FOOTBALL, COLLEGIATE

American football's origins can be traced back to England and the split between football players into two groups, "ruggers" (those who played a game similar to modern rugby) and "soccers" (those who played a game most closely related to modern soccer). By the mid-1800s, both forms of football had immigrated to American colleges, first with a form of association football (the game played by the "soccers") called "ballown," which was played at Princeton University, and later a hybrid form of soccer and rugby, which was played at numerous university campuses across the northeastern part of the United States. This new hybrid, which would later become modern-day American football, both in form and in structure, emanated out of the rigidity of industrial production, the urbanizing tendencies of population distribution, and the expansionary propensities of nineteenth-century American ideology.

In 1866, Beadle's Dime Book of Cricket and Football offered codification (albeit vague) of the first rules of the soccer-rugby fusion that was to become American football. This publication signaled the trend toward formalization indicative of most organized sports that emanated from the latter part of the nineteenth century. College football, indeed most American and British sports in the mid-to-late 1800s, exhibited many of the rationalizing tendencies of the industrial era due to the pervasive productivist logics of the era and sport's tendency to develop in urbanized manufacturing centers. Prior to 1866, each university had its own nuanced set of rules for playing American football. However, the codification of college football found in Beadle's facilitated "intercollegiate" competition, as, for the first time, rival schools could compete against one another with the same conventions. Thus, in 1869, the first intercollegiate football game played in the United States took place when Princeton challenged Rutgers to a game that resulted in a 6–4 Rutgers victory. This game, and the popularity of subsequent intercollegiate contests between northeastern universities, resulted in a meeting in New York four years later where Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Harvard developed the first set of formal rules for intercollegiate football.

With a general foundation in place, intercollegiate football in the 1870s saw continued spread in popularity across the United States. The advent of new modes of transportation, particularly the expansion of the transcontinental rail system, which was completed on 10 May 1869, enabled teams to travel to new regions, and opened new flows of people and (sport) culture to the western part of the continent. Signs of the sport's popularity were evidenced by the expansion of intercollegiate contests to the southern United States. In 1873, for example, two southern schools, Virginia Military Institute and Washington and Lee, played against each other in a well-documented contest. Only a few years later, in 1879, the first intercollegiate game to be played in the Midwest took place between the University of Michigan and Racine College. As the sport grew in recognition throughout the decade and participation expanded to the ends of the country, developments were under way back in the northeastern United States that would shape college football for the next century and beyond.

College Football's First Rivalry: Harvard and Yale

Founded on the rules developed in 1873 and the subsequent games played under those parameters, and in response to football's growing status, Harvard and Yale formed the first Intercollegiate Football Association in 1876. Not only did the new organization serve as a governing body for the infant sport, but these measures also further positioned the two institutions at the focal point of college football up until the turn of the century. Throughout the 1880s, games between the two sides garnered a great deal of media attention from popular newspapers, and game attendance was in such demand that spectators would pay up to $60 per ticket. Indeed, most of the rules and rule makers of early intercollegiate football emanated from either the Harvard or Yale programs from that era. Despite Yale's continued success on the field during the early stages of the rivalry, both schools reaped fiscal and cultural benefits from the earliest college football spectacles. Examples of the thousands of dollars in revenues from their Harvard-Yale football games include Harvard's ability to build a 22,000 seat on-campus stadium for the football team in 1903, and Yale's propensity to charter four-car passenger trains to their away games.

The early success of college football was further enhanced by the contributions of Walter Camp to the Harvard-Yale rivalry of the late nineteenth century. Considered the "father of American football," Camp is widely thought to be the most influential person in the history of the sport. As both a player (1876–1879, 1880–1881) and coach of the Yale football team in the latter part of the nineteenth century, Camp's foresighted imagination for developing rules and strategies reshaped college football's style on the field and enhanced its popularity off the field. In 1880, and again in 1882, Camp introduced numerous changes to the rules of the game, most notably: the number of players (down to eleven per team), size of the field (similar to today's dimensions), a system of downs (three attempts to gain five yards), change of possession (previous rules allowed one team to maintain possession for an entire half), and yard lines (one horizontal line every five yards down the field). These rules created the basis for college football's break with rugby by concretizing particular aspects of play which differed significantly from traditional rugby rules.

