26 OCTOBER 1929, Page 15

COLLEGE ATHLETICS.

The Carnegie Foundation publishes this week its long- awaited Report on American College Athletics. The staff and members of the Foundation, assisted by independent authorities, have been investigating the subject for more than three and a half years. They have had the co-operation of some two thousand persons and made personal visits to one hundred and thirty universities, colleges and schools, so the report is unusually well-documented and thorough. It Constitutes an expected, but none the less telling, indictment of the present spirit and organization of athletics in American 0311eges and schools. The fundamental defects, the authorq find, are "commercialism and a negligent attitude toward the educational opportunity for which the American college exists." Few American colleges and schools, it found, can be regarded as keeping their sports free from the commercial taint. This is seen in the general employment of paid directors, managers, coaches, publicity agents and others, in jafractions of the amateur code and in the system of recruiting

and subsidizing college athletes. The revival of the spirit of amateur sportsmanship is seen as an imperative and urgent need. Salutary reforms in this direction are already begun and, with the increasing attention given by college authorities and others to the problems involved, the belief is encouraged that during the next decade or so conditions will be materially improved.