Apparently the realm of college sports has its defenders. An e-mail:

You’re nothing but an elitist twerp. Harvard deemphasized football because they couldn’t compete, not because of some high-minded educational purpose. And yes, graduates of schools with big-time programs do affiliate themselves with their teams. That’s certainly better than the affilations that Harvard students have, e.g Gay Feminists, Anti-Fur Activists, Leftist Anarchists etc. It’s on the fields of play at college that are sown the seeds of victory. But effete present-day Harvard pussies aren’t aware of that as they prepare themselves for their productive careers in hedge fund management (perhaps they’d be better off learning how to use a pair of hedge clippers) and progressive journalism (i.e. giving away national secrets). Lose your rose-colored glasses as I’m sure you learned a lot less in your college days than anyone enrolled at UNC Charlotte.

On that first charge, let me submit a plea of nolo contendere, though elitist twerp-dom is by its nature an identity to which one constantly aspires, yet which is rarely, in fact, achieved. Someday, someday.

As to the imputation that I had somehow defended Harvard, let me apologize: It would also be to my great amusement to see Yalies, Harvardians, whoever, try to “sow the seeds of victory” on any sort of field against, say, the University of Florida. That is a game I would surely turn out for, if only to appease a morbid sense of sadism vis-à-vis the ninnies in crimson. That said, insofar as university sports really are not about training a normal college student to be an athlete but about pretending that a brute is a college student, I think Harvard could field quite a good team were it to offer up some 20 spots solely on the basis of athletic talent. Why not, I suppose….

I do wonder, however, about my correspondent’s kind of Neanderthal reflex in defense of college sports. These are games, after all. And for whatever devotion universities have — many times forsaken — to the acquisition to truth, I nonetheless cannot imagine that its attainment lays in throwing or kicking any sort of ball across a wooden or turf surface. Reasonable people, I suppose, are free to disagree.