Walter Camp's legacy is further cemented by his relationship with journalist Caspar Whitney and his mentorship

of college football legends Amos Alonzo Stagg and John Heisman. In 1889, Camp and Whitney, a long-standing supporter of college football, introduced the first "All-America" team—their selections of the best players from across the country. This tradition continued, and, by 1898, the first official "All-America" team chosen by Walter Camp was published in Collier's magazine. Two of Camp's former players, Amos Alonzo Stagg and John Heisman, further contributed to the revolution of alignments and formations, innovative rules, and pioneering strategies that shaped football leading up to the turn of the century. As a coach, Stagg's University of Chicago teams were some of the most recognizable teams in early midwestern collegiate football. Heisman, the person for which college football's most celebrated trophy is named, is credited with being the first coach to suggest that the forward pass be legalized. While the end of the century was highlighted by great rivalries such as Harvard-Yale, legendary personalities such as Camp, Stagg, and Heisman, and modern rule changes that would reshape the game, a new decade awaited college football: a decade in which new challenges would threaten the existence of the adolescent sport.

The First Bowl Game

". . . it is up to me to give them a carnival far superior to anything they have ever seen . . . you would not be put to one penny of expense from the time you left your University until you returned, including entertainment while here . . . ."

James R. H. Wagner, President of the 1902 Rose Bowl, in his invitation to University of Michigan to play in that game against Stanford University.

With that invitation to the Fielding Yost's University of Michigan team, James Wagner set into motion the creation of the "Granddaddy of them All," the annual Rose Bowl college football spectacular. Before that first game was held in 1902, the centerpiece of the annual Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California, was a polo match. When organizers decided that polo wasn't drawing enough attention to their parade and festival, a tournament committee member suggested that a football game between two national powers might be a good drawing card. Wagner agreed, and the first game was set in motion.

To represent the West Coast, Wagner selected Stanford University, champions of what was then known as the "Pacific Coast Universities." To create as much interest in the game as possible, Wagner selected Michigan as Stanford's opponent. Michigan, led by coach Yost, was the talk of the nation that year. The team was unscored upon in ten games, outscoring the opposition 501–0, a remarkable accomplishment. Yost accepted Wagner's invitation, and the team traveled by rail to California, leaving Ann Arbor on December 17.

On New Year's Day, the two teams made their way to the stadium through a huge throng that had turned out for the game. Ironically, the official colors selected for that year's Tournament of Roses were blue and gold, which were almost identical to Michigan's colors of maize and blue. This infuriated the Stanford fans, who began to tear down blue and gold banners and flags as the game drew near. Before the game, Michigan actually participated in the Tournament of Roses Parade, riding on a float and waving to the crowd.

With 8,000 fans looking on, the game itself turned out to be an anticlimactic finish to an exciting day. Stanford held its ground at first, but before the first half had ended, Michigan had begun to flex its muscle and took a 17–0 lead. In the second half, Michigan simply wore down Stanford and scored almost every time it had the ball. With eight minutes left in the game and the score 49–0 Michigan, Stanford captain Ralph Fisher asked Yost if he would accept Stanford's concession; he would, and the first Rose Bowl was in the books. Michigan closed the season with an 11–0 record and outscored its opponents 550–0, a mark that will certainly never be broken in modern football.

Unfortunately for football fans, Michigan did its job too well. Because the game was so lopsided, Wagner and tournament committee members feared that the public would be bored by any future games, so football was dropped from the tournament schedule in 1903. And what was it replace by? Why, chariot races of course. It would be sixteen years before football was once again added to the Tournament of Roses schedule, with the Rose Bowl finally becoming a permanent part of the New Year's festivities.

