| If you are interested in football, especially in college | | | | Woodrow Wilson, who served as a part-time coach |
| football, read on to learn some interesting insight into | | | | at Wesleyan, an English instructor at Oklahoma who |
| the roots of the game. | | | | had recently come from Harvard, Vernon Parrington, |
| In the 1890s college football had already created | | | | taught the fundamentals of football on the windswept |
| strong emotions of love and hate. Big-time eastern | | | | practice field in Oklahoma. At Miami University of Ohio |
| football had demonstrated that it could draw large | | | | the president called upon all able-bodied members of |
| crowds, create alumni support, and build an identity that | | | | the faculty to go out for football. In a game between |
| would attract new students. The fact that it had little to | | | | North Carolina and Virginia a member of the North |
| do with classical education bothered only the | | | | Carolina faculty scored the winning touchdown. Often |
| traditionalists on campus and a handful of crotchety | | | | the faculty proved helpful to the budding football |
| purists elsewhere who wrote critically of football in | | | | programs in other ways such as giving athletes |
| magazines, newspaper articles, and official college | | | | passing grades or writing articles arguing that football |
| reports. | | | | built intellect. Only a handful, like Wisconsin's Frederick |
| Outward appearances may have changed, but the | | | | Jackson Turner, made a determined effort to root out |
| gridiron problems in that era appear remarkably similar | | | | the abuses in the culture of college football such as |
| to the present. In the 1890s big-time recruiters and | | | | the intense media attention given to the sport and its |
| alumni contacts scoured the eastern prep schools for | | | | tendency to cushion star athletes from academic |
| talented juniors and seniors ready to entice them to | | | | requirements. That was more than a century ago. |
| Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. Occasionally, unscrupulous | | | | When we turn to the 1980s and 1990s what do we |
| alumni convinced students to quit high school before | | | | encounter? Outward appearances of football may |
| they graduated in order to enroll at an institution with a | | | | have changed, but the problems appear hauntingly |
| big-time team. Boosters funneled tuition money to poor | | | | similar. Big-time football teams induce players to attend |
| but athletically talented boys from the coal fields of | | | | their institution with offers of cars and money as well |
| Pennsylvania and the industrial towns of the Northeast | | | | as running booster operations to funnel cash to |
| to preparatory schools in order to prepare them for | | | | blue-chip players. Players who obtain special admission |
| big-time college athletics. Some of these young men | | | | or enter the institution fraudulently do so only to play |
| were in their mid-twenties when they finally entered | | | | football and often leave without graduating. Schools |
| college. Other athletes went from school to school | | | | manage to keep their players eligible by manufacturing |
| selling their services, phantom players who had no | | | | credits or by easing them into simple courses in which |
| academic ties with the institution. | | | | they are assured of receiving passing grades. Some |
| Big-time alumni football entrepreneurs-the counterpart | | | | coaches engage in violence toward players in practice |
| of today's athletic directors-arranged a schedule of | | | | and even try to drive them out of school so that they |
| games which began with weak teams and worked up | | | | can use their scholarship slot. |
| to big money games held in New York, Boston, and | | | | Athletic departments and institutional officials have |
| Philadelphia. Gridiron profits supported stadium building, | | | | become obsessed with the potential for profits from |
| sumptuous living quarters and training tables for | | | | televised big games or bowl games. Big-time teams in |
| players, as well as Pullman cars for retinues of trainers, | | | | the NCAA try to manipulate the organization so that |
| massagers, alumni coaches, and other hangers-on | | | | they will be able to have more coaches, scholarships, |
| who followed the team to the big games. What was | | | | and only minimal academic requirements. Players |
| left over went to support an array of lesser sports | | | | commit acts of violence and brutality, then manage to |
| that big-time football had eclipsed. | | | | avoid the consequences. College presidents whose |
| At the major football schools critics complained that | | | | salaries and prominence fall far short of the head |
| football players became the campus elite, admired by | | | | football coaches dutifully show up at football games |
| their fellow students and regarded skeptically by many | | | | and related alumni events, treading cautiously around |
| faculty. In the absence of professional football, players | | | | the mire of big-time college athletics. |
| basked in the attention of the media, and the names of | | | | All of this has added up to major athletic scandals, |
| the gridiron stars appeared regularly in the sports | | | | most of them involving big-time football. Scandals such |
| pages of big city newspapers. Even college faculty | | | | as the pay-for-play violations at Southern Methodist |
| and presidents had to be properly worshipful of | | | | and Auburn from the late 1970s to the early 1990s |
| football and its elite because they knew that football | | | | man-aged to create internal disruptions and negative |
| advertised their schools and helped to retain the loyalty | | | | publicity at numbers of big-name institutions. Yet, in |
| of alumni. As a result, they often ignored or remained | | | | spite of the obvious flaws in college football, it |
| blissfully unaware of scams to admit unqualified | | | | continues to enlarge its grip on the major universities. |
| students, play athletes who never enrolled, or resort to | | | | The athletic foundations persist in enlarging their |
| stratagems to keep weak players eligible. | | | | massive gridiron complexes, selling the rights to buy |
| Though booster organizations did not exist outside of | | | | tickets for upscale luxury boxes and suites, and then |
| alumni groups, booster alumni and townspeople, | | | | collecting additional revenues for the sale of high-priced |
| student managers, and even faculty engaged in | | | | tickets. The major teams have created indoor facilities |
| unethical acts. A Princeton alumnus named Patterson | | | | out of donations that might have gone to deserving but |
| entertained football players and made every effort to | | | | impoverished non-athletes for scholarships. While |
