JRN 362 - Lecture Fifteen

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

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football


Review• College football remained

enormously popular from the 1930s through the 1970s despite the rise of professional football and the emergence of television.


Review• And so did high school football,

which had become the center of life for many towns in the football crescent and the south.


Review• High school football followed the

template established by the founding myths of the game in the 19th century and by popular culture in the first half of the 20th century.


Review• James Wright ‘s poem “Autumn

Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio” perfectly captured how a community’s life and the trajectory of its myths circulated around high school football.

• The poem revealed how the game cycled through generations, each living in the past through the present.


Review• … through football.

• For many communities in the football crescent, it would prove to be the lasting link to its most prosperous past as economic changes roiled through the region in the 1970s and beyond.


Review• While local attention remained

fixed on the high school team, regions and the nation followed college football as the century entered the second had of the 20th century with the same passion as they had at the start of the 20th century.


That College Game• In fact, some scholars assert that

during the 1950s, college football represented American culture as carrying the ideal balance “discipline, strength, and toughness” to meet the perceived threat from the so-called “Communist menace.”


That College Game• As in previous generations,

college football was viewed as a front-line defense against all that threatened the U.S, including itself.

• In fact, football and other sports and physical activities were thought to represent a return to manliness as much as they had in the 19th century.


That College Game• In 1956, President Dwight

Eisenhower established the Council on Youth Fitness in 1956 to encourage a return to the manly virtues of physical fitness.


That College Game• In 1961, Eisenhower’s successor,

John F. Kennedy, delivered a stunning address in which he asserted other countries had “moved ahead of younger people in this country in their ability to endure long physical hardship, in their physical fitness and in their strength.”


That College Game• JFK said that in addition to

intellectual abilities, American youth needed to “participate in physical exercise” and show a “ willingness to participate in physical contests, in athletic contests” in order to “strengthen this country,” among other things.


That College Game• It was in this context that the

tension between the old – the physical expression of manhood as represented by football and its authoritarian coaches – would collide with movements that called for free speech, free love, the end of segregation and the end of a war in Southeast Asia.


That College Game• Dan Jenkins of Sports Illustrated

captured the essence of college football of the moment in the 1960s with his classic book Saturday’s America (1970).


That College Game• Both sarcastic and serious, the

book revealed the atmosphere of college football in a way that matched the tone of the period.

• It was as far removed from the glorification of the game as represented by the words of Grantland Rice in a previous generation.


That College Game• Jim Murray of the Los Angeles

Times described Jenkins as the best college football writer in the country, high praise from a man who was a highly respected writer himself.

• Murray had this to say about the modern sensibility of Jenkins’ prose.


That College Game• “Certainly Dan reads as if he was

written half by Jove and half by a leprechaun. Grantland Rice called the Notre Dame backfield ‘The Four Horsemen,’ but only Jenkins would have mused on them as ‘Harry Pestilence, Don Famine, Sleepy Jim Destruction and Elmer War.’”


That College Game• Jenkins captured college football

at the point where one era was ending and another beginning.

• Periods such as that are noted by chaos, as modernity crushes the old way of doing things.

• And the game and a single region that resisted modernity ended the period firmly lodged in the new normal.


That College Game• College football had endured the

scandals of the late 1920s and the Great Depression that followed.

• Then, World War II sent many of its players off to combat in Europe and the Pacific in the 1940s.

• The game sort of stood still on the surface, even though new coaches and tactics were about to emerge.


That College Game• College football’s maturation

from the days of Rockne and various methods of determining champions steadily matured, until settling in 1936 when the Associated Press decided to poll its writers to create a national champion from an independent body of writers.


That College Game• An examination of AP poll results

revealed the complex regional shifts underway from the mid 1930s to the 1960s.


That College Game• AP national champions tended to

emerge from two regions over the first two decades of the polls:

- The Football Crescent- The Southwest.


That College Game• Here are the AP champions from

the 1930s (1936-1939)



That College Game• The teams are evenly split

between the crescent – Minnesota and Pittsburgh – and the Southwest – TCU and Texas A&M..

• Now Here are the AP champions from the 1940s:



That College Game• The champions from the 1940s

are lodged firmly in the crescent, with Notre Dame winning four titles (1943; 1946-47; 1949), Minnesota two (1940-41), Army two (1944-45) and Ohio State (1942) and Michigan (1948) winning one apiece.


That College Game• Notre Dame’s four national

championships solidified the work established by Rockne in the 1920s in transforming the college into a national power under coach Frank Leahy.

• It was this period that revealed Notre Dame’s “subway alumni” or national following.

• But things were changing.


That College Game• The shift in regional power

stemmed from several sources, including moves to deemphasize football at elite colleges and the development of coaches in World War II who now looked for full-time coaching positions throughout the country.