Troubled Times

The end of the Spanish-American War in 1898 ushered in unimpeded expansion across the continent. Just as people moved westward, so too did the games they played. The increased interest in college football in the West was best exemplified by the first Rose Bowl game in Los Angeles, played on New Year's Day in 1902. However, during this period the role of college football in both sport and academic landscapes was under scrutiny due to the violent nature of the sport and the unethical practices of coaches and athletes both on and off the field. Detractors from the field of higher education such as Harvard President Charles Eliot viewed college football as a threat to the moral and academic integrity of the mission of American universities. Furthermore, religious officials within the community were quick to challenge the violent nature and perceived lack of ethics in the new sport. Conversely, one of college football's biggest proponents, then American president Theodore Roosevelt, held fast to the rough and violent features of football. Prior to and during his presidency, Roosevelt stood by the notion that the American people had become soft, and aggressive sports such as college football were necessary to curtail the tendency toward latency.

By 1905, college football supporters and reformers were in the middle of a highly publicized battle in what would become college football's most critical season. The game was filled with problems both on and off the field, as the use of "mass plays," the "flying wedge," and other controversial strategies resulted in increased injuries, while rampant professional involvement threatened the amateur ethos of college football. A report on the state of college football published early that year profiled the violent nature of turn-of-the-century college football, proclaiming that eighteen deaths and an estimated 150 serious injuries were directly attributable to the rough play of college football. In a somewhat unprecedented move, Roosevelt intervened by inviting football insiders from the major eastern football-playing universities—Harvard, Yale, and Princeton—to the White House to discuss possible reform measures. The effects of these meetings were minimal, in part due to Harvard's reluctance to cooperate with Princeton and Yale, standing firmly behind their own codes of football conduct. Later in 1905, New York University chancellor Henry McCracken called representatives from nineteen institutions of higher education to New York for a second series of conferences aimed at reforming or, if need be, abolishing college football. While only twelve schools sent representatives to the first meeting, the decision was made to reform—rather than abolish—the sport.

The New York Conference and the second series of "big three" meetings rendered three important practical, if not philosophical, changes to intercollegiate football. First was the formation of the Inter Collegiate Athletic Association (ICAA), set to codify and govern all the football related activities of its member institutions. This governing body of college football would later become the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)—the institute now responsible for governing all contemporary intercollegiate athletics. Now empowered to reform college football, the newly formed ICAA sought to unify the detracting institutions with the newly formed governing body. Subsequently, a second outcome of the New York Conference was the inclusion of the old committee (comprised of the "big three" along with Cornell and Pennsylvania), into the newly formed ICAA. However, this was done following numerous concessions by ICAA member schools to the incoming programs. The third and most substantial consequence of the New York meetings of 1905 and 1906 was the implementation of numerous rule changes that would forever affect the game. Based largely on the Harvard's recommendations, the ICAA elected to legalize the forward pass, create a neutral zone at the line of scrimmage, increase the yardage required for a first down from five to ten, and disqualifying players "guilty of fighting or kneeing" an opposing team's player (Whittingham, p. 40). Many of these rules were adopted to open up play, thus decreasing the risk of injury and reducing the amount of foul play.

The reform measures instituted between the 1905 and 1906 seasons temporarily silenced many of the critics of college football. Satisfied by the measures taken by the ICAA, most institutions were willing to retain their football programs despite the continuing (although declining) number of deaths resulting from participation in the sport—three in 1906, two in 1907, seven in 1908 (Watterson, 2000, pp. 108–110). Despite institutional support for the game, these deaths instantiated claims of college football's barbaric nature, thus fueling a new thread of public debates. The critical vox populi that had been quelled, or at least softened, through the rule changes in 1906 arose again to threaten the existence of college football. New York and Washington, D.C., public schools banned football, and western universities such as Stanford threatened to abolish the sport or revert back to the English version of rugby.

Responding to the second wave of public scrutiny, in 1910 the ICAA officially changed its name to the NCAA, and also ushered in broad sweeping rule changes to limit the number of "mass" or "wedge" type formations and the opportunities for violence in-between plays. The highlights of the new rules were: changing the format of play from two thirty-minute halves to four fifteen-minute quarters; banning the flying tackle; requiring seven players to line up at the line of scrimmage; prohibiting the interlocking of arms for the purposes of blocking; permitting only backs and ends to be eligible to catch a forward pass. These rule changes signified an important break in the code of play in football from the traditional rules of rugby. Furthermore, this reformed version of football embodied the social and cultural logics of industrial America, and facilitated the virtually unimpeded growth of the sport throughout the "Roaring 1920s."

