American History Reform

University Press of Kansas

Chapter Title: Stadiums: Between Campus and Culture Book Title: The Rise of Gridiron University

Book Subtitle: Higher Education's Uneasy Alliance with Big-Time Football

Book Author(s): BRIAN M. INGRASSIA

Published by: University Press of Kansas

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1ch79ct.11

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C H A P T E R 6 Stadiums: Between Campus and Culture

In 1902, Ira Hollis, a Harvard engineering professor and athletic com- mittee chairman, advised Charles William Eliot that the university should build a football arena at its Soldiers Field athletic grounds in Boston. The new facility was needed, said Hollis, since big-time spec- tator sport was “probably a lasting addition to modern universities.” This prophecy—the accuracy of which Hollis would later come to re- gret—was self-fulfilling, for if athletics was not permanent at Harvard before the $310,000 stadium’s construction in 1903, it certainly seemed so afterward. Completed less than a decade after the first mod- ern Olympics in 1896, Harvard Stadium was modeled on the classical stadium at Olympia. To minimize costs, Harvard used the new tech- nology of steel-reinforced concrete. America’s first large concrete structure, Harvard Stadium was the prototype for dozens of large, early 1900s arenas, many of which were constructed for nationalistic or militaristic reasons.1 While colleges often built such stadiums to fit campus plans, they could hardly disguise the fact that these venues cemented football as a ritual located in a gray area between campus and culture. To be sure, many administrators and coaches claimed that sport was an educational experience—a form of physical, mental, and moral training. But huge stadiums exposed the reality that football was commercial popular culture. By building permanent arenas, uni- versities constructed liminal campus spaces, located in a semi-academic, semi-popular netherworld, where meaning was a saleable commodity. Higher education institutions thus ceded cultural control of athletics to the public. By the 1920s, the proliferation of campus arenas showed that sport’s meanings, which were situated between commercial cul- ture and the ivory tower, could be negotiated by consumers—not only by academics.

Since the 1880s, big games, especially on Thanksgiving, were played at urban athletic parks. Harvard and Yale played at the South End Grounds, home of the Boston Red Stockings (Braves) in 1878 and 1880, and at Manhattan’s Polo Grounds, the field of baseball’s New York Giants, in 1883 and 1887; Columbia and Princeton also played at

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the Polo Grounds. Stanford and Cal first met at the Haight Street base- ball grounds in 1891. Georgia and Auburn played at the Atlanta fair- grounds that later became Piedmont Park in 1892, before relocating their rivalry to Brisbane Park, home of the minor league Atlanta Crackers. At this time, some universities began building temporary wooden stands on campus. Chicago students constructed stands on Marshall Field (land that was donated by the retail magnate of the same name, at the request of William Rainey Harper) in 1893. Initially, the stands seated 1,200 spectators and cost $1,210; by 1898, they ac- commodated nearly 11,000. Such a facility required constant mainte- nance. The university kept a large stockpile of wooden boards, planks, and stringers on hand for repairs. Likewise, every summer until 1914, a group of carpenters fixed Yale Field’s stands by replacing weakened or old boards that had been marked by their leader, dubbed “Blue Pencil Pete.”2

While workers kept collegiate sports venues in a condition that al- lowed them to generate money and publicity, the large crowds that flooded rickety stands could still cause problems. Universities, like the owners of other entertainment venues, had to control the crowd and protect facilities from wear and tear. As early as 1896, Chicago’s Presi- dent William Rainey Harper asked athletic director Amos Alonzo Stagg to employ a “special policeman” to patrol the stands during the game, in order to ensure that spectators did not smoke in nonsmoking areas or cause excessive wear to the seats. The condition of the stands was a sensitive issue at a university that consciously used football to raise funds and promote itself to potential donors. By the early 1900s, Harper even pleaded with Stagg to keep the grandstands presentable for the “down town people” who complained that that the bleachers were filthy and unsuitable for genteel patrons. While the university wanted to avoid alienating refined Chicagoans, it also had to consider the safety of the crowd. In 1902, temporary stands at Marshall Field collapsed during a game between Michigan and Wisconsin, leading to protracted and expensive legal battles.3 To avoid a repeat of these nightmares, Chicago officials ensured there were enough ticket clerks and ushers for the 1905 Thanksgiving game. The Chicago police de- partment even dispatched 125 men to patrol the grounds, while jani- tors locked down nearby Hitchcock Hall to keep out nonpaying spec-

