AMERICA AT PLAY

Greymouth Evening Star, 4 February 1939, Page 9

AMERICA AT PLAY

HYSTERIA OVER FOOTBALL Mr Grattan O'Leary, associate cdi- . ter of the “Ottawa Journal,” has been visiting tho United States for the pur--1 '.«£ of fathoming the American attitude toward President Roosevelt. Ac(t iding to him “the average Canadian u.nnot understand American criticism of President Roosevelt.” But in tho midst of his study of political ami class discord Mr O’Leary made a discovery which prompted him to say: “A country is safe when all these 1 coplo can go crazy over football,’ writes the New York correspondent cf the London “Sunday 'Times.” No eno will question this 1 visitor’s use of tho word crazy in describing tho mass hysteria which grips this nation during the ten weeks in which teams, representing 300 or more colleges and universities, indulge in the variation of Rugby which over here goes under the name of “intercollegiate football.” Considering thc| shoitness of the season and the fact that games are played only on one day of tho week, the sport is by far tho country’s most popular. And this does not except baseball. The gate receipts from tho 2,000 games played between tho different colleges must total £1,000,000. Intel collegiate football masquerades at an amateur sport, but all Americans will admit, as even now President Huchins of the University of Chicago is saying, that it is honeycombed with professionalism. It quite safe to assert that no more than one in each fifty colleges has a football squad which would pass the test of pure amateurism. This is to say, that in the other 49 there are football players who are being paid directly. receive free tuition or indirect subsidies, or who are being supported entirely at college by alumni. ■ A visitor like Mr O'Leary finds on a Saturday afternoon in- autumn every American town or city housing a college given over to football. Entering into the spirit of the thing, he mingles in. the crowd and presently is in a concrete stadium (after paying a. fee of anywhere from 10s to 255). This stadium, seating 25,000, or even 100,000 persons, is used just' nine or ten times a year. The partisans are banked on either side, from which they shout cheers and songs to the music of the college bands, the musicians in some of which are hired or subsidised.

THRILLING SPECTACLE There is no denying that the spectacle is colourful and thrilling, so much so that Americans will argue that it justifies the pretence which helps to bring about the staging. Each college has its own' songs, and many are stirring and impressive. When the eleven from the United States Military Academy is playing it is really stirring to hear and to see the regiment of 1500 cadets singing in. unison: On, brave old Army team, on to the fray! Fight on to victory, For that’s the fearless Army way. A betting man, with a knowledge of American university graduates and their devotion to their football teams, would, lay a bob or two that on the afternoon of November 19 last the spirit of one Mr Joseph Kennedy was in the stadium in New Haven, singing with the 35,000 who were there in the flesh: Harvard, fair Harvard! With the Crimson in. triumph flashing To the strains of victory, Old Eli’s hopes we are dashing Into blue obscurity.

It may be necessary to explain that Yale University is the Oxford to the Cambridge of Harvard, and that it is known as Old Eli because of the first name of its founder and that its colour is blue. The Harvard-Yale rivalry is the most ancient and honourable in the land.

Getting back to our visitor and his initiation into American football, he discovers that the game is played upon a rectangular field 360 ft. ,in length and 160 ft. in width. The ball is a convex spheroid. There . are eleven players to a side, and substitute are permitted freely. Thus, in the course of the game, which is played in four periods of fifteen minutes each, as many as 30 players are employed in both teams. There is no extra play if the game is a tie after the regulation time limit. To score a touch-down is the chief object of the play. This is done by running the ball past the opponent’s goal line or by catching it not more than ten yards beyond that line after a throw from a team mate. The foot is used very little in American football. The team in possession of the ball has four tries in which to advance ten yards either by running or passing. When, after three rushes or passes, the ten yards have not been gained, the ball is kicked to the opponents who then try their hand .it making the ten yards in four attempts. BATTLE OF GIANTS The game is fast and furious, resolving into a battle of 22 young giants who throw their bodies at each other and fly through the air to tackle the one who is running with the ball. So great are the demands of the game that on the better teams there is rarely place for a boy who cannot meet requirements such as these: weigh at least 1801 b., run 100 yards in 11 seconds, and, revel in a rough and tumble. Injuries are frequent and severe, and it is a rare game that does not see at least one player carried from the field with a broken bone or a dislocation. Deaths in college games are infrequent, there' being none, last year. However, 19 boys between the ages of 16 and 18, have been killed in school and club games. About live years ago a West Point cadet broke his neck making a tackle in the game against Yale University, while in New York City one college player was killed and a team-mate paralysed on one afternoon.

Now, the presidents of the colleges and universities are concerning themselves with the evils of professionalism, injuries and the tremendous betting which is done. They know that they have something of a Frankenstein on their hands. The sporting public, which doesn't bother its head about these evils, turns its attention to basketball, hockey, boxing, and wrestling—interest in any or all of which is tame compared with that in football.