That College Game• First, pre-war powers such as the

University of Chicago and Carnegie Tech either dissolved their teams or turned them into minor sports as fresh scandals emerged.


That College Game• Second, the American Council on

Education called for a ban on spring practice and the abolition of bowl games as football teams dominated campus conversation – and budgets in the early 1950s.

• Although more bowl games than ever would be played, some colleges took notice – and action.


That College Game• Yale, the college where American

football was founded by Walter Camp, joined Harvard, Princeton, Penn, Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown and Columbia in creating the Ivy League in 1954.

• The league formally began play in the 1956-57 academic year.


That College Game• It would no longer emphasize

sports as league presidents agreed to a common set of academic standards for athletics.


That College Game• The withdrawal by many eastern

schools from the national scene would have been forced upon them anyway.

• The shift in power toward the South, Southwest and West was methodical.


That College Game• Oklahoma under head coach Bud

Wilkinson emerged as the first power outside of the East and football crescent, even though Wilkinson himself was rooted in upper Midwestern football.

• Wilkinson played quarterback on the Minnesota teams that won the AP’s first national championship in 1936.

• He also played hockey.


That College Game• During World War II, Wilkinson,

like other great coaches such as Paul Brown, served as an assistant coach on a service team, in Iowa.

• In 1947, Oklahoma picked Wilkinson to be its head coach.


That College Game• Under Wilkinson, Oklahoma

developed into one of the greatest – if not the greatest – in college football history.

• Oklahoma won the AP title in 1950, 1955 and 1956.

• Between 1953-57, the Sooners won a record 47 straight games.


That College Game• The 1955 Oklahoma team is

widely considered to be one of the best ever, finishing 11-0 by beating Maryland 20-6 in the Orange Bowl.


That College Game• Wilkinson deployed the T-

formation but did so within the context of a hurry-up offense.

• He is sometimes credited with a no-huddle-style innovation.

• More importantly, Wilkinson integrated Oklahoma’s team, recruiting fullback Prentice Gault in 1956, who later played with the Cleveland Browns.


That College Game• The AP polling data underscore

the rise to prominence of Oklahoma and other schools outside of traditional powerhouse regions.

• Note the southward shift in the following map of poll winners from the 1950s:



That College Game• Of the 10 AP champions in the

1950s, only three – Michigan State, Ohio State and Syracuse – were from the crescent.

• Four came from the South: Tennessee, Maryland, Auburn, and LSU.

• And one, Oklahoma, came from the Southwest.


That College Game• In the 1960s, the trend

continued, with the West emerging as a third powerhouse region to join the Southwest and South.



That College Game• Only Minnesota, Ohio State and

Notre Dame won national championships from the football crescent in the 1960s.

• Alabama alone won three. Texas and USC won two apiece.


That College Game• The pattern held in the 1970s.

• Only Notre Dame (1973, 77) and Pittsburgh (1976) represented the crescent in the AP roster of national champions.

• Nebraska (1970, 71), USC (1972), Oklahoma (1974-75) and Alabama (1978-79) won the others.



That College Game• The football heroes likewise

came from the South, the Southwest and the West.

• John David Crowe, 1957 Heisman winner from Texas A & M.


That College Game• Billy Cannon, Heisman winner

from LSU


That College Game• Joe Bellino, Heisman winner from

the Naval Academy …


That College Game• Roger Staubach, quarterback of

the 1963 Naval Academy team ..


That College Game• Mike Garrett, 1965 Heisman

winner from USC …


That College Game

Gary Beban, 1967 Heisman winner from UCLA …


That College Game• And O.J. Simpson, Heisman

winner from USC.


That College Game• Quarterback Joe Namath of

western Pennsylvania - in the heart of the football crescent – did not win the Heisman Trophy even though he led Alabama to a national championship.

• But Namath and Simpson would both follow the Red Grange playbook to use their college stardom as a platform to transcend the sport.


That College Game• Here’s the ngram – measuring

the volume of times his name appears in books - for Namath:



That College Game• And the ngram for Simpson:



That College Game• Despite the shift in power from

the crescent to the South, Southwest and West, the second Game of the Century (after Army-Notre Dame in 1946) took place on Nov. 19, 1966 in East Lansing, Michigan, between two old powers from the Great Lakes region: Notre Dame and Michigan State.


That College Game• The teams were fully integrated

teams battling for college supremacy.

• That fact showed how far the southern schools lagged in reflecting the movement toward integration outside of that region.


That College Game• The game featured a buildup

that only a television culture supported by the thriving magazine industry could sustain.

• ABC was compelled by members of Congress to air the game even though it violated NCAA rules for broadcasting.


That College Game• It turned out to be a classic, with

the teams battling to a 10-10 tie.

