Word: bingham
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...William J. Bingham made a statement Wednesday afternoon. No one but Jack Durant of the Associated Press knows exactly what he said, but everybody knows he shouldn't have said...
...story, as most of the local press played it, was either completely inaccurate or misleading. For one thing; Bingham said Harvard was giving up "big-time" football. What is "big-time" football? He implied the football team would continue to play traditional Ivy League opponents. Six of Harvard's nine opponents are traditional rivals. Of the other three, everyone knew Stanford was only a home-and-home arrangement, and the Army contract runs until 1951. Holy Cross is hardly "big-time" in 1949. So what did Bingham accomplish by announcing Harvard would cease to he "big-time?" Precisely nothing...
...Finally, Bingham announced, that the Big Three rivalry didn't mean much any more. This comment was not only ill-advised but downright untrue. If the Big Three rivalry means nothing, why do 60,000 people come to the Harvard-Yale game annually? Why does that game lead most of the Sunday sports sections the following day? Why does the Yale game count twice as much as any other game toward earning a letter? Why are the Harvard-Princeton and the Harvard-Yale games the only ones which undergraduates and alumni always attend regardless of price or team records...
Then there is the problem of Pennsylvania, Bingham is entitled to his opinion that Penn subsidizes football by scholarships, and I am not sure he is wrong; but it was a poor idea to bring this up now. For one thing, Harvard has not played Penn since 1942, so why bother discussing it at all? For another, Bingham should have realized that even if he was speaking as a private individual his position as head of the HAA implies that this is the official University opinion on Pennsylvania...
...above four criticisms are on the statement alone; now we come to the question of timing. That Bingham should even discuss the problem of intercollegiate football at this time with the press, either on or off he record, is a greater blunder...