Football Tickets

(Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions, at the request of the writer will names be withheld.)

To the Editor of the Harvard CRIMSON:

Presumably with the body of Harvard men, I today received my applications for this fall's football games' tickets. From the printed matter enclosed with the applications, I learned for the first time that season tickets have been abolished. I suggest that you might well take editorial notice of this abolition, for it seems to me that it is the ultimate step in the commercialization of Harvard athletics.

College athletics are primarily for the students and graduates of the colleges. This was recognized a number of years ago by the ticket policy of the H.A.A. During the period in which I was at Harvard, one could purchase an H.A.A. ticket for $5, and with this ticket could see practically all the athletic events of the College year. These H.A.A. cards, as they were called, were shortly afterwards done away with. They were succeeded by the season tickets. Season tickets were made less and less of advantage to the student or graduate of average means in two ways: by increase in their price, and by decrease in the number of games to which they would admit. And now the season ticket has been done away with. We appear to be on the threshold of a period in which college games will degenerate into a striving of young gladiators for the entertainment of mobs which have nothing in common with the contestants, mobs whose members, in turn, have nothing in common between themselves save the possession of a substantial amount of money.

How much money should a college football team make in a season? Daniel J. Lyne.