Harvard President Charles Eliot was among those opposed to the curve, claiming it was a dishonest practice that Harvard students should not want to partake in. At an athletics conference at Yale University in 1884 a speaker (thought to be from Harvard, likely Prof. Charles Eliot Norton, a cousin of the Harvard President ) was reported to have stated: "For the pitcher, instead of delivering the ball to the batter in an honest, straightforward way, that the latter may exert his strength to the best advantage in knocking it, now uses every effort to deceive him by curving—I think that is the word—the ball. And this is looked upon as the last triumph of athletic science and skill. I tell you it is time to call halt! when the boasted progress in athletics is in the direction of fraud and deceit."