STATE COLLEGIAN
Published on Thursday of each week dur*ng the
college year by the students of The Pennsylvania
State College in the interest of the Students. Fac
ulty, Alumni and friends of the college.
Entered at the Post Office, State College, Pa.,
as second class matter.
EDITORS
T. F. FOLTZ, ’O6, Chief.
F. K. BREWSTER, 'O7.
F. B. GARRAHAN, 'O7.
H. D. MASON, 'O7.
A. K. LITTLE, 'O7
R. B. MECKLEY, 08.
J. K. BARNES, 'O9,
BUSINESS MANAGERS.
W. J. DUMM, ’O6.
S. H. YORKS, 'O7.
B. W. SCRIBNER, ’OS
SUBSCRIPTION.
$l. 50 per year or $1.25 if paid within CO days after
date of subscription.
THURSDAY, NOV. 23, 1905
EDITORIAL
This is an old, old story. It is
a very easy matter to contract the
habit of cutting the campus but it is a
ten times harder proposition to break
one’s self of such a habit. Last
spring, when the sod was in a deli
cate condition, the students were
prevailed upon to keep off the grass
and so avo.d making those unsightly
paths. The result was that at last
commencement our campus was in a
very presentable condition. The
superintendent of the college grounds
has taken the trouble to have “keep
off-the-grass’ ’ signs placed at prom
inent spots on the campus and in
some places has erected wire fences.
It is not necessary to say that they
were placed there for a purpose.
Keep off the grass.
Football Resume.
The “big” colleges have finished
their “practice” games and are now
in the midst of their important
games. In a few weeks the sport
ing editors of newspapers and maga
zines will sum up the results of
these ‘ ‘important’ ’ games and from
these results will pick the football
THE STATE COLLEGIAN
champions of 1905. So it is now a
good time for us to look back over
the season of “practice” games and
draw a few conclusions from them.
First and foremost one conclusion
is inevitable: the football supremacy
of “big” colleges is gone forever.
This is not any vauge delusion of a
disordered fancy, it is a cold hard
fact. Why ? Let us turn to the
records of the so-called “Big Six”
colleges; colleges that a few years
ago were deemed invulnerable to the
attacks of any institution not includ
ed within that mystic Six. Yale has
best maintained her prestige, but
during’the past month she was de
feated in all but the score by our
own college. In truth, the very
fact that an official was compelled
to use trickery and fraud in order to
maintain the prestige of Yale in that
game, shows how insecure that
prestige is.
Princeton has bitten the dust be
fore Dartmouth defeated not by
a “ fluke.” not by the accidents of
war, but because she met a better
team.
Pennsylvania considered herself
lucky to escape defeats at the hands
of Swarthmore and Carlisle, was
played to a standstill by Brown, and
could do no better than to play a
draw game with Lafayette.
Harvard for the last three years
has found a tartar in Dartmouth, be
ing defeated two years ago, con
gratulating herself on last year’s 0-0,
and escaping defeat this fall only by
those strange terms of fortune pe
culiar to football.
And as for the other members of
the Big Six —Cornell and Colum
bia —they have all they can do to
win a majority of their games.
Cornell was lucky to defeat Col
gate by a single point last month,
and her defeat by little Swaithmore
was more than decisive, it was over
whelming.
Columbia has come to expect an
annual defeat at the hands of Am
herst, and went wild with joy when
a lucky field goal tied the score in
the last play cf this fall’s game.
Yet Princeton was able to score only
twelve points against Columbia and
sixteen against Cornell.
These facts —and what can be
more unanswerable than figures —
prove that the prestige of the “big”
college is no more. But has it dis
appeared forever? We think so,
for this reason: —
Football as played this fall has
been pre-eminently a game for big
men; speed and head-work have
been at a discount. Now if the big
universities with their large number
of students, their perfected systems
of “inducing” prep school "stais”
to enter their gates of learning, their
complicated and involved methods
of play, their large and skilled staff
of coaches and trainers and their
peifect equipment made possible
through their great profits of the
season’s play, if with these advan
tages in their favor, they are going
down to defeat at the hands of small
colleges, how much more will this
be the case when football is
cleansed and improved ? And
cleansed and improved it must be if
it is to live as an American college
sport. When speed and spirit have
taken the place of “beef” and bru
tality, when the abominable system
of recruiting is no longer in force,
when the paid coach is compelled
to leave the gridiron, when sports
manship and love of the game super
sede the desire to win and to make
money, then, even more than now,
will the plucky little college be able
to down its proud antagonist and re
duce the painful inflation so
noticeable in the craniums of the
“big” college players. And at this
state of affairs all true sportsmen
and the entire American public will
rejoice. The big college may con
tinue to win most of its games, but
it can never be certain when defeat
shall humble it. The supremacy of
beef is gone forever.