jrn 362/sps 362 - lecture three

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of FootballRich Hanley, Associate ProfessorLecture Three

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football

Review• The game of football in the

1880s began to capture the hearts and minds of America, in large measure because of the confluence of ecstasy and violence at the core of the American Dream Life.

• The mass media of the day relentlessly promoted the game.


Review• Since 1876 when Yale, Harvard,

Princeton, and Columbia formed the Intercollegiate Football Association under the rugby code, the game had shifted dramatically to become more open and more appealing to spectators in the process.


Review• Under the leadership of Yale’s

Walter Camp, innovation enforced by changes in the rules kept opening the game to action piece by piece.

• Camp’s installed the line of scrimmage in the rules, to give clear lines between offense and defense.


Review• The moonshot rules moment

occurred in 1882 after football spectators rebelled against the so-called block game.

• The block game meant one team would hold the ball for an entire half without moving it to avoid a turnover.


Review• In 1882, the rules committee

governing college football adopted the first down to keep the ball moving and create incentives to do so.

• That meant a team that advanced the ball at least five yards in three downs or did not lose at least 10 yards could keep the ball.


Growth & Survival• That alone opened the game and

spurred innovation in terms of positions and formations as noted in Lecture Two.

• Among the innovations after 1882: signals, called by the captain (not necessarily the quarterback).


Growth & Survival• Yale’s first signals consisted of two

sentences: “Play up sharp, Charlie,” and “Look out quick, Deac.”

• At Princeton, the play would be signaled by the first letter of the word, meaning that a “What’s the matter” call indicated the ball would go to the fullback.


Growth & Survival• The 1882 rules also settled the

variability in formations.

• From then on, the line would consist of seven players with four in the backfield: quarterback, fullback and two halfbacks. New plays emerged, including the V


Growth & Survival• In 1887, Lehigh in south Bethlehem,

Pennsylvania, which started its football team in 1884, deployed the V formation.

• It was a polished variation of a formation first used in 1884 in a game between Princeton and Pennsylvania.


Growth & Survival• The formation called for the line to

form a “V” with the apex forward and the runner encased in the middle, thus becoming the seed for what would later be known as the wedge.

• That ushered in the age of mass formations and mass momentum that amped up the violence.


Growth & Survival• The play formed 10 yards behind the

line of scrimmage, with the line forming the V and interlocking their arms to strengthen it.

• The runner would start the play at the apex of the V and the blockers would move past toward the scrimmage line.


Growth & Survival• In 1885, even before the proliferation

of the wedge and the violent play it created, Harvard banned football, only to reinstate it the following year.


Growth & Survival• Ironically, Harvard would perfect the wedge play in the next

decade and come very close to killing football for good in the process, meeting Yale in a game that many observers of the time said was the most violent in history.

• More on that in Lecture Four.


Growth & Survival• The proliferation of newspaper

coverage of football began slowly in the 1880s but it led to the first wave of myth-making heroics and heroes.

• Importantly, it spread the game to the south, midwest and west from its cradle in the northeast as trains carried newspapers everywhere.


Growth & Survival• Spalding produced a football guide

with rules and stories written by Walter Camp to promote the game – and sales

• It also included a catalog of gear and was distributed nationally to coaches at colleges and prep schools, helping to standardize play across the U.S.


Growth & Survival• Books by Camp such as American

Football found a wide readership among people who wanted to learn about the game and understand why so many people attended games.

• It both educated current spectators and inspired boys to aspire to football heroics.


Growth & Survival• Coaches likewise helped to

popularize the game with training manuals.

• In short, the transmission of football by newspapers, magazines and books in the period between the late 1880s and early 1900s underscored its media-friendly structure.


Growth & Survival• Newspaper accounts as noted

previously created interest in the game just as colleges were forming rapidly in every sector of the nation.

• Please see the link on Blackboard for a map that animates the growth of colleges in post-Civil War America.


Growth & Survival• Colleges proliferated on the

strength of a law passed in 1862 called the Morrill Act, named after its sponsor, senator Justin Morrill of Vermont

• The act gave each state 30,000 acres of federal land to sell to raise money to establish state universities.


Growth & Survival• The Civil War delayed the act’s

impact but eventually some 69 colleges including Auburn, Cornell, Florida, Georgia, LSU, Nebraska, Ohio State, Penn State, Tennessee and Wisconsin were founded.

• All formed football teams from the start.


Growth & Survival• And all needed experts to help

organize the teams.

• So newly formed state and private colleges such as Notre Dame turned to Yale and Camp.