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tators. University lawyer Wallace Heckman, concerned about the pos- sibility of another collapse, asked Stagg if the grandstands could sup- port the weight of the crowd. To reduce the chance of tragedy, the ath- letic department erected wooden fences between sections and made sure not to sell more tickets than seats. After the game, Heckman lauded the “splendid work” that “with almost mathematical cer- tainty” had made the contest a success.4

Just as games were won by systematically gaining yardage and min- imizing the chance of losing the ball, successfully staged athletic drama did not happen by luck. Universities could also reduce the chance of catastrophe or litigation by building permanent stands. Be- ginning in the 1890s, nationalism and war memory often served as motivations, or convenient rationalizations, for constructing such are- nas. Harvard’s Soldiers Field was dedicated in 1890 to the memory of alumni who served in the Civil War. College officials intended the field, located on a reclaimed Charles River tidewater marsh, to stimu- late martial manliness. Donor Henry Lee Higginson and President Eliot hoped it would promote “manly sports” and prepare students for their “duties as men and citizens of the Republic.” Sport might heal the nation’s metaphorical war wounds by allowing (white) men from distant regions to gather for strenuous athletics.5 Half a continent away, the University of Wisconsin dedicated its field, Camp Randall, in 1893. At first, the state legislature considered purchasing the for- mer Civil War training camp for the use of a veterans’ organization, the Grand Army of the Republic. But a mass of students gathered in March of that year to demand that Camp Randall become part of the university campus. They cited Harvard’s new “monumental and me- morial” field and argued that the field could serve as a drill ground for the “university battalion,” as well as a place for war monuments and athletics. The students did gain their field, and while some considered changing its name, those who insisted that the moniker “Camp Ran- dall” was sacred, like the names of the Civil War battlefields, won.6

A decade after dedicating Soldiers Field, Harvard built a stadium there. Engineering professors, including Ira Hollis, designed the arena with assistance from architect Charles Follen McKim (named after the physical culture proponent) and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who had designed New York’s Central Park and Chicago’s

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Midway Plaisance, as well as campuses at Stanford and Berkeley. Ini- tially, Harvard Stadium accommodated 21,000 spectators, with 13,000 additional temporary seats for big games.7 At the time, this was a huge facility; in 1903 only baseball fields like the Polo Grounds seated so many. Since the stadium had to support the weight of the crowd, resist fire, require limited maintenance, and be constructed as cheaply as possible, the designers chose reinforced concrete. Even though con- crete was untested in New England’s harsh climate, Hollis considered it worth a try. But while concrete was clearly more durable, some wor- ried that the stadium would make football a permanent part of univer- sity life. Hollis privately conceded as much, and in an engineering journal he admitted that the stadium implied a “willingness . . . to put athletic sports upon a permanent basis.” Yet he minimized this prob- lem by stressing football’s benefits. Sport was now regulated by com- mittees resembling those of other university departments, and the games facilitated gatherings of the university’s far-flung “friends.” All things considered, it did not seem so bad that spectator sport was be- coming a permanent campus ritual, especially when an athletic de- partment surplus of $33,000, accumulated from ticket sales, subsi- dized the project.8

Harvard Stadium demonstrated the feasibility of large, concrete arenas. Frederick W. Taylor, an engineer and rational time-manage- ment (Taylorism) proponent, even featured it prominently in a book about reinforced concrete. Additionally, the venue pioneered a new, multifaceted stadium-financing strategy. Besides ticket-sale revenues, Harvard Stadium was funded in part by private donations, including $100,000 from the class of 1879, which included economics professor F. W. Taussig.9 This tactic foreshadowed the practice of building are- nas with nonbudget monies, a boon for universities that hoped to maintain low-cost athletics. But it was also problematic. The use of gate revenue or donations allowed athletic departments to claim au- tonomy, or justify intercollegiate athletics as a self-funding university activity. Outside financing also pressured college sports impresarios to appeal to public desires. Sport was, in fact, becoming a lasting addi- tion to modern universities, but its relationship to the academy ap- peared increasingly complicated as football became an integral part of popular culture.

