The Nation: Hanging Up the Sweatshirts

It seems that at least every second American male once scored the winning touchdown against Tech or Madison High, and every third female once swished her pompons and gave a LOCOMOTIVE, LOCOMOTIVE for the Black Tigers or the Golden Falcons. Unfortunately, high-powered athletic programs cannot operate on the gauzy dreams of former Friday night warriors. The hard realities of school appropriations have recently come home to Philadelphians with the announcement that, because of the fiscal crisis in the school system, all athletic programs will be dropped as of next September.

Since the announcement, Board of Education President Richardson Dilworth says he has been receiving an average of 150 letters a day, most of them critical, and an endless round of telephone calls, many of them obscene. “We’ve touched the sacred cow of varsity athletics,” he said. “People want to know ‘Where is the National Football League going to get its material?’ “