University of Virginia Library

THE
SPORTS
SCENE

By Bob Cullen

ON THE PROGRAM, they simply call it "The College
Game" and they indicate its goodness by painting a football red,
white, and blue, which stands for Motherhood, and Frank
Merriwell, and Apple Pie, and the fighting Irish, and Pat O'Brien
floating over the Golden Dome, and that's what you think of
when you think of "The College Game," right?

Hardly. It's not really little Albie Booth scampering down
the left sideline at Yale Bowl to beat the Harvards, it's more like
David Rockefeller scampering down the left side of Wall Street
to win for the Chase Manhattan.

FOOTBALL GAMES, are no longer won by hard practices,
desire, or any other of the traditional factors. You win college
games today the same way you win them in the National
Football League. The team that spends the most money wins. In
the quest for victory, major college football has become a
spending spiral, until now the institutions are backed to the
wall. They must spend more money if they are to remain in
serious competition, but they have tapped their sources to the
utmost.

Obviously, the red, white, and blue, apple pie "College
Game" is more than overdue for a major overhaul, both in
concept and procedure. Gradually, the colleges themselves are
coming to realize this. Rule changes are in the offing, changes
that would restore a bit of proportion and a little sanity to the
college game.

WE CALL IT A GAME with qualifications. To the coaches
that run it, football is hardly a game anymore. To the players,
football is no longer a game, it is the dominating factor in their
lives for five months out of every school year. Even the contest
itself no longer has some of the necessary qualities of a game.
Football is a sport where depth is all important, where you have
to have forty-four top-flight players, because the games last
longer now, and a team can no longer win through an emotional
edge alone.

The first thing that the colleges ought to do is eliminate the
two platoon system, because it's become too expensive to find
enough players to make up one of today's teams. In rugby, a
player that starts the game has to finish it, or else leave his team
a man short. We see no reason why a football player cannot be
expected to finish a half that he starts in, unless injured, or
removed for a one-play-only kicking specialist. This would
restrict the number of men that could possibly play for a team
in a game to 22. Instead of giving out 35 to 40 scholarships per
year, a team could compete with about half that number.

IT NOW SEEMS PROBABLE that the NCAA, solely for
economic reasons, will go back to one platoon ball. But you can
be certain that the rich powers of college football will leave
enough loopholes in the new rule to assure them that their
advantage in money and resources will still be felt on the field.
They will probably arrange for something along the lines of Paul
Dietzel's 1959 LSU team, which was THREE platoon ball.

We hope that they also get around to outlawing redshirts.
This ridiculous custom originally came into practice as a benefit
for players who were injured for an entire season. They were
given another year in which to complete their eligibility. The
practice, like everything else in college ball, has grown out of all
proportion. Now coaches red-shirt players by withholding them
from action during their second year, then having them stay in
school for an extra semester, taking courses only to be eligible
for their last season of football. It's a practice that permits the
schools with greater talent to build up stockpiles for use in
future years, and one that constitutes a blatant admission that
the red shirts main reason for being in school is fulfilled on
Saturday afternoons in the stadium.

Another rule that the Poobahs of the NCAA might do well
to reconsider is their new first down rule, the one that stops the
clock after each first down. The effect of this rule has been to
add 10 to 15 minutes of time to each game, giving the
depth-rich schools an even greater advantage over their poorer
competitors.

OF COURSE, the establishment powers in the NCAA will
argue that the two platoon system gives more red-blooded
American boys a chance to get out and play good ole
wholesome football, and that red-shirts are really sitting out a
year of football to pull their grades up, or else why would they
get into grad school so easy and become eligible for a fifth year
of football, and that the new rule leaves time for more fourth
quarter touchdowns and isn't that type of excitement what the
fans really come out to see? And if the colleges are to compete
with the pros for the fans' allegiance, shouldn't they play a wide
open skillful two platoon game?

At that rate, the college game will soon become little more
than a minor league farm system for professional ball, which
would soon become the only agency with enough funds to
support it.

SO WHY NOT ELIMINATE spring practices, red-shirts,
hundred-man squads, and domination of the game by money?
Why not take the game away from the people who worry about
whether the stadium is filled and give it back to the students?
We don't know why not, but we're sure that "The College
Game" in all its connotations, is merely a myth.