Growth & Survival• “Will you kindly furnish me with

some points on the best way to develop a good football team. I am an instructor connected with this university and have been asked to coach the team,” wrote James H. Kilvan, who once lived in New Haven and watched Yale football games.


Growth & Survival• Camp, though, was busy. He was

on his way to coach Stanford in California.

• Camp’s standing and that of Yale cannot be overstated during this period of football.


Growth & Survival• The new state and private

colleges all wanted to imitate Yale, Harvard or Princeton and hired alumni from those schools to do so.

• Yale alumni in particular were instrumental in forming teams throughout the country.


Growth & Survival• Between 1876 and 1893 alone,

the number of colleges playing football grew to 88. Over the next 20 years, more than five times that number would field teams.

• And Yale seemed to have a hand in many of them, spreading the gospel of Camp, seemingly everywhere.


Growth & Survival• In addition to teaching football

techniques, Camp named All-America teams to honor great players, beginning in 1889.

• Most notably, he embedded the game with a moral code that blunted the violence that had disturbed college faculty and others critical of the game.


Growth & Survival• Camp and football boosters linked football to the development of

morality and character.

• He made that link explicit in works of fiction for children and reference works for spectators.

• Without question, Camp believed that participation in football created both an outlet for adolescent energies and the moral lessons that would carry a man through live.


Growth & Survival• Camp encouraged his supporters to follow his lead.

• Note the language of the next selection of commentary about football, this one by one of Camp’s friends.


Growth & Survival• A passage in a book for boys called The Substitute expands on

Camp’s conceptualization of a code of conduct.

• Note how he stresses the point about playing to win but playing to win within a framework of honor.

• Even in defeat, it is important to maintain honor, Camp believes.

• That was the amateur ideal of the period.


Growth & Survival• In recognition of the reality of adolescent life, Camp wrote that

football players may stray form the code but they are always better of for having lived it:


Growth & Survival• It is that morality alongside tactics that Camp’s players and

colleagues from Yale spread over the country as their influence over football persisted well into the 20th century.


Growth & Survival• Auburn illuminates Yale’s role in

the development of college football as both a sport and a moral instrument even outside of Camp’s direct influence.


Growth & Survival• A Yale alumni named Charles Wilcox attended medical school at

the University of Virginia and introduced the sport to the campus in 1886

• A Virginia undergraduate named George Petrie from Alabama did not forget the game when he left to attend graduate school at Johns Hopkins.

• In 1892, Petrie returned to Alabama to teach history at Auburn, then known as Alabama Polytechnic.


Growth & Survival• Petrie started the graduate

program and the football team at Auburn.

• He adopted the colors of Virginia: orange and navy blue.

• Thus Yale’s role in the start of Auburn football can be traced to an alumni who influenced the first coach.


Growth & Survival• And the alumni’s influence over Petrie extended to the

composition of the Auburn Creed, which reads as if written by Camp himself.

• “I believe that this is a practical world and that I can count only on what I earn. Therefore, I believe in work, hard work. I believe in education, which gives me the knowledge to work wisely and trains my mind and my hands to work skillfully …


Growth & Survival• “I believe in honesty and truthfulness, without which I cannot win

the respect and confidence of my fellow men.

• “I believe in a sound mind, in a sound body and a spirit that is not afraid, and in clean sports that develop these qualities.


Growth & Survival• “I believe in my Country, because it is a land of freedom and

because it is my own home, and that I can best serve that country by "doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with my God.

• And because Auburn men and women believe in these things, I believe in Auburn and love it.”


Growth & Survival• The last piece of the code sparks our interest as it means that

players compete above all for Auburn, creating a bond between player, spectators and school.

• And that bond over football is what ties alumni to schools for life.


Growth & Survival• Petrie’s role at Auburn was typical of how coaches were hired in

the 1880s and early 1890s.

• The growth of academia meant the need to hire professors, who by and large were educated in the East, particularly at Yale and similar places.

• These are the institutions where football traces its origins.

• And coaches came from the faculty ranks or were hired just to oversee teams and athletic departments.


Growth & Survival• The direct impact of Yale’s social network and its role in

popularizing football is never more evident than in the career of Amos Alonzo Stagg.

• Stagg ( 1862-1965) attended Phillips Exeter Academy and decided to attend Yale in 1885.


Growth & Survival

• Stagg was an original All-American at end, when Camp selected him to his first such team in 1889.


Growth & Survival

• In 1890, Springfield College (then known as Springfield YMCA) hired Stagg to coach football.

