The College Football Crisis Part I

That crisis centers around two things: the recruitment of high school players and their subsidization while in college. Both, for reasons which this survey made amply clear, have in recent years gone far beyond the limits of the tolerable. The resulting threat to the game is very real. Here is what one of football's most honorable and dedicated figures had to say on the subject—Fritz Crisler, athletic director of the University of Michigan, formerly head coach at Princeton and Michigan and chairman of the Rules Committee of the NCAA.

"We have discarded the principles on which college football was established. Emphasis in aims, purpose and objectives has changed. We are applying professional tactics to educational ideals and college athletics. We are very aggressive, in scouting and recruiting and we offer arrangements bordering on a paid-player basis.

"We generally assume the 'blue chip' football player from high school is destitute. We are taking refuge in subterfuge and by some of our practices have created hypocrisy in some individuals and some institutions. We are nourishing a monster which can destroy us if we admit we are powerless to direct, resist or control it.

"The cure is to treat athletes not as a special class but the same as all other students; to adopt and create machinery to enforce legislation on a noncontract, nonpaid-player basis; to assume the athlete, his parents and relatives have some responsibility in financing the education of their boy; to allow the boys to seek their colleges and courses of their own free will rather than colleges seeking the athletes. Instill in young Americans that participation in college football is a privilege to be earned, not a right to be demanded and bargained for—which in the process would make them disdainful of subterfuge and dishonesty."

Now let's stop for a minute and see just what the rules on subsidizing intercollegiate athletics are across the nation. Here is the picture as revealed in the answers to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED's detailed questionnaire.

All colleges, both as individual schools and as conferences, seem to have about the same problems, with the exception of the Ivy League and, of course, the service academies. On principle each conference operates under rules which seem proper and satisfying to the group, the loose, general supervision by the NCAA. The NCAA tends to leave the matter of subsidization up to each conference and school, acting only on reports of subsidization above the top limit.

Those conferences which more or less follow the full athletic scholarship plan—the Southeastern, Atlantic Coast, Southern, Big Seven, Southwestern and Skyline—seem to feel that this plan works out quite satisfactorily. The Big Ten does not have sharply defined limits for each school but tends to approve a grant-in-aid for tuition and a work program for athletes which enables them to earn the amount necessary to support themselves. Among the Big Ten schools there seems now to be a definite swing in sentiment toward some type of open athletic scholarship that would take care of the necessary college expenses. The Pacific Coast Conference permits grants-in-aid to cover tuition and fees in all cases except at UCLA and California, where institutional policies are different. Until this year the PCC would permit a player to work for a maximum of $75 per month—50 hours per month, in season and out, at $1.50 an hour. This amount has been raised for the coming year to $100 per month by increasing the hourly pay-rate maximum to $2.

The attitude of the Ivy group toward subsidization can be summarized from these two excerpts from the presidents' agreement of 1954:

"The members of the group reaffirm their prohibition of athletic scholarships. Athletes shall be admitted as students and awarded financial aid only on the basis of the same academic standards and economic need as are applied to all other students.

"No student shall be eligible who has received financial support from any source except 1) from personal or family resources; 2) in return for services (other than of an athletic character) rendered through employment at normal wages; 3) from financial aid awarded by or with the specific approval of the regular academic authority of the, institution in which the player is a student; 4) from government grants to war service veterans or regularly enrolled members of ROTC units."