The Football Racket

BRYAN STINSON, tramp athlete and professional football player, through the generosity of an alumnus is brought to Cheltenham University to "get an education." He naturally becomes the football star of the college, receives all the class offices, is the idol of sorority girls, and is admired by everyone as being a "real man." After he has given his all for his college in the final game of his senior year the story of his professionalism leaks out but is successfully covered up. Stinson, however, confesses later that he is a professional, resigns from his college responsibilities, but in the end is held by all in higher esteem than before. That is the story of "Colossus."

The book is written with the intention of exposing professionalism in college athletics and Mr. Hall does so by satirizing conditions at a typical state university. Through one of his characters he indicts American amateur athletics vigorously and upholds the English ideal "sport for sport's sake." The story is trite, similar to any cinema of college life, and typical of the kind of stuff that appears in the popular fiction magazines. Even the indictment of athletics is outworn in this day when a change for the better has taken place and the football overemphasis bugaboo has been pretty well dispelled.