Sport: Boos & Catcalls

• Share

The 1951 football season, plagued by a succession of athletic scandals and disgraced by a sudden rash of dirty play, came to an end last week with a few final boos and catcalls. Among them: ¶The shaky Missouri Valley Conference seemed on the verge of breaking up for good over the case of Drake Halfback Johnny Bright. When conference officials refused to take any action in the slugging that broke his jaw (TIME, Nov. 5 et. seq.), Drake withdrew from the conference, was promptly followed by Bradley University (which has three players awaiting sentence in the basketball fix scandal).

¶The venerable Ivy League was treated to an angry post-mortem after the rough-house Dartmouth-Princeton game which sidelined twelve players, including Princeton's All-America Halfback Dick Kazmaier (concussion and broken nose) and Dartmouth Quarterback Jim Miller (broken leg). Princeton Quarterback George Stevens accused Dartmouth End Don Myers of deliberately trying to knock Kazmaier out of the game; other Princetonians claimed that Myers had also wound up another play by booting a Tiger lineman in the back. ¶The rough & ready Southwest Conference produced a "grudge game" which even had the eyes of Texans popping. At one point a Texas substitute hurtled off the bench to slug a Texas A.&M. player; before the game was over, the fans had engaged in a free-for-all, and the referee had paced off 140 yards in penalties.

In all the hue & cry, the clearest warning came from Indiana's Coach Clyde Smith, quitting under alumni pressure after a disappointing season (two wins, seven losses). Said he: "We, as coaches, and the universities, as educational institutions, have sold our athletic heritage for a mess of pottage . . . We must be willing to accept in part the blame for the inroads made by protected gambling into the field of university athletics .. . You can't buy a boy's body and expect him to play with his heart and soul."

Basketball also got a few more lumps last week. On the eve of its opening game, City College of New York discovered that four more athletic admission records had been tampered with, including that of its current captain, Arnold Smith.