Education: The Old Bean Pot

In more leisurely days it took three years to turn out a sound Cheddar, 17 years to produce a worthy draft of bourbon, a generation or more to establish an enduring interscholastic tradition. Then the technicians and pressagents turned on the speedup. Last week, having lighted a fire under a pan of tradition, Boston University, with some help from Syracuse University, was preparing to prove that it could be cooked to a turn in no more than the time a mountain distiller would take to turn out a batch of Old Popskull.

What the annual Boston-Syracuse football game needed for greater...