Phog Allen to William Allen White, 1927

By Staff     Sep 9, 2002

February 19, 1927

The Honorable William Allen White
The Emporia Gazette
Emporia, Kansas

Dear Mr. White:

I was happy indeed to receive your esteemed communication of the 16th inst. The American Physical Education Service, which is a branch of the Playground Association of America, had written me asking if I would write the outstanding daily papers of Kansas to inquire of them if they would be willing to run several short articles. It was for this service and not for the Kansas Relays that I wrote you.

However, I want to thank you for your kindness in offering to give valuable space for the Kansas Relays. We will need the same splendid publicity that you have given before toward our Relays.

These articles on the playground service are short, interesting, and I am sure will be of interest to your readers.

I was happy that you brought up a subject which is very much discussed by our friends over the state. I notice that you have been uneasy and unhappy about the overstressing of athletics in the University.

I take it that that is more fiction than fact. I do not believe that athletics are overstressed at the University of Kansas. In fact, the outcry over the state is more to the effect that we inhibit athletics here more than we should. I assure you that I believe firmly in sane athletics. I love the University of Kansas, I assure you I would not want to cripple its good name in any way.

A person can hear lots of gossip, and I know that in your long years of experience you have learned to diagnose the good from the bad.

I want to speak very frankly, Mr. White, in regard to the athletic situation. The University of Kansas is a great institution. It draws 5,000 students annually to Lawrence. Ninety-nine per cent of those students come to get an education. The other one per cent, of course, come to be here for social activities, athletics or what-not.

I believe that athletics have a cancerous growth, the same as do politics, business, and religion. We had adopted here at Kansas, heretofore, a policy that the University would attract its share of young men of athletic talent who desired to pursue a university course; but on account of the tremendous interest in athletics, not only amateur but also professional – it seems as if the normal athletic talent that should be attracted to the University is being diverted to other channels due to the fact that other athletic associations and schools in this state are soliciting, personally and through their alumni, men who have already determined to come to K.U.

They do so by offering lucrative jobs – jobs better than the Employment Bureau here at the University would offer them and which would pay thirty-five cents an hour. By this means, these men are being persuaded not to come to Kansas, even though this is the school of their choice.

Coaches of other schools are making personal calls upon them. Our coaches have not done this and are not doing it now. But coaches in other schools are very definitely doing it, and we are having to meet that sort of competition.

You, as a businessman and an editor, can appreciate what competition in this twentieth century means.

I mentioned that there is a great interest in athletics these days. I was impressed with the fact that you r newspaper was erecting an electric scoreboard in front of your plant during the world series in baseball. It was operated on Sunday, and I personally can see nothing against it. Yet there was great criticism from the pulpit because the ministers thought baseball and religion were not synonymous.

They were not. In fact, as I saw it, people could go to church and worship; and then if interested in baseball, they could think about baseball without desecration to the Sabbath.

Yet the parallel situation is in athletics.

Many academicians feel that we cannot have a school where people can meditate and study, and at the same time have athletics of a competitive and spectacular nature.

I believe we can, because the boys who compete must be passing in more hours than the average student who comes to the University. If a boy is able to compete through his three or four years of college life, hi is sure to graduate.

I trust you will pardon this lengthy epistle, but I wanted you to feel that we are still trying to play the game squarely here at Kansas. We will not overemphasize athletics to the detriment of academic responsibility.

With great admiration for your viewpoint, I am very cordially yours,

Forrest C. Allen
Director

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1826Phog Allen to William Allen White, 1927