The Emergence of the College Football Spectacle

The more aesthetically pleasing game that had materialized from the reform meetings of the century's first decade drew increasing amounts of public and media attention during the 1910s. While World War I forced fiscal contraction of large, public American universities, the refined style of play and improved levels of performance primed college football for wider consumption during the succeeding decade. Beyond the rule transformations of the preceding decade, the unparalleled growth in college football's popularity and participation between 1920 and 1950 was largely attributable to three symbiotically interrelated factors: professionalization under a chimera of amateurism, inherent hypocrisy of the university in allowing recruitment of athletes while admonishing the professional nature of college football, and the commercialization of college football, largely through its relationship with the mass media.

First, the veneer of the amateur ethos upon which collegiate athletics was founded enabled football-playing universities to develop deep-seeded ties with alumni, the media, and other supporters under the guise of the "purity" of amateur sport. Despite the illusion of authenticity, issues of amateurism and professionalism have long cast a shadow over college athletics in America. Professionalism in college athletics can be traced back to intercollegiate rowing in the 1860s and 1870s, when northeastern colleges hired skilled rowers to compete on behalf of their schools. Schools with winning football traditions during the era—particularly Yale, Notre Dame, and Michigan—experienced large financial gains through the sport. To this end, Yale University was rumored to have a separate, rather sizable bank account with excess revenue created directly from the football team. Thus, success on the gridiron was an integral part of the formula for generating operating funds for many of these institutions, particularly in postwar times of monetary hardship. This, coupled with the NCAA's and university officials' inability to regulate participation in intercollegiate football, resulted in rampant illegal professional involvement for the sake of winning.

Second, the increased role of professional coaches and the pressures of winning resulted in intensified recruiting practices among college football programs. Particularly in the 1920s, a decade of continued growth, during which college football attendance doubled and revenues from the games tripled, most universities increased the number of full-time coaches under their employment. College football coaches at larger football-playing institutions such as Michigan, Chicago, Harvard, and Notre Dame typically earned higher salaries than full-time, tenured professors at those same universities. Some of the more notable coaches of the era included Knute Rockne from Notre Dame, Fielding Yost from Michigan, and Robert Zuppke of Illinois. New controversies began to swirl during the 1920s, as numerous coaches and staff members were implicated in scandals involving illegal recruiting and professionalism.

The third aspect of college football that contributed to its successful thrust into the American popular cultural conscience was the sport's relationship with the media. The increasing cultural popularity of film and radio in the 1920s helped to celebrate both individual and team performances in sport during the "Golden Decade". The earliest forms of this sport/media relationship nurtured public awareness of celebrities such as Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame, and Red Grange. Just as college football depended on the news media to create celebrities and spectacularize the game and its players for the sake of promoting and growing the sport, reporters during the era built their own reputations around the sports they covered. Grantland Rice, perhaps the most famous of all college football writers, was notorious for sensationalizing athletes and their performances. For example, Rice immortalized the renowned Four Horsemen of Notre Dame in a game report published in the New York Herald-Tribune in 1924. The four athletes that comprised the Notre Dame backfield, despite only average statistical performances during their intercollegiate careers, are among the most heralded of all American athletes of the early twentieth century, thanks to Rice's portrayal of their achievements.

Another one of college football's most revered stars —Red Grange of the University of Illinois—was possibly the most important athlete in the development of modern college football. For example, in a well-documented performance in 1924 against a favored University of Michigan team, Grange scored six touchdowns in front of over 65,000 fans. The media rhetoric surrounding this and other games stirred public interest in Grange, and, by association, the sport, thus helping to cement college football spectacles of the early twentieth century as some of the most significant cultural forms of the era. In fact, college football, rather than its professional counterpart, was the more popular of the two during the first quarter of the twentieth century. Indeed, it was not until the 1950s and the marriage between professional football and television that the NFL moved past college football in popular cultural cache.

