Life — June 15, 1905 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

VOL. XLN JUNE 15, 1905, Ne 17 West Tauery-Fiast Stamer, New Yous isonewho plays gamesex- } clusively for fun. A Zi profes- #7 | sional is ZEEE | one who > plays) in part, least, money or considerations which have a value. It is desired, for excelle sons, to limit participation in college This, as show articles in Me. 2 prac Why? Be- institutic young fellows abound who have been unable to provide with parents who amateurs. Needham's sports to by Mr. Clure’s Magazine, has proved, tice, to. be very difficult. cause in our educational themselves can support them com- fortably at school and college. ‘These lads have to do something for their own maintenance. Some of them are excellent athletes — baseball-players, football-players, oarsmen and the like. Their skill is marketable. They can hire out in the summer to play baseball at summer resorts, especially if they come as college-players, since college- students generally pass for gentlemen sound moral There is no son why a collegian should not help him- self along by playing ball in summer for hire, provided he does it openly. But he cannot do it openly, and still hold his status And there is ample moral objection to his Id on or cons standing that he as an amateur. doing it secretly, and trying to! by equivocation, evasion, lyin cealment to has forfeited. The whole effort. then, to keep pro- fessionalism out of college sports is an effort to constrain men who pass for gentlemen to behave like gentlemen. -LIFE- If such men have not the basic charac- teristics. of gentlemen, the effort is bound to be severe. If they are not honorable, scrupulous, truthful, they will on their qualifications. en fool the inspectors who pass. If they are not men of sensitive integrity, they will yield to s« tions to go to this col- fe or th nd receive secret com- pensation in one form or another for athletic services. It is hard w make men—be they players, managers, trainers or what—live up to the gentle- man’s. standard, unless they respect that standard, are bred adhere to it, not merely by agreement but by instinet ey Pea HE gentleman's standard was de- veloped in the first place by men who did not have to work for a living, but lived on what they had, and were supposed to be able to shape their con- duct without regard to money consid- erations. In older times people who their services for hire—lawyers, doctors, and the like — did gentlemen, on, for example, would not take : from his publisher. In our time and country those details of fastidious- long been outlawed. sold writers rank as newspaper not mon the largest fee now disturbs a law or a doctor's claim to be rated a man, provided it was honestly earned or decorously extorted. But in athletics the old artificial standard still obtains, There is a feeling that though a man may work f or gamble for it, without prejudice to his social stand- ing, he may not sell his skill and still retain his sports, status as a gen- tleman, and continue to compete with gentlemen in gentlemen's games > long as the college games were ricted interest, and brought in no revenue and were almost altogether played by lads who, “gentleman "-like, did not have to support themselves and had leisure to play, this question of amateur standing made no particular trouble, But with the increasing pub- nd importance of the games, wful progress in revenue-earning city, the their tax upon the time and energies of their momentous growth in the players, and the aggravated solici- tude about this. searching out for husky, hard-working youths to play in them, and this feel- ing on the part of some of the youths thus employed, that the laborer, whose winning, has come efforts contribute to the acquisition of big sums of gate money his hire. And so the standard, which is worthy of commercial the great world of business and most of the prac- tical its wi governs cerns of life, keeps elbowing into college sports and try- ing to drive the gentleman's standard out The seem well devised and The remedy ? remedies in use as efficacious The trouble is not that the remedies are not good, The trouble is a trouble of the same sort as the trouble with the trusts, and railroads and insurance companies. They have all yrown so big and strong that they have outgrown the restraints that used to hold them. The chief trouble with college athletics is that its pickings are too rich, its gate moneys too important, its surpluses too big. Another trouble is that the proportion of college men as could be expected. but that the disease is so bad. who are used to applying the gentle- Q s standard to anything is not so overwhelm: that its application to port is a simple matter. Too many collegians, being unfamiliar with it, fail to see its point. the business world. Why should it go in athletics? They don't see. Who can blame them ? But if anyone wants a nice new im- practicable remedy for college profes- sionalism that will be greeted with and execrations, try this : It doesn’t go in hootings Exclude from intercollegiate contests all youths that cannot show a decent minimum of from disclosed sources, income You have an old-fashioned gentleman's standard for sport. Exact from contestants—since it seems to be necessary—that they shall qualify tech- nically, on the old- **gentlemen."’ That will help to relieve the college proletariat from tempta- tion to earn money as it shouldn't, and may modify the interest of the public in the games. And if that doesn’t work a cure, abolish gate money, Professionalism lives on gate money, money it is be ashioned basis, as nd without gate and to perish. comicbooks.com