Games Colleges Play

Games Colleges Play PDF

Author: John R. Thelin

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 1996-11-18

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1421403919

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Featuring a new introduction by the author, the paperback edition of Games Colleges Play chronicles the history of intercollegiate athletics from 1910 to 1990. Featuring a new introduction by the author, the paperback edition of Games Colleges Play chronicles the history of intercollegiate athletics from 1910 to 1990—from the early, glory days of Knute Rockne and the Gipper to the modern era of big budgets, powerful coaches, and pampered players. John Thelin describes how sports programs—although seldom accorded official mention with teaching and research in the university mission statement—have become central to university life. As administrators search for a proper balance between athletics and academics, Thelin observes, this peculiar institution grows increasingly powerful and controversial. Thelin examines the 1929 Carnegie Foundation Report, the formation of major athletic conferences, the national college basketball scandals after World War II, the dissolution of the Pacific Coast Conference in the 1950s, and the Knight Foundation Report of 1991. He finds disturbing patterns of abuse and limited reform and explores the implications of these patterns for today's college presidents, faculty, and students. Games Colleges Play provides historical background that will inform current policy discussions about the proper place of intercollegiate athletics within the American university.

Creating the Big Ten

Creating the Big Ten PDF

Author: Winton U Solberg

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2018-03-21

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0252050258

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Big Ten football fans pack gridiron cathedrals that hold up to 100,000 spectators. The conference's fourteen member schools share a broadcast network and a 2016 media deal worth $2.64 billion. This cultural and financial colossus grew out of a modest 1895 meeting that focused on football's brutality and encroaching professionalism in the game. Winton U. Solberg explores the relationship between higher education and collegiate football in the Big Ten's first fifty years. This formative era saw debates over eligibility and amateurism roil the sport. In particular, faculty concerned with academics clashed with coaches, university presidents, and others who played to win. Solberg follows the conference's successful early efforts to put the best interests of institutions and athletes first. Yet, as he shows, commercial concerns undid such work after World War I as sports increasingly eclipsed academics. By the 1940s, the Big Ten's impact on American sports was undeniable. It had shaped the development of intercollegiate athletics and college football nationwide while serving as a model for other athletic conferences.

Amos Alonzo Stagg

Amos Alonzo Stagg PDF

Author: David E. Sumner

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2021-09-27

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1476685762

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Amos Alonzo Stagg (1862-1965) grew up one of eight children in a poor New Jersey family, graduated high school at 21 and worked his way through Yale. His goal was to become a Presbyterian minister, but he dropped out of Yale Divinity School because he felt he could have more influence on young men through coaching. He was hired as the first football coach at University of Chicago after its founding in 1892. Under Stagg's leadership, Chicago emerged as one of the nation's most formidable football teams during the early 20th century, winning seven Big Ten championships and two national championships. After Chicago forced him to retire at 70, Stagg found another coaching position at College of the Pacific, where he was forced to retire at 84. He found another job and never fully retired from coaching until he was 98. His marriage to his wife Stella--his de facto assistant coach--lasted almost 70 years. Sports Illustrated wrote of him, "If any single individual can be said to have created today's game, Stagg is the man. He either invented outright or pioneered every aspect of the modern game from...the huddle, shift and tackling dummy to such refinements as the T-formation strategy." This biography tells the story of his life and many innovations, which made him one of the great pioneers of college football.

Passing Game

Passing Game PDF

Author: Murray Greenberg

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2008-11-04

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0786726954

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Benny Friedman, the son of working class immigrants in Cleveland's Jewish ghetto, arrived at the University of Michigan and transformed the game of football forever. At the time, in the 1920s, football was a dull, grinding running game, and the forward pass was a desperation measure. Benny would change all of that. In Ann Arbor, the rookie quarterback's passing abilities so eclipsed those of other players that legendary coach Fielding Yost came back from retirement to coach him. The other college teams had no answer for Friedman's passing attack. He then went pro—an unpopular decision at a time when the NFL was the poor stepchild to college football—and was equally sensational, eventually signing with the New York Giants for an unprecedented 10,000, bringing fans and attention to the fledgling NFL. Passing Game rediscovers this little-known sports hero and tells the story of Friedman's evolution from upstart to American celebrity, in a vivid narrative that will delight and enlighten football fans of all ages.

Football in the Big Ten

Football in the Big Ten PDF

Author: Gabriel Kaufman

Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc

Published: 2007-08-15

Total Pages: 49

ISBN-13: 1435844319

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The Big 10 Conference is the United States’ oldest Division I college athletic conference. It was at the turn of the 20th century, when the conference was established, that rules for college sports were created. With a dynamic subject matter that will appeal to sports fans and reluctant readers alike, this book offers a wealth of fascinating information and statistics. Packed with information, it includes conference history, teams and mascots, player and coach profiles, conference rivalries, and important game highlights.

College Football and American Culture in the Cold War Era

College Football and American Culture in the Cold War Era PDF

Author: Kurt Edward Kemper

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2023-12-11

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 0252047281

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The Cold War era spawned a host of anxieties in American society, and in response, Americans sought cultural institutions that reinforced their sense of national identity and held at bay their nagging insecurities. They saw football as a broad, though varied, embodiment of national values. College teams in particular were thought to exemplify the essence of America: strong men committed to hard work, teamwork, and overcoming pain. Toughness and defiance were primary virtues, and many found in the game an idealized American identity. In this book, Kurt Kemper charts the steadily increasing investment of American national ideals in the presentation and interpretation of college football, beginning with a survey of the college game during World War II. From the Army-Navy game immediately before Pearl Harbor, through the gradual expansion of bowl games and television coverage, to the public debates over racially integrated teams, college football became ever more a playing field for competing national ideals. Americans utilized football as a cultural mechanism to magnify American distinctiveness in the face of Soviet gains, and they positioned the game as a cultural force that embodied toughness, discipline, self-deprivation, and other values deemed crucial to confront the Soviet challenge. Americans applied the game in broad strokes to define an American way of life. They debated and interpreted issues such as segregation, free speech, and the role of the academy in the Cold War. College Football and American Culture in the Cold War Era offers a bold new contribution to our understanding of Americans' assumptions and uncertainties regarding the Cold War.

Saint Woody

Saint Woody PDF

Author: Bob Hunter

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2022-09

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1496233093

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Saint Woody is a Bill Bryson–style look at Ohio State football and the spiritual fanaticism that surrounds it.

College Football's Most Memorable Games, 2d ed.

College Football's Most Memorable Games, 2d ed. PDF

Author: Fred Eisenhammer

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 0786461853

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Presented here are 60 games featuring some of the most outstanding efforts in history--dramatic comebacks (such as USC's 1974 triumph over Notre Dame), stunning upsets (Columbia's 21-20 win over Army in 1947 or Appalachian State's over Michigan, 34-32, in 2007--see front cover), great individual efforts (Jim Brown's 43 points in a single game), bizarre plays (Roy Riegel's wrong-way run that helped Georgia Tech defeat California), and Yale-Harvard, 29-29, in 1968 (the latter scoring 16 points in the final 42 seconds). Each story includes the highlights of the games, with quotes from many of the principals, a look at the contest's effects on football overall, career follow-ups for the key participants, and seasonal wrap-ups for the teams involved.