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Harvard Stadium kicked off a national stadium-building competi- tion. Permanent stands were soon constructed at urban campuses such as Georgia Tech, or at traditional powers like Princeton. A $25,000 do- nation from Atlanta businessman John W. Grant spurred construction of Georgia Tech’s athletic field in 1913, completed with $30,000 worth of labor provided by Fulton County convicts. Grant Field was de- signed by New York landscape architect Charles W. Leavitt, who also designed the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Forbes Field (1909). The concrete stands initially seated 5,000, but this capacity was not enough for Tech’s popular, Heisman-led teams. In 1915, the total number of seats was raised to 12,000, with plans for another grandstand. These addi- tions, said the Atlanta press, made Grant Field the South’s biggest sta- dium, comparable to fields at large East Coast universities.10 This asser- tion was a stretch, since eastern universities were building especially large arenas at this time. In 1913, Yale began constructing a huge “bowl”; the next year Princeton rushed to complete its own concrete “horseshoe.” Edgar Palmer, president of the New Jersey Zinc Com- pany, donated $300,000 to build Palmer Memorial Stadium, which seated 41,000 (with a possible expansion to 55,000). Once the stadium was completed, a huge crowd descended on the small college town for the arena's first major game in 1914.11

Princeton saw the stadium as an endowment. Palmer, besides giving a “permanent football amphitheatre” to Princeton’s athletic association, explicitly intended the facility to support the college. Its large capacity would negate the need to erect temporary stands for the vast Yale-game crowds and would therefore allow the athletic association to earn an annual profit and give the university $10,000 from gate receipts each year.12 A different arrangement, however, took shape in New Haven, where Yale’s Board of Athletic Control pioneered a new way to fund its 85-acre athletic complex, including a massive, 70,000-seat coliseum that would, by itself, cost at least $300,000. Yale enticed a large number of donors by promising them the option to buy tickets. Each $100 gift allowed a donor to buy two seats for fifteen years; each additional $100 added another seat. While Palmer Stadium was an endowment with virtually no strings attached, thousands of strings were attached to Yale’s arena. Every donor who helped fund the bowl was entitled to buy entrance to the spectacle. Yale’s Alumni Advisory Board explained

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the several reasons why the Yale Corporation was so determined to build a huge stadium that it utilized a strategy that seemed to cede ath- letic control to spectators. First, many Yale supporters were not able to attend the games, which had become major social events, at smallish Yale Field. Second, the concrete and earth stadium would be “fire- proof” and therefore safe for large crowds. Third, the field, clubhouse, and stadium in the new athletic complex would unite “men of different [university] departments on common ground.”13

Before a speck of dirt was moved or a drop of cement poured, the Yale Bowl was being asked to do a lot of work: please alumni and friends, unite a fragmented university, and accommodate huge crowds. It would even underwrite “athletic expenses for all Yale students.”14

Yale was neither the first nor last university to expect football to pay for physical culture, but it was the first to announce the construction of a huge stadium, solicit pledges in return for ticket options, and then expect the structure to turn a profit. Indeed, Yale’s ambitions out- stripped its benefactors. By 1912, the General Athletic Committee was already considering renting out the bowl to help pay for the athletic complex. The fundraising campaign fell short and the upper tier of stands was not finished until the 1920s, when the athletic association solicited donors for a “Bowl Completion Fund.”15 Nevertheless, in 1914, the Yale Bowl was a spectacular and awe-inspiring structure best comprehended through statistics: 35,000 cubic yards of concrete, 600,000 pounds of steel, and 75,000 square feet of turf covering twelve and a half acres. The first game, a 36–0 rout at the hands of Percy Haughton’s Harvard squad, was viewed by 70,055 spectators with 300 reporters and telegraph operators. One writer explained the game by imagining a Martian’s reaction. First, the extraterrestrial might have been surprised that a contest between two universities was not academic; second, he would have contrasted it with the Great War raging in Europe and seen football as a “friendly rivalry” in a non- combatant nation.16

In a few years, though, America would abandon neutrality and send young men off to actual war—not a moral equivalent of war. The global conflict changed life on both sides of the Atlantic, but it espe- cially shaped American campuses. Early on, enrollments dropped when students joined the armed forces. But once the military and in-

