College football

“ The grandstands were filled with a motley crowd of students, men and women spectators and pretty girls galore, for nearly all the feminine contingent of Fairview Institute was on hand, shrilly cheering, or singing for their favorite team, and waving the colors of their own college, intermingled with those of Randall or Newkirk. ”

“ In this way, the members of the team know that they have the support of the college, and this makes them play harder. This builds up college spirit.
Every college has its own freshman and sophomore traditions; one at Princeton is, that shortly after college opens there must be a rush about the cannon, between the freshman and sophomore classes. All those who have witnessed this sight, know that it is a vital part of Princeton undergraduate life. On that night in my freshman year, great care was taken by Cochran that none of the incoming football material engaged in the rush. ”

“ College games, for the most part, nowadays are played on college grounds. Accordingly the sport has been withdrawn from the miscellaneous multitude and confined to the field where it really belongs and the spirit of the game is now just what it should be—exclusively collegiate. ”

“ Harry Brown, that great Princeton end-rush, is on the other end of the bench, being taken care of by Bill Buss, a jovial old colored attendant, who was for so many years a rubber at Princeton.
I know men who never enthuse over football, but just play from a sense of college loyalty, and a fear of censure should they not play; who are [Pg 35] sorry that they were ever big or showed any football ability. College sentiment will not allow a football man to remain idle. ”

“ While throughout the New England towns and villages at this period a "dribbling" game was being played, the American colleges naturally adopted a form of play resembling that in progress under the English Rugby rules. Running with the ball and tackling, in fact every feature which tends to make the game a vigorous one, have subconsciously moulded the game in America. College football in the United States now stands as an exemplification of the athletic instincts of its younger generation. ”

“ The smuggling in of a professional baseball or football player whose college standing is maintained by snap courses or by indulgent professors, is a thing despicable in the eyes of all right-minded college men. It is the sacrifice of the university idea to the demand for victory in college sports. And in similar fashion the disposition to win by fair means or by foul, which has sometimes disfigured our college athletics, lies at the root of the ugly distrust felt by institutions for each other on the athletic field. ”

“ I mention this because you know as well as I do that there are colleges--I mention no names--where a born football player, such as either of you, would simply be lost; where he would be tied down by such stringent rules that he could never amount to anything on the gridiron. I don't mean to say that at Robinson the faculty is lax regarding standing or attendance at lectures, but I do say that it holds common-sense views on the subject of college athletics, and does not hound a man to death simply because he happens to belong to the football eleven or the crew. ”

“ Without athletics the college life is dull and listless and a man leaves the halls of his alma mater, an alumnus, with the relief attending an accomplished task.
But, at the same time, while sentiment and spirit are essentials to success in the life of every man, they cannot lie dormant and accomplish the desired results by their mere existence. In conjunction with them must go other just as valuable attributes and these attributes are fostered and developed in football as in no other known game. ”

“ The game is no more violent than is required by the physical demands of the men who play it.
There are no memories which cling so persistently to the mind of the alumnus, always capable of awakening a glow of enthusiasm and always recalled with pleasure, as those interwoven in the football games of his undergraduate days. There are no ties so potent to bind him to the college through the business of after years. The conversations at class reunions invariably drift to football in general and certain games in particular. ”

“ There is no game in which team work is more important than in football. Eleven boys of moderate ability and comparative light weight who can execute their plays with skill and precision can beat a team of heavier boys or superior players who may lack their skill and organization. In the case of a school team it is almost always possible to secure the services of a coach from among the graduates. If such a one has had experience on a college team so much the better. ”

“ I recall so well my freshman year at Princeton, how Garry Cochran, captain of the football team, went about the college with Johnny Poe, looking over the undergraduates and watching the incoming trains for football possibilities. If a fellow [Pg 19] looked as though he might have good material to work upon, he was asked to report at the Varsity field the next day.
All athletic interests are focused on the gridiron. The young undergraduate who has no likelihood of making the team, fills himself with facts about the individuals who are trying to win a place. ”

“ The true friends of sport in the United States must wish that the football mania may soon disappear in its present form; and the Harvard authorities are to be warmly congratulated on the manly stand they have taken against the evil. And it is to be devoutly hoped that no president of a [Pg 118] college in the future will ever, as one did in 1894, congratulate his students on the fact "that their progress and success in study during the term just finished had been fully equal to their success in intercollegiate athletics and football!". ”

“ As early as 1840 an annual game was played at Yale between the freshmen and the sophomores, but the establishment of a regular football association dates from 1872, also at Yale. In the following year an intercollegiate organization was formed, and since then football has increased in popularity at the colleges to such an extent that just as baseball has become the great national game, so has football become the great American collegiate game. Track athletics is the most recent form of athletic sports to be introduced into the college, and most colleges now have their field days. ”

“ It is loyalty to college--college spirit--which makes the college man a valuable addition to the institution he adopts. It is the self-same spirit or a sentiment that stands for the best in college life and is an absolute essential to its success in its highest meaning, and it is college athletics, of which football is the highest exemplification, which make this spirit possible. ”