Just as the 1920s ushered in the concurrent growth of both college football and American cultural life, the game, as well as most aspects of American economic and social activity, suffered substantial setbacks during the 1930s. This period saw a split between those institutions dedicated to sustaining intercollegiate sport, and those who, in large part due to economic reasons, eliminated intercollegiate sport in favor of an academic focus. This was best exemplified by the creation of numerous football conferences, including the Big Ten (the Big Six Conference at the time) in 1928 and the Southeastern Conference in 1932. While most large public institutions continued to invest resources in college football, some historically successful institutions such as the University of Chicago (where Amos Alonzo Stagg coached from 1892 to 1932) abolished football during the decade in response to the growing scandals and the increasing economic demands of the sport.

College Football in War and Prosperity

The two decades of college football succeeding the 1930s were greatly influenced by war, technological innovations, and a period of emphatic patriotism across the United States. As World War II began in 1939, and American forces were sent abroad, back in the United States, college football and television started to form an alliance that would increase the cultural significance of both in the coming years. The first televised college football game was played between Pennsylvania and Maryland on 5 October 1940. A few years later, in 1951, the NCAA approved the telecast of one intercollegiate football game each Saturday afternoon throughout the season. Notably, technological advances in college football during the era went beyond the mere introduction of television. For instance, Cecil Isbell of Purdue became the first coach to lead his team from the press box by employing new means of communication to orchestrate the on-field action.

One result of U.S. involvement in war was increased patriotic sentiment and discourse through the various burgeoning media streams. College football, marketed as a distinctly American sport form reflective of American political, technological, and cultural logics, echoed this trend in its creation of college All-Star games such as the one witnessed by 79,000 at Soldier Field in Chicago in 1934, which pitted college football's best players against the defending National Football League champions, the Chicago Bears (the game ended in a 0–0 tie). Furthermore, college bowl games like the Liberty Bowl, which began play in 1959, often strategically aligned themselves with American patriotic imagery and rhetoric through halftime pageantry, in-stadium signage and theatrics, and other strategically contrived forms of discourse.

Another important development for college football during the postwar era were the provisions of the Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944, or what is more commonly known as the G.I. Bill. The measure set aside billions of dollars in federal aid for returning servicemen and servicewomen who wished to pursue college educations. Soldiers returning from both World War II and the Korean War took advantage of the G.I. Bill, as large numbers of veterans and military personnel enrolled in colleges and universities nationwide. The influx of student population at some major universities resulted in a need for increased campus housing, classrooms, and other facilities. One result of the G.I. Bill was that, by the end of mid-1960s, more than 40 percent of all young men in the United States were enrolled in an institution of higher education. For college football, higher enrollment impacted not only the pool of potential players (the male student body) a head coach could select his team from, but also a boost in student support for the university and its teams.

A second result of the G.I. Bill was the increased number of male student athletes at major universities. Servicemen returning from duty were recruited by the institutions to play football, which resulted in an increase in the number of "scholarship" athletes on each team. During this time period, numerous universities were indicted for providing unauthorized aid to their student athletes under the guise of the G.I. Bill. Student athletes would receive preferential treatment and extra remuneration beyond what was typically afforded recipients of the G.I. benefits. To curb such activity, and to universalize the aid given to athletes, the member institutions of the NCAA in 1951 passed a Sanity Code. After much debate, the Sanity Code was created as a compromise between liberals, who felt that student athletes deserved privileges (particularly those students who were funded through the G.I. Bill) but that such benefits should be documented and made public, and conservatives, who held fast to ideals of amateurism in intercollegiate sport. In the end, however, the Sanity Code failed to eradicate professionalism in college football and to publicize the imbursements provided to student athletes.

Another important, and indeed related, result of the G.I. Bill of 1944 was the specialization of football skills and positions at the college level. Prior to the midcentury scholarship boom, due to the low number of scholarships available, most teams would field the best players on both offensive and defensive sides of the ball. This meant that most players would play the entire game, and learn both offensive and defensive skills. However, with a bevy of players at their disposal, many of different sizes, shapes, and skill levels, coaches of the 1950s and beyond were able to create specialized roles for each player. It was during this period that separate units for offense, defense, and special teams became more commonplace in the college game. Furthermore, increase team size translated into higher cost for the university, especially in providing room and board, travel, and equipment for the larger teams.

