Show Open Professionalism Can Cure Evils in College Athletics of being expelled from West Ninety cadets are in the process Point for alleged cheating in their academic work According to reports over 40 of these men are varsity football players and others are participants in other combined with recently uncovered basketball has given collegiate athletics its biggest black eye in And continuing and may uncover the basketball investigations are more and the West Point matter may involve many more than are now Public faith in collegiate athletics is at an all-time low and something must be done to restore These recent occurrences dealt intercollegiate athletics a blow from which it may never recover unless current practices are Several remedies have been suggested for the condition in which the colleges find In relation to the West Point situation some Senators are suggesting that collegiate athletics be temporarily abolished at the Point until such time as a complete investigation is This would be a drastic but it will take drastic moves to clean up collegiate athletics and restore the public's confidence in college What lies at the bottom of all this It is the undeniable presence of underhanded professionalism in collegiate We are not trying to pass the blame off entirely onto the All these boys know right from wrong and they know throwing games and cheating are definitely But the colleges give the athletes an entirely false sense of values by the manner in which they induce them to attend The boys know they are supposed to be amateurs to compete in inter-collegiate but when the school authorities or associations show the kids that this rule is not important because it can be violated without much chance of the athletes become conscious that other rules can be easily broken without If the first violation is condoned or practiced by the then why shouldn't they condone other violations of the existing Many coaches are against the under-the-table gifts which are handed to prospective but most adopt the attitude that the other schools do it and they have met the In many which don't offer out and out athletes are given jobs which require only their presence on the athletic field and a show of doing an occasional bit of This is just as much underhanded as the giving of gifts of cash or Undoubtedly many of the boys implicated in throwing these basketball games observed this violation of the amateur code going on in their own universities and decided that it would be okey them to break a few more rules and pick up a few extra bucks from College athletics are too big a part of college life to let them die because of the inroads gamblers and cheats have made upon But we can't let the situation continue in its present state because corrupted athletics are worse than no athletics at The limitation of athletics to the campus and close areas wouldn't work because gamblers have already invaded campuses and proved they are as vulnerable to fixing as the big Abolishment of collegiate athletics would eliminate the cor- but intercollegiate athletics are too valuable as a recreational source for the students and community to And from the boy's angle there is no better place to learn many of the highest ideals of life than on the athletic Most boys love enough to play them whether they 1 are paid or Thus no payment would be necessary if it were not for the danger of neighboring schools quietly inducing the best athletes to attend their schools and An honor system among such as the one existing at West would have to be but we have seen that that system is far too subject to failure to depend After considering the problem for some time there is the solution we think would be most We would suggest that all college athletes be paid honestly and above board with no under the table These athletes put in a great deal of time and effort and give of their They also risk serious injury which may disable them for They also make a great contribution to the life of the It is not fair to expect them to do all this without as we have in the Their pay should be commensurate with their efforts and would this clear the problem of dishonesty now present in college In the first- place the boys would be given no lessons on how to beat the rules as they went through college All their pay would have honestly earned and openly No rules would have been and they would have no reason question the integrity and honesty of the authorities over Under this program competitive bidding for athletes would be done m an open No deceit or dishonesty would be involved and the athletes would not have a first hand example of how to get away with cheating the This plan would surely be revolutionary in college but as we have said before something revolutionary is Colleges could look to professional baseball for a good example of how to run their The pubic has the utmost confidence in the integrity of baseball even though it is played by Baseball once had a to contend with similar to the one which grips college athletics But baseball met the situation with drastic methods which erased all taint of scandal from the baseball Now in a time of corruption baseball carries a clean The step of moving the college athletes on to an open professional basis is drastic but it would eliminate the greatest evil in college that of underhanded Professional athletics are not it is the underhanded methods used by colleges so far that has produced the mess which is at hand This step would make participation in athletics entirely independent of academic standing and thus eliminate the temptation to cheat in order to stay As long as the athletes stayed in school they could participate under the plan we Our plan will probably never get a trial but we are convinced that is the best road to clean and honest college John F. |