Northwestern University - Syllabus Yearbook (Evanston, IL)

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orthWestern,Year' Book 0. i a Prof. Gillesby During the spring of IQO6, the Trustees completed arrangements with Prof. Gillesby, whereby he was to act as head of the newly-created department of physical culture, for a period of three years. Before he accepted their offer, he spoke the key-note of the situation: You need not expect that I can bring out teams of championship class in less than three years, they must be developed, largely, from the men already at Northwestern. His method has always been to develop what he finds at hand, rather than to attract stars to him. At New Orleans, where he built up a championship Y. M. C. A. baseball team, at Ravens- wood Y. M. C. A., where he developed a Western A. A. U. championship basket ball teamg and at Evanston Y. M. C. A., where he developed a Western A. A. U. basket ball team and a N. A. U. championship track team, Prof. Gillesby has proved himself to be a genius, as great in his particular Helds of athletics as are the Wizard ofthe Midway and the father of the ' 'Hurry-up ' ' championship teams at Michigan in theirs. For the smile that won't come olf' ' he has Yost beat at his own game. History always repeats itself-when Prof. Gillesby happens to be the one who is making the history-so here,s to three years from last spring! VV PoL1o U55 16

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ATHLETICS

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4-43 pa .gg in KGZSYLLABUS gg The Athletic Situation As it is Of course, this is the ideal system of athletics, a system which allows the greatest number of men to engage in the sport and to attain the physical development attendant upon it. PTOf. F. O. Glillffby With a summerls active campaigning in athletic advertising, with a foot ball season, under the new order of things, past, with a basket-ball season at its height, it is not impossible to appreciate, with some degree of accuracy, just how much of last summer's athletic literature was based upon the principles of purely commercial advertising, how much was intended as a pacifier to the student body, how much ofit was good athletic dope, Yet there are some first principles to be considered before all this. A theory has gained considerable ground, of late, that without strong athletic teams, presumably, as advertising mediums, a university cannot hope to stay in the front rank. It were as sensible to claim that the buildings make a school. For the cause of a school 's real strength one rnust go back to its scholastic ideals and forward to their fulfillment. At Northwestern we have used the Harvard plan, teachers first, then the trappings. Our budget for the current year for faculty expenses alone is ,fC5oo,ooo, while that school which a few years ago was the one great school in the West, has, of late, had winning teams and-a poorly paid faculty. Man for man Northwestern has the strongest teaching force in the West, and by what in the last analysis is an educational institution to be judged? College athletics performs its most legitimate function when it furnishes the means of systematic exercise to the entire student body-not to a few specialists. Aside from this more limited and ideal view, there are a few things concerning our athletic situation, past and present, which faculty and student body, alike, need to consider. While we may have had the best of raw material, it has been almost an impossibility to whip it into shape for a championship team, even impossible to get some of the most desirable of that material out for practice. Each of the other members of the Big Nine has all its departments upon one campusg Chicago and Minnesota with modern gymnasiums backing upon their athletic fields. Minnesota, until the new Conference ruling, had her training table in the gym itself. Our Medic school is distant I6 or I7 miles from the field, and our other professional schools are over I3 miles away. Northwestern has never asked for quarter, has never accepted sympathy, and has always defied anyone to pity her, but we, ourselves, need to understand why, with men of championship calibre, it has been impossible to have winning teams, we need, even more than this, to appreciate the fact that it has taken more physical stamina, more moral courage, and more loyalty to their school, for the men who wear the N to play their consistently snappy never-be-crushed game in the face of all odds, than it has for the men of the Maroon or the Maize and Blue to win their championships. Not because we were losing, nor because they believed with some critics of the game that football was essentially brutal, but because ofthe spirit of professionalism that has been creeping into the game oflate, and because of the tendency toward commercialism, the trustees, last year, Y-at FOLIO 17