(6) Wherever they are taken seriously athletic contests require a preliminary period of “training,” which includes abstinence from sex incontinence, from alcohol, smoking, overeating, and late hours.  The discipline which this involves is an object lesson in the requirements for efficiency in any undertaking, and excellent practice in their fulfillment.  How far athletes learn this lesson and apply it to wider spheres of activity, it would be interesting to discover.  In any case, they have proved in themselves the ability to repress inclination and find satisfaction in what makes for health and efficiency; and all who know the implications of “training” have received a subconscious “suggestion” in the right direction.  The other side of the problem is this: 

(1) Competitive athletics, if taken seriously contests,inevitably take more time and energy than their importance .warrants.  A member of a college football or baseball team can do little else during the season.  Studies are neglected, intellectual interests are subordinated, college figures essentially as a group of men endeavoring to beat another college on the field.  If a man is bright he may “keep up with” his studies, but his intellectual profit is meager; his energies are being absorbed elsewhere.  This phenomenon has given rise to much satire and to much perplexity on the part of college administrations.  A few have gone so far as to banish intercollegiate contests, asserting thatthe purpose of coming to college is primarily to learn to use the brain, not the muscles.

(2) The strain of intense rivalry is too severe on the body.  It is now known that the intercollegiate athlete is very probably sacrificing some of his life when he throws his utmost effort into the game or the race.  The length of life of the big athletes averages considerably shorter than that of the more moderate exercisers.  From the physical point of view, interclass or interfraternity contests, not taken too earnestly, are. far better than the intercollegiate struggles.  They also have the advantage that far more can participate.  The problem before our college authorities and leaders of student sentiment is how to check the fierceness of the big contests-shortening them, perhaps, possibly forbidding entirely the more strenuous and how to provide sports for all members of the college; so that, instead of a few overstrained athletes and a lot of fellows who under exercise, we shall see every man out on the field daily, and no one overdoing.  This ideal necessitates far larger athletic grounds than most of our colleges have reserved.  It may necessitate the abolition of some of the big contests that have been the excitement of many thousands.  But it must not be forgotten prelude and preparation for life; they must not be allowed to usurp the chief place in a man’s thoughts or to unfit him for his greatest after-usefulness. [Footnote:  Cf.  Atlantic Monthly, vol. 90, p. 534; Outlook, vol. 98, p. 597.] Is it wrong to smoke?