THE REROIG CHOICE

Red Grange upon whose back the mystic '77 has flashed, upon whose head the laurels of pen and public have been hung, Red Grange, hero and iceman, now announces to the world his choice of a career. He is to abandon college for professional football. And when he divulges the nature of his future team, a team which can include no player who has not finished a "college career"--bachelor of football, then there need be no more uncertainty as to his real value as an accessory of a college.

Indeed, a contemporary hero of the gridiron, Oberlander of Dartmouth, by refusing a similar chance for fame and fortune illumines the choice of the Illinois gentleman with the light of a more legitimate understanding of his duty. To him dignity is not developed by dollars, nor character increased by acclaim. He prefers his degree to the applause of the fight fans of football and forgets glamor in a decent respect for his college.

Surely the undergraduate here must appreciate the response of the man from Hanover, for newspaper fame and the accompanying fortune are not so easy to forego in reality as in the theorized discussions of the ethics laboratory. Yet when one man has moral strength enough to play a game for what the game itself offers and no more, then college athletics by his single example maintain a higher, a better place in the development of youth; when another is weak, then he sets a feeble example to the next generation of football players and gives the outside world another chance to misjudge the colleges. Red Grange by choosing to become a successful machine, working or the pleasure of the horde, has killed whatever esteem he could have had among university men. Oberlander's jersey is still in his locker: Grange's faded blue hangs in a pawn shop.