In spite of all this, the sum of one's sensations amounted to lively
pleasure. The pleasure would have been livelier if university football
were a better game than in candid truth it is. At this juncture I seem
to hear a million voices of students and ex-students roaring out at me
with menaces that the game is perfect and the greatest of all games. A
national game always was and is perfect. This particular game was
perfect years ago. Nevertheless, I learned that it had recently been
improved, in deference to criticisms. Therefore, it is now pluperfect. I
was told on the field--and sharply--that experience of it was needed for
the proper appreciation of its finesse. Admitted! But just as devotees
of a favorite author will put sublime significances into his least
phrase, so will devotees of a game put marvels of finesse into its
clumsiest features. The process is psychological. I was new to this
particular game, but I had been following various footballs with my feet
or with my eyes for some thirty years, and I was not to be bullied out
of my opinion that the American university game, though goodish, lacked
certain virtues. Its characteristics tend ever to a too close formation,
and inevitably favor tedium and monotony. In some aspects an unemotional
critic might occasionally be tempted to call it naïve and barbaric. But
I was not unemotional. I recognize, and in my own person I proved, that
as a vehicle for emotion the American university game will serve. What
else is such a game for? In the match I witnessed there were some really
great moments, and one or two masterly exhibitions of skill and force.
And as "my" side won, against all odds, I departed in a state of
felicity.

* * * * *

If the great cities of the East and Middle West are not strikingly
sportive, perhaps the reason is that they are impassioned theater-goers;