• Notre Dame coach Ara Parseghian - who played at Great Lakes under Paul Brown - was criticized for “tying one for the Gipper” when Notre Dame ran out the clock instead of throwing the ball to move within field goal range.


That College Game• That game was not certainly the

last hurrah for the football crescent in terms of national power.

• But the dynamics of the nation and population shifts to the south and west meant that conferences outside of the crescent would become just as powerful if not more so by the time the century closed.


That College Game• College conferences had long

emerged from regional geography.

• The Big 10 (est. 1896); the Big 8 (est. 1907); the Southwest Conference (est. 1914); the Pac 8 (est. 1915) ; and the SEC (est. 1932) were joined by the ACC (est. 1953).


That College Game• The eastern elite schools,

meanwhile, continued to huddle within a tight geographic region, linked under the Ivy League (est. 1954, to begin play in 1956).



That College Game• These relationships by region

would within a generation shatter but for the most part, all held for decades, with the Big 8 becoming the Big 12 and the Pac 8 eventually becoming the Pac 10 and later Pac 12.


That College Game• There were seven main teams

that played independently of any conference: Miami of Florida, Notre Dame, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, the U.S. Military Academy (Army), and the U.S. Naval Academy (Navy).



That College Game• The regional variations extended

deeply into the cultural and societal realms, which, in turn, co-mingled with football.


That College Game• Texas football developed a

culture where high school football dominated communities on Friday nights and the Texas Longhorns dominated the state on Saturdays under coach Darryl Royal.


That College Game• But nothing was like the South.

Unlike the other regions, football transcended the rituals of Saturday and Saturday night.

• It became a de facto religion for a region whose footprint reflected the old Confederacy.


That College Game• College football analyst Tony

Barnhart once remarked that the South had forged an “emotional bond with college football that I have not seen in any other part of the country or with any other sport.”


That College Game• What makes the role of football

relative to religion even more important to the region is that the South is largely a theocracy, known informally as the “Bible belt.”

• Southerners are more likely to attend church than Americans in other regions.


That College Game• Yet what do we make of this

statement by a fan of Alabama documented by scholar Eric Bain-Selbo:

• “Put simply, Alabama football has not, is not, and never will be just a game. It’s much, much more. It’s a way of life. You are born with it, you die with it, and your happiness during those moments in between greatly depends on it.”


That College Game• According to Bain-Selbo,

southern football fans equalize the experience of football with “experiences described by religious practitioners (for example, mystics).”


That College Game• Because of that, he concludes,

“perhaps we have good reason to take more seriously claims by observers and fans that game day at universities throughout the South are occasions for religious experiences.”

• And yes, college football is more popular than NASCAR in the South.


That College Game• That religious fervor the South

holds for football also plays out in the civic realm, and this became clear when calls emerged in the 1960s to desegregate teams.

• And this is evident in the career of Paul “Bear’ Bryant..


That College Game• Born in Arkansas, Bryant ,left,

played football at Alabama with Don Hutson, who later starred with the Green Bay Packers as one of the first star receivers.


That College Game• Bryant began coaching football

during World War II as part of the V-12, pre-flight, program for naval aviators.

• Program coaches included George Halas, Paul Brown and Bud Wilkinson, to name a few.


That College Game• In 1954, Bryant left the head

coaching position at Kentucky for the top spot at Texas A&M.

• Bryant immediately stamped his influence on Texas A&M, holding the team’s first summer training camp in a placed called Junction, Texas.


That College Game• The 10-day training session

became famous for its ferocity and for Bryant’s unyielding pressure on the players in the summer heat.

• Many players left the program; those who remained became known as the Junction Boys..


That College Game• Bryant’s legend grew even

though the team had a 1-9 record.

• Bryant moved to Alabama for the 1958 and it was there that he secured his legacy as one of the top collegiate coaches.


That College Game• It is difficult to imagine the

cultural and social fabric of the South in the 1950s and 1960s when viewed from the distance of generations.

• But Bryant coached in a fully segregated region that banned African-Americans from playing.


That College Game• In 1961, Alabama finished

undefeated and won the national championship.

• But Bryant and his team unwittingly became caught up the hardening of attitudes about segregation as professor Andrew Doyle has shown in his research.


That College Game• U.S. Rep. Frank Boykin of

Alabama wrote Bryant a letter that established an underlying motivation as to why he wanted the team to win in football: showing the South’s “way of life” as something that should be celebrated and preserved.


That College Game• “Bryant and his championship

team had become potent symbols of pride and cultural vitality to white southerners in the midst of a profound social transformation,” Doyle wrote.


That College Game• ““Paul Bryant and his national

champions possessed the power to soothe the anguish and give expression to the righteous anger,” Doyle wrote.

• The editor of the Birmingham News wrote that Bryant’s players embodied “old true values” of the South.


