Race Questions, Provincialism, and Other American Problems: Expanded Edition

Football and Ideals

football and ideals  Not long ago I printed an address that I had read before a society of teachers of physical training. This address dealt with some of the relations between physical training and the present problems of moral education in America; and in one passage of the discussion I referred to those of our modern athletic sports which attract the greatest public attention, which in consequence fill the largest place in newspaper reports, and which, as a matter of course, draw together the most notable and enthusiastic assemblages of people when the culminating events of each season take place. What I said in this passage, regarding these sports, was carefully confined to some observations upon their importance and their dangers as moral influences, as social forces, as phenomena of the life of great masses of our people, and especially as factors influencing the moral education of our youth. The editor of the Harvard This essay was originally published in Harvard Illustrated Magazine (10 [1908]: 40–47). {  } football and ideals  Illustrated Magazine has asked me to restate some of my theses for his readers. He has himself seen my previous article. He knows what my position is. In requesting me to present the matter in a way that can make any sort of appeal to his readers, he is aware that, in some respects, I am an opponent of views that are now the ruling views amongst these readers. He cannot expect that, being what I am, I shall be able to affect these opposing opinions in any notable way. In brief, he asks me to lead, or at least to take part in, a ‘‘forlorn hope.’’ I can only say, at the outset, that, since the matter concerns a contest for a moral ideal, the task is as attractive as it is forlorn. I Football is, in many respects, the king among those athletic sports which arouse the keenest general interest, which are reported at the greatest length by the newspapers, and which draw together the notable and enthusiastic assemblages. Consequently, football is at present a great social force in our country. It has long been so. Apparently it is destined long to remain so. In consequence, any plain man, however little he knows about the game itself, is bound to form his impressions about its place among the great social forces of his time and his nation. The plain man has a right to these impressions—yes, even a duty to form them. He may be able to give many reasons for them without being even disposed to form or to express any opinion whatever regarding the more intimate and technical problems of the game itself. Any great social force properly attracts the attention and awakens the scrutiny of the man who is not directly involved in the activities which represent this force. It does so, not because of what those who are under the direct sway of this force regard as its most interesting features, but because of its interference or coöperation with the other social forces which mould our common life. Thus, for instance, the great labor strikes, nowadays so common, are phenomena that represent great social forces. Each great strike grows out of controversies whose merits are, in general, quite problematic to all who stand at a distance from the disputants, and who  football and ideals know nothing of the practical workings of the business in which the strike has arisen. To judge who is right in the particular controversy that has led to the strike is therefore usually impossible to anybody but the expert. And nevertheless, if the strike is a serious one, our ignorance of the merits of the controversy, and of the technique of the industry in whose conduct the quarrel has arisen, does not absolve us from forming an opinion as to the way in which the interests of our common social order are affected by the strike. Some of these common interests we do understand; and it is our social duty to understand them. If they are endangered by the strike, we form an opinion regarding the mischief done. We must form such an opinion. If hereupon a powerful employer of labor suggests that he has a ‘‘Godgiven ’’ right to run his business in his own way, and that we, being quite ignorant (as in fact most of us are ignorant) of how his...