“ They have become the nucleus for a perverted college sentiment. College spirit has come to mean enthusiasm for the winning of a game, and a college that has no football team is supposed to have necessarily no college spirit. Pride and loyalty to Alma Mater, the prestige of one’s college, one’s own collegiate self-respect, get bound up and dependent upon a winning season at athletics. It seems amazing sometimes to the undergraduate how the college has surrendered to the student point of view. ”

“ He can offer no opinion upon the game before the contest.
Each college has its preferred list of officials. Much time is given to the selection of officials for the different games. Before a man can be chosen for any game it must be shown that he has had no ancestors at either of the colleges in whose game he will act and that he is always unprejudiced. At the same time the fact that a man has been approved as a football official by three of four big colleges is about as fine a football diploma as any one would wish. ”

“ Football competition is very strong. There is the keenest sort of rivalry among college teams. There is very little love on the part of the men who play against each other on the day of the contest, but after the game is all over, and these men meet in after years, very strong friendships are often formed. ”

“ He comes to college fresh from his school day experiences ready to conform himself to the traditions and customs of the new school, his college choice.
The world will never again look quite so big to a boy as it did then. Entering as boys do, in the fall of the year, the uppermost thing in mind, outside of the classroom, is football. Sometimes it is the uppermost thought in the classroom. What kind of a Varsity football team are we going to have? ”

“ I can see the game now; there was no scoring [Pg 252] in the first half. To the outsider the teams seemed evenly matched, but we, who knew our men, thought we saw that the power was there; and if they could but realize their strength and that they had it in them to lay low at last that armor-plated old rhinoceros, the terror of the college jungle—Yale,—with an even break of luck, the game must be ours. ”

“ Such is the college that you write themes about to tell me that it is perfect. The college is made up of men who worship mediocrity; that is their ideal except in athletics. The condition of the football field is a thousand times more important to the undergraduates and the alumni than the number of books in the library or the quality of the faculty. The fraternities will fight each other to pledge an athlete, but I have yet to see them raise any dust over a man who was merely intelligent. ”

“ The superabundance of coaches and the demand for victory combine to force the boy.
"If there is any forcing to do, the college is the place for it, when the boy is older and better able to stand the strain. In recent years I have seen not a few brokendown boys enter college. Boys are coming to college now who needs must be told everything, and if there is not a large body of coaches about to tell them, they mutiny. They seem to forget, or not to know, that most is up to the man himself. ”

“ If we broke the rules our team would unquestionably suffer.
Some of my most pleasant football recollections are those gained as an official in the game. I count it a rare privilege to have worked in many games year after year where I came in close [Pg 386] contact with the players on different college teams; there to catch their spirit and to see the working out of victories and defeats at close range.
Here it is that one comes in close touch with the great power of leadership, that "do or die" spirit, which makes a player ready to go in a little harder with each play. ”

“ Yet the highest honor men are often members of teams. But it may be said that the introduction of football into college has affected the scholarship of the college in general unfavorably, even if it has not so affected the scholarship of the players themselves. ”

“ We’re going up against a hard team, and on strange grounds, but just think of it as if you were going to play Fairview, or Boxer Hall, or Dodville Prep right here. The worst feature of out-of-town games is that they throw the men off their stride. Don’t let that happen to you.”
They all promised that it should not, and then the players separated. The coach had arranged for a game with a distant college—Wescott University—which boasted of a superb eleven. It [220] meant a long trip on the train, two days spent away from Randall, and a day to come back in. ”

“ Whatever changes the future is to bring in the development and control of inter-collegiate athletics, our universities cannot very well escape the fundamental fact that they have become an integral part of our university system, and that, rather than attempting a change by radical measures, they [234] can best correct any present abuses by wise regulation, by a constant effort toward a modification of the present overwhelming emphasis on the one game, football, and above all, by a consistent encouragement of universal participation on the part of the students in some form of college sport. ”

“ I remember that I had not seen a victory over Yale since I was graduated from college in 1879. Some of the suggestions that I made about the time men should be played were laughed at. The standpoint I took was that a man should not be allowed by the coach to play until he was deemed fit. ”

“ FOOTBALL. For many years, the game of football has been the favorite amusement at some of the American colleges, during certain seasons of the year. At Harvard and Yale, it is customary for the Sophomore Class to challenge the Freshmen to a trial game, soon after their entrance into College. The interest excited on this occasion is always very great, the Seniors usually siding with the former, and the Juniors with the latter class. The result is generally in favor of the Sophomores. ”

“ Their reward for the bruising, hard work, with hardly a shadow of the hope of getting their letter, comes in seeing the great game itself. Like the college scrub teams the hardest rooters for the Varsity are to be found in their ranks.
Now for the game itself. Always hard fought, always well fought, there is perhaps no clash of all the year that so wakes the interest of the gen [Pg 223] eral public, that vast throng which, without college affiliations, is nevertheless hungry for the right of allegiance somewhere, somehow. ”

“ The president paused, and glanced questioningly at the proctor, whom he evidently took for an authority on sports. For Dr. Churchill, while an enthusiastic supporter of every team in the college, knew rather less about the various terms, and times of games than the average baby. The proctor nodded in acquiescence.
“Even the very football field is under suspicion,” continued the president, and there was another great sigh, mainly from that section of the chapel where sat Tom and his chums. “In fact the entire ground on which the college is built has been claimed by outsiders. ”