That College Game• Bryant, however, was not like his

fans. For one, he was a millionaire, a businessman and author whose works focused on contemporary management techniques (much as Walter Camp has developed).

• He sought and received permission to play Penn State, a racially integrated team in the 1959 Liberty Bowl.


That College Game• But non-Southerners –

particularly influential voters in the AP poll of top college football teams – did not see Bryant that way.

• Instead, they saw him as a representation of the segregated South.

• Still, writers voted for his team as the best in nation on many occasions through the years.


That College Game• In 1962, Ole Miss was the best

team in college football and considered to be a contender for the national championship as determined by the Associated Press poll.

• Even Sports Illustrated saw Ole Miss as the nation’s best team and put the school on its cover in Fall of that year.


That College Game• Yet the team would be caught in

the drama of the times as the federal government moved to integrate the University of Mississippi.

• When a student named James Meredith sought to enroll in the school under the protection of U.S. Marshals, the campus erupted into violence.


That College Game• The role of football in the

cultural fabric of the South is evident in a nationally televised speech John F. Kennedy delivered on the role of the federal government in protecting Meredith on the Ole Miss campus.

• The riot had already broken out on the campus as white students and others violently protested Meredith’s enrollment.


That College Game• Kennedy spoke to the nation

that night amid the explosion of violence in Oxford, Miss.

• “You have a great tradition to uphold, a tradition of honor and courage, won on the field of battle and on the gridiron as well as the university campus,” Kennedy said.


That College Game• The startling inclusion of football

in a speech designed to explain the federal role underscores Kennedy’s understanding of the importance of the game to the South.

• He knew the Ole Miss team was among the top in the nation and had rallied the state behind its chance at a national title.


That College Game• Yet Kennedy knew it would take

federal troops to suppress campus rioting by some white students and outsiders recruited by the KKK to stop the violence.

• Ironically, federal troops bivouacked outside the football stadium.


That College Game• Mississippi would not win the

national championship as AP voters, appalled at the violence, selected the University of Southern California as national champion.


That College Game• Slowly, SEC teams desegregated

in the face of the reality of the moment.

• Kentucky was the first, in 1967

(Nate Northington, left) and.Tennessee followed in 1968, followed by Auburn (1970), Florida (1970), Mississippi State (1970), and Vanderbilt (1970).


That College Game• Bryant worked behind the

scenes to soften the segregationist stance of Alabama but it took a carefully designed schedule to transform the all-white Alabama team.


That College Game• Bryant invited the University of

Southern California to play at Alabama in 1970.

• USC had an all-black backfield.


That College Game• Alabama lost the game, but

Bryant had made his point. Alabama needed to integrate its team – and it did the next year.


That College Game• Alabama, with Wilbur Jackson,

left, and Georgia desegregated in 1971.

• Mississippi and LSU became the last teams to desegregate in the SEC.

• Both did so in 1972.


That College Game• The other great social movement

in the 1960s focused on the Vietnam War.

• College campuses filled with tear gas as protestors took to the quads to demonstrate against U.S. military intervention in Southeast Asia.


That College Game• Football became a place for both

celebration and protest.

• At the Yale Bowl in October 1968, Yale cheerleaders presented the black power salute to fans during the national anthem before the Dartmouth game.


That College Game• Yet the game had a unifying

force as well.

• Football turned out to be the single old-timey ritual that both the greatest generation and the baby boomers could agree on.


That College Game• “The hawkers of protest have

made the University of California at Berkeley a symbol of campus unrest. Far more typical are the students whose interests embrace both education and revolt, both football and Vietnam. They make Cal exciting and stimulating.” – Sports Illustrated, Jan. 3, 1966.


That College Game• "I went to a political rally

yesterday. I saw a person who had his picture in Newsweek holding a picket sign protesting the war in Vietnam. The first thing he talked about was the Oregon game, and then he told me that he was going to the Big Game instead of the VDC [for Vietnam Day Committee] march.” – Sports Illustrated, Jan. 3, 1966.


That College Game• The game that best reflected the

insanity of the 1960s took place in the oldest stadium in college football – Harvard Stadium - in November 1968 between ancient rivals Yale and Harvard.


That College Game• Yale quarterback Brian Dowling

led the Bulldogs but he also represented a counterculture interpretation of football via a Yale Daily News comic strip called Doonesbury..

• His character named B.D. wore his football jersey with its signature No. 10 everywhere on campus.



That College Game.• But Dowling and star running

back Calvin Hill entered college football mythology for another reason: they were part of one of the greatest games ever played.

• Harvard score 16 points - two touchdowns and two two-point conversions in the closing minutes – to tie Yale, 29-29.


That College Game• Yale players have never let go of

the moment the game ended with the score tied, 29-29.

• All agreed. they had lost.

• Yet all also agreed they had participated in something historic, something that made sense to two of the schools that had played the longest.
