College Football Part II – Violence and Brutality in Football

• Unsurprisingly, the frequency of player injuries, on-campus student violence, and the growing commercialism of the game attracted widespread criticism from reformers, moralists, and politicians throughout the country.

• Many university presidents aligned with their faculty members in strong opposition to the place of football on college campuses.

Violence and Brutality in Football

• Led by Harvard University President Charles Elliot (1834–1926), opponents argued that college football jeopardized the health of the student body by glorifying violence and brutality, encouraged habitual violations of the rules, and diverted time from a student's studies and daily life.

University of Michiganalumni team 1899(Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Violence and Brutality in Football

• By condemning the game's win-at-all cost commercial spirit and calling for moderation and reform, opponents argued that college football proved incompatible with the educational mission of American universities.

• Some faculty members took their opposition of the college gridiron to the extreme by abolishing football altogether. In the 1890s alone, schools such as Trinity (later Duke), Georgetown, Columbia, and Alabama abolished football for varying lengths of time.

Violence and Brutality in Football

• In 1893 even U.S. President Grover Cleveland was forced to abolish the year's Army-Navy annual football contest due to the game's escalating violence.

• Fearing a student revolt, or simply recognizing the importance of the financial rewards and public prestige associated with the game, university presidents turned a blind eye to the evils of college football.

Violence and Brutality in Football

• Future U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), defended the game on the grounds that it supposedly helped built the necessary character and strength needed for a new industrial and urban lifestyle.

• Based on a belief in Social Darwinism and its “survival of the fittest” ideology, many of the nation's leaders claimed that college football instilled the masculine and martial virtues needed for American men to govern themselves, their country, and the world.

Geographical Diffusion of Football• From its roots and early development in the

prestigious Ivy League schools of the Northeast, college football spread to every region of the country.

• Throughout the Midwest and the South, college campuses caught football fever. In March 1892 a game between Stanford and California even signaled the arrival of football in the Far West.

Geographical Diffusion of Football

• Colleges large and small took up the game in part due to the demands of the student body and in part as a means by which to emulate the powerful eastern institutions such as Harvard, Princeton, and Yale.

• The geographical diffusion of college football led to the development of regional styles of play.

• While established eastern schools relied heavily on their defense, budding western schools adopted an all-out attacking style. Similar regional differences were witnessed in the South, where schools developed their game around a quick, pass-oriented brand of attack.

• The growth of college football throughout the country also led to the establishment of regionalconferences, the first of whichwas the Western Conference (predecessor to the Big Ten),established in 1896.

Geographical Diffusion of Football

• The power enjoyed by prestigious Eastern schools such as Yale was gradually being threatened, namely by the Universities of Chicago, Minnesota, and Michigan.

• Despite the rising democratization of thecollege game, footballremained a predominately white institution in the1890s.

Geographical Diffusion of Football

• African Americans were in the minority on both college campuses and the college gridiron, although a handful of talented black athletes played on some of the leading college teams in the nation.

• The most prominent African American player of the day:William Henry Lewis, a native-born Virginian and son of former slaves, who played for and captained both Harvard University and Amherst College in Massachusetts.

• He was chosen to Walter Camp's prestigious “All-American” team in 92’ and 93’, and was later named the most dominating “center rush” of the entire decade.

• Other prominent black football players included: William Tecumseh Sherman Jackson and George Jewett

African Americansin College Football