nts from Central and South America.

CHAPTER XI

ATHLETICS

Michigan differs in no respect from other American universities in the
general and, some would have it, the extravagant interest in outdoor
sports which have come to be defined under the general term "athletics."
This emphasis on contests and games of strength and skill is universal
and is woven into the very fabric of student life in all our
universities and colleges. We cannot therefore avoid the conclusion that
it is an inevitable and characteristic expression of the American
spirit. It is only natural for the sons and grandsons of the men who
settled this country to take an interest in wholesome and vigorous
sports; in fact it would be a sad commentary on the degeneracy of the
modern generation if such an expression of their inheritance were not
evident. But a distinctively American attitude towards sport is also
manifested in the intense personal and university rivalries developed,
the very rock upon which the modern system of inter-collegiate athletics
rests, no less than in the genius for organization and systemization
which has, within the last twenty-five years, made organized athletics
such a tremendous factor in the life of all American universities.

Whatever changes the future is to bring in the development and control
of inter-collegiate athletics, our universities cannot very well escape
the fundamental fact that they have become an integral part of our
university system, and that, rather than attempting a change by radical
measures, they can best correct any present abuses by wise regulation,
by a constant effort toward a modification of the present overwhelming
emphasis on the one game, football, and above all, by a consistent
encouragement of universal participation on the part of the students in
some form of college sport. This, in fact, is the latest development. It
is not so much a reform as a return to older traditions, from which we
have departed only in comparatively recent years, as the following
review of Michigan's athletic history will show. This survey is offered,
however, not so much because of its relation to the general development
of the present-day attitude toward sports in American universities as
because it may have particular interest for every Michigan graduate,
whether he counts himself a radical or a conservative in matters
athletic.

It goes without saying that there was almost no thought of organized
sport