scrimmage, or who can hold the dummies for the blues to block. The blues do not play amongst themselves because they are likely to hurt one another and be lost for the big game on Saturday. Also it is necessary for the varsity blues to feel their power and be able to march up and down the field through the weaker red shirts.

A few of the red shirts know that they will never rise in the varsity hierarchy, and they are still content to come out for practice season after season to be used by the blues. But there are not enough of these men. The rest of the red shirts arc players who dream of making at least the third-string varsity one day, but whom the coaches are reasonably sure will never make the grade. Instead of telling these men that their chances of making the varsity are extremely small, the coaches, because they need men on whom their varsity can sharpen its claws, encourage the red shirts to return each year to try again. Of course all this is a matter of subtle suggestion; it is impossible to prove actual misrepresentation of facts, but I have spoken to and played against a number of disenchanted red shirts who for four years held dummies and waited their turn to be mashed by the blues, only because it was hinted that they might make it one day.

To a young boy who is fresh out of high school — where he was a big man because of his football playing — the slightest hint by a big college coach that he might make the varsity is enough to set the home town buzzing and to increase the player’s illusion of prestige. When he fails to make the varsity team, it seems one of life’s most terrible tragedies.

Two years ago, such a player came to Michigan. As a great high school star and a holder of state records in track he was looked upon by his friends and home-town supporters as a potential All-American, and when the Michigan coaches watched him operate on the freshman team they seemed to agree. The following season — last fall — the player’s picture was in every sporting magazine in the country, and since such publicity could occur only with the coaches’ sanction, it was assumed that he would do great things. Then the football season began, and game after game the highly publicized player was left sitting on the bench. Although he dressed for all the games, and made all the trips, for some reason unknown to himself or to his teammates he was newer allowed to play, except for a few seconds in one game, and by the end of the season it was apparent that he would not make a varsity letter. When Michigan prepared to make its second trip to the Rose Bowl, a t rip on which ten more than the usual number of players were taken, so that even some of the red shirts went along, the coaches refused to take him, and in so doing as much as told him that he would never play for Michigan.

To a boy who had boon heralded as a second Tom Harmon this was a crushing blow, especially since any reasonable person would assume that the football system, after publicizing the player with such vigor, would feel honor-bound to take him along on the Rose Bowl trip. What happened to this boy represents in concentrated form what happens to most of the students who play big-time football. They are first deluded into thinking that they are great and that football is great; then they are used by the system and finally discarded with at best nothing to show but a scrapbook full of redundant and inaccurate clippings.

Of course such build-up and subsequent disappointment occurs elsewhere in life, particularly in a professional sport like baseball. But this is all part of the professional scene, and it has no place in college athletics. College football should have all the benefits of a strictly amateur sport; but it is losing these and acquiring the undesirable aspects of a professionaI sport.

6

ANY accusation that football leaves the player with nothing but a scrapbook full of clippings will move the defenders of the game immediately to demand that some mention be made of the “character building" upon which football seems to have a priority. Aside from the probability that the coaches who direct uncommercialized college sports, such as track, wrestling, and gymnastics, could present good arguments showing these sports to be just as effective builders of character as football, it seems to me that anyone who assumes that athletics are an extraordinary factor in the development of an individual’s character is guilty of ignoring the many forces which contribute to such development.

But in the football world there is great emphasis placed upon character development; and if, in the coaches’ not infallible judgment, an individual player’s character does not seem to be developing in the manner prescribed by the big-time football system, his position on the team will be endangered. Because all big-time football players and coaches have grown up with the idea that it is necessary to give your all for the alma mater, anyone who does not seem willing to do this is looked upon as a coward.

The importance of winning in big-time football makes it absolutely necessary to field the best team possible on important Saturdays, regardless of injuries. When the modern compulsion to win is superimposed upon live old give-your-all idea, the pressure on an injured player to play despite his injury is immense. No matter how many times a player proves himself in battle, the first time he decides that an injury should keep him off the playing field he is given the raised eyebrow and accusing stare by the coaches, trainer, and even some of his teammates. This subtle accusation is caused by the team’s collective dread of weakening the winning combination, and it is especially acute if the injury is not obvious and the coming game is expected to be close.

Near the end of my junior year, when I was a first-string, battle-scarred veteran of many games, I received what I considered to be a very serious knee injury a week before Michigan was to play Ohio State for the conference championship. The knee was badly swollen, and it was impossible for the doctor who looked at it to make a valid diagnosis until the swelling subsided. But, since I could not walk, and since it was necessary for me to spend two days in the hospital, I assumed that T would not be expected to play in the big game.