A New Dawn Fades

Prior to the war-ridden era of the 1940s, very few African Americans represented major public institutions in intercollegiate football contests. While northern schools demonstrated some progress in integrating their sports teams, universities in the South were often staunch defenders of segregation both on the field and in the classroom. One example of a broader, but not universal, trend among northern schools to include African Americans in intercollegiate sport came during the World War I era when two African Americans, Fritz Pollard and Paul Robeson, became high-profile football All-Americans at Brown and Rutgers. In the North, the presence of African American football players continued to grow throughout the early part of the twentieth century. However, from the period spanning Jackie Robinson's entry into major-league baseball in 1947 through to the adoption and implementation of the Twenty-fourth Amendment, which abolished segregation in 1962 to 1964, African Americans were restricted from playing on the football teams of almost every major southern school. The south, and states to the west, where southerners from previous generations had migrated, still very much held to segregationist values and the Jim Crow laws that promoted such segregationist practices. To such an end, during this era southern schools oftentimes refused to play northern schools if they had a black player on the team.

Numerous incidents of student protest and boycotting of football contests, as well as American policy changes on issues of race equality, eventually resulted in a more equal distribution of participants in college football. In 2000, for example, the NCAA reported that 43.2 percent of Division I-A football players were African American. However, only three of the 117 head coaches coaching Division 1A teams in 2003 were African American. Moreover, the commercialization of intercollegiate football led to both the symbolic and material exploitation of African American athletes, who were led to believe that college football was a means to social equality. Black athletes were (and still are) recruited to play football for large public institutions, yet more than half have never received a university degree, while their white teammates have tended to graduate at a rate almost 20 percent higher. In pursuit of revenues and renewed alumni and booster interest, the alienation of athletes in college football from their opportunities to gain an education, coupled with the fact that sport is often viewed in the African American community as a primary means of gaining social equality, has resulted in another persistent problem for the game.

The Reaganite policies of the 1980s ushered in unimpeded deregulation of the exchange of economic and cultural goods. In American intercollegiate football, such economic and political shifts translated to the expansion of their product through newly permitted television mediums, and primarily cable television. In an ever-more open, and highly competitive, market these cable channels, particularly those who devoted their content strictly to sports, were in search of more products to fill their time slots. College football, and other sports, grew in popularity as a direct result of institutional alignments with these emerging media forms. While this enabled continued growth for the sport, it also created a highly lucrative industry where amateur, teenage athletes were presented to vast audiences. Division 1-A, which is comprised of 117 of the nation's largest universities, has ensured lucrative contracts with numerous media platforms, most notably is the $400 million in contractual revenues from the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) for rights to broadcast the top four college football bowl games through the 2006 season. These athletes were turned into celebrities and marketed by their universities in an effort to maximize notoriety and exposure for the institution. However, virtually none of the revenues generated for the universities trickles down to the athletes.

Other problems that have emerged during the second half of the twentieth century also relate to the commercial nature of college football and the emphasis by colleges and universities on intercollegiate athletic performance over academics. In many ways, this has always been the case, but historically bound opportunities to expand college football's commercial and cultural appeal have furthered the economic interests of these institutions and fostered growth in college football's social importance. College football is a multibillion-dollar industry, garnering vast economic revenue through sponsorship, television and other media contracts, alumni and booster support, brand licensing, and ticket sales. To this end, college football teams have become such a priority to the universities that they purportedly represent, most "big-time" programs operate under budgetary constraints separate from each university's general fund, and football-related university employees typically earn twice the salary of academic faculty. As of 2004, several college football teams spent over $100,000 per player per year on travel, equipment, room and board, and other expenditures. These issues are obviously only a few of the many that will continue to confront the game of college football as it progresses through the twenty-first century.

See also: Football, Professionalization of Sport, Stadiums

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Joshua I. Newman