University of Virginia Library

Punt?

The frost is on the gridiron and the frozen
Wahoo football team is now spending the
winter shivering over the frightful statistics
they have compiled in this bleak season. But
there may be some hot times yet in the
coaches' sanctums in University Hall, as the
controversy over the future of our perennially
mediocre football team rages around Don
Lawrence and the proposed renovation of
Scott Stadium.

What, we are wont to ask, is going on?
Rumors and alleged rumors fill the air, but
just what is going to happen is still anybody's
guess. Coach Lawrence, whose every season is
a "building" season, is rumored to be on the
way to the showers. Hardly anyone is
surprised because it is a well-recognized fact
of inter-collegiate and professional sports that
when a team is a consistent failure, the coach
is either the culprit or the scapegoat. Even if
he is merely a scapegoat for a host of more
complex and diverse weaknesses, he most
easily can be exorcised, and usually is.

This is half of the news. The other half is
the proposed addition of 12,000 new seats to
Scott Stadium. Hardly anyone isn't surprised
at this because most people think Scott
Stadium already has more seats than it needs.
Granted, every year or so the stadium fills up
for what is a potentially "big game"
especially with Virginia Tech, but who wants
to expand a stadium that most often has such
excess capacity that even a flask can be
almost assured of its own seat?

What, then, should be done?It is hard to
imagine that dismal performance after dismal
performance does not have something to do
with coaching. But it is harder to imagine
that the coaching is the crux of the problem.
Behind the most obvious fault of the Cavalier
football program (its dearth of victories) are
the often contradictory objectives toward
which the program is supposedly aiming. Do
we want a mighty powerhouse that can hold
its own against Michigan or Missouri? Or do
we want a perennially mediocre but
pleasantly unprofessional squad which can
lose respectably to North Carolina and
Maryland?Or, for the sake of argument, do
we want an inter-collegiate football team at
all?

There are those, especially alumni, who are
tired of trying to support a football team
which is handicapped by ACC rules and "The
Virginia Way," and would like to see us
dedicate ourselves to a winning way, whatever
the costs in academic standards or community
spirit. There are those die hards who are good
enough fans to attend even losing games year
after year. And, there are those who could
not care less if Scott Stadium were plowed
under for a larger parking lot. Each point of
view represents a legitimate way of looking at
the sport of football, depending on what
premises one accepts.

At Virginia, the first premise of our
involvement in intercollegiate athletics has
been that there is a place for student-athletes
in an academic environment which encourages
scholarship and supports competition on the
playing fields. There is a great tradition in
education which appropriately emphasizes the
benefits of participation in sports; it is the
idea which Cecil Rhodes demanded be
embodied in his famous Rhodes Scholarship
program. It is only recently in America that
collegiate athletics have become unabashed
training leagues for future pros. Most major
state and private universities have chosen to
accept that role for their sports
program–Virginia has shunned it.

Virginia should continue to shun the
tentacles of professional sports as they reach
down and sever the ties between student and
athlete. Nevertheless, we can strive to win. By
scheduling competition which makes for
exciting contests, even if there are no big
names, we can have a potentially winning
team without having to recruit grease
monkeys and gorillas to clobber their
counterparts at mammoth universities.

But we cannot foresee a need for 12,000
new seats in Scott Stadium. What prompted
this idea...one sold-out game?Or a long-range
plan to join the Big Ten? The answer
probably lies somewhere between those
extremes; but whatever it is, it does not seem
to us the best way to support athletics at the
University regardless of who pays the bill. If
someone is concerned enough about sports at
the University, his money would be better
spent for the furtherance of intramural
programs to serve the expanding student
body.

Virginia always seems to be at a "turning
point" or "moment of decision" regarding the
future of intercollegiate athletics. Still, we
seem to be weakening a little more each losing
season, yielding gradually but perceptibly to
the pressure to win, to win often, and to win
against opponents whose entire athletic
program is based on other premises. We may
be a little behind the Michigans and Ohio
States, but we are following their lead
nonetheless.

We are on third and twenty; if we don't
break away this time, we will be forced to
punt. Should that happen, the game is out of
reach and the University of Virginia will have
suffered its worst gridiron defeat in
history.