However, the man who substituted for me lacked both my weight and experience. So I found to my dismay that as soon as I could walk I was expected to “gut it out,”as the Michigan training-room slogan would describe it, by reporting to the practice field, having my knee trussed up with tape, and preparing to give my all for Michigan. Although I could feel loose things inside my knee, I was so intimidated by this frightening preoccupation with guts that I hobbled dutifully out onto the practice field.

On the field I found that my obvious inability to play was looked upon with suspicion, and I began to hear remarks that I was allowing the knee to get the better of me. Instead of being ordered back to my hospital bed for a thorough examination, I was merely told that whether I played or not was entirely up to me. At this point it was clear that I was expected to play, and if I did not I would be dubbed a quitter. Like everyone else, I think there are certain things for which it is worth while to give my all, but I decided then that, the primitive alma-materism of an obsolete generation of college playboys was not one of them, and I did not play.

About a week later the knee became locked in a rigid position, and it was necessary for me to return to the hospital. It was now possible to see that a piece of cartilage had been torn in such a way that there was little chance of its growing back together, and an operation would be required. The operation did more than fix my knee, because now the coaches knew that I had not been faking and that I could once more be depended upon to give my all for Michigan. But the point had been made: big-time football has no respect for either the individual’s word or his body.

7

A WORD must be said about the rabid football alumni and the overzealous football fans. I find no fault with anyone who has a normal interest in athletics, but the perverted bigness of football produces people with a perverted interest in sport. Although the number of the most adhesive of these hangers-on to the football scene is not large, their presence is distressing because they are undoubtedly the articulate representatives of a much larger group whose interest in and attitude toward bigtime football allow the unhealthy and prolonged hysteria which permeates the college football scene each fall.

Except for a fawning and familiar interest in a few backfield stars, many of the football alumni whom I met had no real interest in the players as individuals; indeed their interest in the stars was usually based only upon athletic reputation and seldom upon character. Many of the football alumni who help destitute athletes through school, from my observation, do this because of a selfish interest in the perpetuation of the school’s winning record, with which they have identified themselves, and not because of a personal interest in the welfare of the particular athlete. It is this sort of person who exerts the pressure which fires coaches when the team has not won enough games to satisfy the alumni’s collective ego. These are the men who are influential in promoting among young boys a distorted idea of what it really means to play big football; and these are the ones who think that other people’s judgments of men are as superficial as their own when they say that football players will have no trouble finding jobs, because everyone is glad to hire a football player.

Concerning the finding of jobs, it would be my guess that largely because of very widespread recruiting practices, the term football player has become synonymous with ape, and because of this it is often better for the job applicant to save mention of his gridiron record until after he has become acquainted with a prospective employer. Concerning the meaty subsidization question, I am glad to say that the University does none of it. A few of the players receive help from alumni, but a school with Michigan’s prestige and record can usually get all the football material it needs without such aid.

During my four years at Michigan I played in games which took me from New York to California, but I was never given the opportunity to meet or speak to an opposing player. If there is any value in having an intercollegiate schedule, it would seem that such value would come from the opportunity which game trips afford to become acquainted with men from other schools and other parts of the country. But big football has no time for palaver. Indeed, on almost every trip we took, we were cautioned to keep to ourselves — because, and this is another slogan that I unfortunately know by heart, “We are here for only one purpose, and that is to win.”

Often during a game I would develop a genuine fondness for some of the players with whom I was exchanging blows, and I would have valued a friendly glass of beer with them after the game. But the visiting team was always whisked off to its train with businesslike alacrity; about the only thing I learned from traveling to other schools was that in every college stadium the grass is more or less green.

Nor did I learn anything from making the Rose Bowl trip — I merely verified my suspicion that of all the farces connected with big-time football, the Rose Bowl is the biggest. The so-called honor and glory of playing in the Rose Bowl is transient and meaningless, as is any glory and honor which is nothing more than the product of a publicity man’s imagination; the three-week extra practice is not justified by the benefits of the game; and the trip to the coast is crowded and regimented. But the visiting team does at least get a trip out of it, and this is more than the host team gets. Of course I had no opportunity to speak to any of the California players, but it is impossible for me to understand how they, as Rose Bowl participants, could think of themselves as anything but extremely unlucky. For them there is no send-off, no cross-country trip, and no guided tours — nothing but three more weeks of drudgery under a southern California sun.

So, after four years of seeing everything there is to see in big-time college football — victories, defeats, publicity, hospitals, championships, and bowls — of being known as a “football player” rather than a human being, of seeing myself and my teammates misrepresented and misquoted by sportswriters who seldom attempted to know the players personally, of playing in a 97,000-seat stadium in which my nonpaying student friends were forced to sit in the end zone, of having my natural desire for physical exercise corrupted and commercialized, of giving up pleasant afternoons in favor of kicking and rolling in the dust and muck of the practice field — I have decided that big-time football is a poor bargain for the boys who play the game.