A big-time athlete who played guard for the University of Michigan in the Rose Bowl, ALLEN JACKSONcannot suppress a grin at our censorious attitude toward the Russians in the Olympic games. After a year of graduate study in England, Mr. Jackson worked in a copper mine in Butte, Montana, in a steel mill in Los Angeles, and with a logging gypo out of Port Angeles, Washington. He is now teaching at the Metairie Country Day School in New Orleans.
Atlantic readers will remember ALLEN JACKSON as the University of Michigan football player whose extraordinary article “Too Much Football,” appeared in our October, 1951, issue.
“American football is violent, expensive, and time-consuming; and the number of people who are able to play under these conditions is extremely limited. Rugby, on the other hand, is more rough than violent, and the expenditure of time and money is small.”
Apart from the moral breakdown at West Point and the taint of professionalism in one college after another, what has big-time football been doing to the player who has gone to college in honest search of an education?ALLEN JACKSONwas a first-string guard at the University of Michigan, from which he was graduated this year. He won his letter on three consecutive championship teams and played in the Rose Bowl. Here is his account of his own experiences at a university where the slogan is: “when Michigan loses, someone has to pay.'