• While there, Stagg coached a man named James Naismith, who before the decade ended would invent a game called basketball.


Growth & Survival• In 1892, Stagg’s divinity professor at Yale, William Rainey Harper,

moved to the University of Chicago as president and invited his former student to coach the football team under an academic appointment as head of the Department of Physical Culture.

• Stagg remained in the post for 41 years.


Growth & Survival• At Chicago, Stagg:

- Organized the university football team and developed it into one of the powers of college football in the first two decades of the 20th century.

- Helped to found the Western Conference, which later became known as the Big 10.


Growth & Survival• Along with Fielding Yost, coach of Michigan, Stagg transformed

football into a must-see spectacle that drew tens of thousands to games.

• The Michigan-Chicago games in the first decade of the 20th drew tens of thousands.


Growth & Survival

• Out in the Pacific region, the University of Southern California began play in 1888.


Growth & Survival• A new university founded in the Bay Area of California opened in

1891. It was named after its founder who built his fortune in the railroad business, Leland Stanford.

• One year later, In 1892, Stanford lured Camp from Yale to serve as its coach as noted earlier.


Growth & Survival• The University of California at Berkeley added a team and created

an intense local rivalry with Stanford.

• The contest became known as The Big Game, creating a rivalry similar to Yale-Harvard (who play each year in The Game) that Camp nurtured.


Growth & Survival• Within this universe of football, clusters of teams, many with

connections to the eastern schools, formed conferences to maintain a routine schedule of games from year-to-year.

• The Big 10, Pac 12 and the Southeastern Conference all trace their ancestry to this period.


Growth & Survival• The growth of football and collegiality of coaches (they all seemed

to know each other from Yale and other schools) sparked what were called intersectional games, as teams from the East met teams from the Midwest and West.

• The first Rose Bowl was played in 1902 in Pasadena, Calif., even though the Rose Bowl itself wasn’t for another two decades.


Growth & Survival• The University of Pennsylvania was particularly active in the

period, of the 1880s, 1890s and first years of the 20ht century, drawing players from Ohio and the western part of the state lodged in what would become known as the football crescent.


Growth & Survival• A Pennsylvania graduate played a

considerable role in spreading the game throughout the United States.


Growth & Survival• He graduated in Penn in 1891 after transferring there from Brown

in Rhode Island.

• His coaching career followed a path from a Oberlin in Ohio, where he introduced the center snap to replace the rolling of the football to the quarterback.


Growth & Survival• In 1895, he went to Auburn, which had founded its football

program a few years earlier under a professor who learned the game at Virginia from a Yale graduate.

• In 1900, he moved to Clemson in South Carolina.

• In 1904, Georgia Tech hired him to coach.


Growth & Survival• He introduced the word “hike” or “hep” to initiate play by the

quarterback after the forward pass was legalized in 1906. • In 1916, his Georgia Tech team scored the most points in football

history, winning 220-0 against Cumberland.


Growth & Survival• The man’s name: John Heisman,

whose name is honored each year by the Heisman Trophy to the best college football player.


Growth & Survival• The fame of coaches exceeded

that of the players, and the concerned many faculty and alumni who saw the game grow on the strengths of captains, upperclassman who led the team in games because coaches could talk to players only at halftime.


Growth & Survival• Coaches featured what one writer called “character-shaping” and

occult “forces” who seemed to exist as a cross between Sherlock Holmes and a professor of Advanced Geometry.

• Even though the rules prohibited coaching during a game, coaches were vested with enormous power – and pay.


Growth & Survival• The magazine Outing explored the role of the paid coach and

concluded:

• “From the true position of a servant, he as become a director, framing the policy in many of our institutions. The (athletic) committees are mere figureheads, taking their advice from the coach.


Growth & Survival• “His sole and unanswerable argument is that if this or that thing is

not done, he will not be able to turn out a winning team … Winning teams roused enthusiasm and gave him more power, until gradually the precept was laid down that winning coaches must have no interference ...

• “Thus the coach developed from a servant to a master and athletes from a sport to a business with a hired supervisor.”


Growth & Survival• The magazine reported that the day of the paid coach “cannot be

with us much longer.”

• The magazine erred, as a cult of the head coach became part of the game because rule changes triggered innovative formations, signals and movement that could only be coordinated by a dictatorial figure.


Growth & Survival

• Despite the criticism, paid coaches were sought throughout the country and helped to spread techniques and tactics – and the football code itself - to make football a national game.

• But one tactic came very close to ending football in the late decade of the 19th century and first of the 20th century.

jrn 362/sps 362 - lecture three

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