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Public Influence inside the College Walls: Progressive Era Universities, Social Scientists, and Intercollegiate Football Reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2011

Brian M. Ingrassia
Brian M. Ingrassia
Affiliation:
Georgia State University
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Abstract

At the height of the Progressive Era a number of social scientists, educational leaders, and politicians called for the reform of intercollegiate football. Since the 1880s football had become a popular spectacle, and many were concerned that it was corrupting the country's universities and college men. This article considers the progressive movement to reform football in the context of programs to make the modern American university useful at the turn of the century—including the Wisconsin Idea of state government developed in Madison and the University of Chicago's sponsorship of settlement houses, social work, and university extension. Although many progressives wanted the university to affect society, most were less enthusiastic about the prospect that elements of that society (what Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner dubbed “public influence”) would affect the university. Social scientists theorized the relationship between the university and the public and constructed an intellectual basis for football reform. Reforms proposed and in some cases adopted demonstrated ambivalence regarding football's academic and public role. Reformers wanted to preserve the popular, profitable, and potentially educational enterprise of football, but they also hoped to curtail its influence over burgeoning universities. The Progressive Era effort to control college football and channel it into constructive directions in many ways demonstrates the paradoxical nature of Progressive Era reform and inadvertently contributed to the institutionalization of “big time” intercollegiate athletics.

Type
Essays
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 59 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2011

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References

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39 Lissak, Pluaralism and Progressives, 6; Davis, Spearheads for Reform, 44.

40 Psychologists were especially adept at using Darwinian categories to explain football; see, for example, Patrick, G.T.W., “The Psychology of Football,” American Journal of Psychology 14 (1903): 368–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Patrick alluded to Herbert Spencer's 1859 essay, “Physical Education.” Bannister, Although Robert, Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Thought (Philadelphia, 1979)Google Scholar, argued that social Darwinism as traditionally construed is largely a myth, many turn-of-the-century intellectuals and social commentators did ascribe to a version of this doctrine.

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56 Watterson, College Football, 85–92; Curti and Carstensen, University of Wisconsin, 2:537–40. The Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives was not yet the Big Ten, as Ohio State University did not join until 1912.

57 Turner, “Speech at Alumni Banquet,” 1–4.

58 Thomas, “Gaming Instinct,” 750–53, 758–61.

59 See, for example, Veysey, Emergence. On the rise of the social science disciplines, see Ross, Origins of American Social Science.

60 Ross, Social Psychology, 84, 87.

61 See Oriard, Reading Football, esp. 57–133.

62 Watterson, College Football, 70–72, and Watterson, “Gridiron Crisis of 1905.”

63 Jordan, “Buying Football Victories,” Collier's, Nov. 11 through Dec. 2, 1905.

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75 Harper, “Shall College Athletics be Endowed?” 277, 281–82.

76 See, for example, A.W. Whitney, Harry Beal Torrey, George C. Edwards, “Report on the Football Situation, by the Committee on Athletics of the Academic Council” (Berkeley, 1905), 2, (copy) in folder 217, Box 6, JBA, BHL.

77 Horowitz, Campus Life, 113–14.

78 “Doubt Free Sport Plan,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 27, 1903, 8. Field, the retail magnate, donated the land for the Chicago's athletic grounds, appropriately named Marshall Field; Lester, Stagg's University, 23–24.

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84 Wiebe, Search for Order, xiii-xiv.

85 Moran, “Courtesy and Sportsmanship,” 118.

86 Jordan, circular letter addressed to Van Hise, Feb. 5, 1908; Van Hise to Jordan (copy), Feb. 13, 1908, RG 4/10/01, Folder 6–76 (D.S. Jordan), University of Wisconsin Archives, Madison.

87 Curti and Carstensen, University of Wisconsin, 2:537–42, 79.

88 See Alston Ellis (President of Ohio University, Athens, Ohio) to Jordan, Dec. 14, 1909, Frames 687–88, Reel 65; and William H. Black (President of Missouri Valley College, Marshall, Missouri) to Jordan, Jan. 3, 1910, Frame 13, Reel 66, David Starr Jordan Papers, microfilm copy in Stanford University Archives, Stanford, California.

89 On the origins of the professional coach, Watterson, College Football, 40–43, 55–56; Smith, Sports and Freedom, 147–64; Mrozek, Sport and American Mentality, 67–68, 73–75; Lester, Stagg's University, 17, 42–45; Gorn and Goldstein, American Sports, 232.

90 The descriptor “big time,” commonly used both in popular discourse and in scholarly works like Ronald Smith's Sports and Freedom, derives from turn-of-the-century Vaudeville; see, for example, Snyder, Robert W., The Voice of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York (New York, 1989), 47, 61–63Google Scholar.

91 Sperber, Murray, College Sports Inc.: The Athletic Department Versus the University (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; Sperber, , Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education (New York, 2000)Google Scholar, 27.

92 Nobles, Charlie, “Saban Goes to Alabama—Miami Fans Turn Crimson,” New York Times, Jan. 4, 2007Google Scholar; Zimbalist, Andrew, “Looks Like a Business—Should Be Taxed Like One,” New York Times, Jan. 7, 2007Google Scholar; Rhoden, William C., “Big Things Expected of Calipari at Kentucky,” New York Times, April 1, 2009Google Scholar.

93 Lester notes this irony; see Stagg's University, 90–91.

94 See Noble, David W., The Paradox of Progressive Thought (Minneapolis, 1958)Google Scholar.