| entice them to his alma mater. Authorities at | | | | quasi-professional student-athletes play the game, |
| Swarthmore lured the huge lineman, Bob ("Tiny") | | | | ordinary students have little to do with the sport. In an |
| Maxwell, from the University of Chicago and arranged | | | | atmosphere of highly specialized career coaches, |
| for the president of the college to pass his bills to a | | | | publicists, trainers, and tutors, college football reflects |
| prominent alumnus. Professor Woodrow Wilson, a | | | | more than ever the professionalism that reformers |
| fanatic Princeton enthusiast, shamelessly used football | | | | long ago set out to de-emphasize. |
| when he spoke to alumni organizations and vigorously | | | | No one would deny that football constitutes one of the |
| opposed football reform in the 1890s and early 1900s. | | | | most entertaining and enjoyable spectator sports. In |
| In contrast, Theodore Roosevelt, a Harvard graduate, | | | | the early days some faculty believed that the student |
| who gloried in the strenuous life and strongly supported | | | | enthusiasm for football would enable the institutions to |
| Harvard football, turned against football brutality in 1905 | | | | alleviate the pervasive antisocial behavior of |
| and initiated the first efforts in his capacity as president | | | | undergraduates. Being aware of its appeal, most |
| to reform the spirit in which big-time football teams | | | | athletic critics and reformers attempted to change |
| competed. | | | | football rather than to abolish it. The few colleges that |
| We know that the prototype for athletic organization | | | | dropped football did so it because the school had no |
| began at eastern institutions in the 1880s and 1890s. | | | | choice or, occasionally, because a college president |
| Yale's Walter Camp, "the father of American football," | | | | happened to wield unusual power at a critical moment |
| became the model for the coach and athletic director. | | | | in football's history. Far and away the largest group of |
| While pursuing a business career, he also acted as | | | | thoughtful gridiron critics have attempted to reform |
| Yale's de facto vice president for athletic operations, | | | | football and to reshape it in such a way that it fit more |
| who dominated the rules committees and ceaselessly | | | | reasonably and appropriately into the spirit and life of |
| publicized the game. From the profits of big games in | | | | the university. Why have they not succeeded? |
| Boston and New York, Camp created an ample | | | | Beginning in the 1890s and continuing into the 1990s, |
| reserve fund that supported lesser sports, afforded | | | | reformers have spent tens of thousands of hours |
| lush treatment for athletes, and provided the money | | | | attending meetings and conferences, devising new |
| that eventually went toward building Yale Bowl, the | | | | rules to solve the latest problems that have cropped |
| first of the modern football stadiums. By making Yale | | | | up, and generally trying to work out better systems for |
| into an athletic powerhouse, Camp built the school's | | | | their own institutions; in the early 1900s moderate |
| reputation, making it second only to Harvard. Because | | | | reformers founded the NCAA to deal with deaths and |
| he succeeded so well, Camp became the first | | | | brutality and to put football securely under the thumb |
| big-name foe of sweeping football reforms-and an | | | | of the faculty and college presidents. Again in the early |
| especially hard-core opponent of the forward pass. | | | | 1950s, in a groundswell of outrage against cheating, |
| By the turn of century the deaths of players in football | | | | gambling, and subsidies for athletes, college presidents |
| led state legislators to introduce laws banning the | | | | and faculty members tried to create stricter standards |
| gridiron game. Players for big-time teams, critics | | | | to reduce the greed and professionalism in football |
| charged, were coached to injure their opponents or | | | | rather than to drop it altogether. In the 1980s and early |
| "put them out of business." The nature of the game, | | | | 1990s an outbreak of scandal in big-time football |
| with its mass formations and momentum plays, made | | | | resulted the same response of temporary uneasiness |
| football less an athletic contest than a collegiate | | | | and halting reforms which had become by then a |
| version of warlike combat. Eventually the violence in | | | | pattern in the history of college football. |
| football led to attempts to reduce its brutality through | | | | The outbreak in the 1980s once again clearly |
| reforms. New rules put a strong emphasis on better | | | | emphasized the failure of reform to bring about real |
| officiating and on less dangerous formations, but they | | | | change. In three major periods of gridiron upheaval the |
| did not necessarily improve the athletic environment. | | | | colleges have been unable or unwilling to eliminate the |
| The deaths and brutality presented an excellent | | | | causes of chronic cheating. While political reforms by |
| opportunity to root out the worst excesses of the | | | | Congress and the states have achieved some |
| runaway football culture. In the 1890s and early 1900s, | | | | enduring success, football and big-time athletics |
| responding to public opinion, professors and presidents | | | | generally have had to face the same issues again and |
| spent a great deal of time talking about the | | | | again-much like Sisyphus repeatedly pushing the stone |
| overemphasis of intercollegiate athletics-and, in some | | | | uphill. Why does big-time football manage to be almost |
| cases, passing rules at the conference and institutional | | | | constantly in a state of crisis? Is there some quality |
| level to regulate college sports. Why, then, did college | | | | about football, or college sports generally, or a flaw in |
| presidents and faculty, who had far more authority | | | | higher education which causes this turmoil? If the |
| over their students than their modern counterparts, fail | | | | Greek ideal of education stands for the training of |
| to control the gridiron beast? Put differently, why did | | | | body, spirit, and mind, why have the colleges failed so |
| school presidents and faculty often themselves | | | | abysmally at their mission? |
| become part of the athletic problem? | | | | Good question, isn't it? But the answer is beyond the |
| . One problem might be that faculty members played | | | | subject of this article - and, unfortunately, beyond the |
| major roles in introducing early football. In addition to | | | | expertise of the college football experts. |