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dustry realized the need for trained experts, they encouraged young men to enroll, or “enlist,” in college. Enrollment quickly climbed, es- pecially at land-grant institutions with engineering and military drill programs. Universities created Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) programs, and in 1918 the federal government created a Student Army Training Corps (SATC). Education became more democratic as federal funds supported 140,000 men at 525 colleges, but military discipline also dominated campuses that had basically become army training schools.17 Some universities ceased intercollegiate football altogether, since spectator sport took too much time away from training, but oth- ers continued sport under SATC auspices. In 1918, the Big Ten granted athletic control to the military, while universities in the precursor to the Southeastern Conference (SEC) fielded teams composed of SATC men. The army even issued guidelines regarding eligibility, training, and season length.18 In this context, several universities that had drifted away from football or athletic conferences in the Progressive Era returned during the war. Intercollegiate athletic competition be- came a way for universities to demonstrate their patriotism and their willingness to reenter the national mainstream. By 1915, California gave up rugby to resume the “American” game. In 1919 (after a 1918 SATC game against Cal), Stanford also returned to old-style football. Michigan rejoined the Big Nine in 1917, making it the Big Ten.19

Football was also a way to reunite postwar campuses around per- ceived traditions. The SATC dominated campus life during the war, and some worried that students might forget prewar life. Stanford’s Daily Palo Alto was concerned that “old interests” were completely gone, and that many now merely saw campus as a backdrop for army training, not a college home. In Ann Arbor, students wondered how they would adjust to postwar life. After hastily constructed military buildings were torn down and khaki uniforms discarded, could cam- pus ever return to normal? Certainly, men who had seen combat would not want to go back to “the old ‘Rah! Rah!’ days.” Like other Americans, students both feared and hoped that life was permanently altered. They felt that the war to end all war had been won and it was time for a fresh start.20 The desire for a new order, though, camou- flaged a need to return to normalcy. Americans sought to bring back prewar spirit. One Stanford student colorfully urged that in order to

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do so, “the paint bucket of Cardinal ‘pep’ must be spilled all over the Quad” and old traditions reinstated. Athletics, it seemed, could help recover an imagined prewar status quo. Some Harvard students even celebrated football’s 1919 return because it would help pull the uni- versity back together. Of course, critics had long complained that football could not unify Harvard (they even posited that perennial athletic losses to Yale were caused by the elective system and lack of college spirit), but in the postwar moment, many conveniently forgot this former pessimism.21

After the war football grew even bigger, in part because it held many implications for manliness—or, to use a term becoming more common in the early 1900s, masculinity. One Ann Arbor student wrote that returning to conference play would be even more signifi- cant than “extermination of the co-eds.” Such rhetoric was not un- usual at campuses where men were becoming alarmed at women’s in- creased interest in athletics, or were trying to reclaim space from female students.22 During and after the war, coaches even actively cul- tivated the idea that football was a manly, warlike struggle. Fielding Yost had clearly articulated this idea as early as 1905, when he analo- gized football to conflict by calling the other team the “enemy,” dub- bing players “missiles of human brawn,” comparing the scrimmage to “human bombardment,” and likening coaching to “generalship.” Shortly before the 1918 armistice, Yost proclaimed, “The different drives made on the battle fronts are similar to the various positions and trick plays which occur on the gridiron. The Allies are bucking the line against the Hun, and when they succeed in breaking through it corresponds to a player, who carries the ball, smashing through for several yards.” Likewise, in 1924, the University of Minnesota’s Presi- dent Marion Burton declared, “All healthy human beings love a com- bat. . . . No doubt this fact accounts in part for the widespread and rapidly growing interest of the public in intercollegiate football games.” Antebellum educators would have chafed at the comparison between collegiate physical culture and armed conflict, but the Great War made athletic violence seem patriotic.23

Such comparisons made particular sense on campuses with SATC teams. All players on Purdue’s 1918 football squad were enrolled in military training programs and the coach was Major Ed Jackson. After

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the armistice, moreover, some army officers parlayed their experience into jobs as physical education teachers, military drill instructors, or coaches. Robert Neyland, a West Point graduate who served in France, was Professor of Military Science at the University of Tennessee before becoming the Volunteers’ head coach in 1926. Throughout his career he saw football as a sort of “war game.” Indiana University’s mid- 1920s coach was William “Navy Bill” Ingram, who previously coached at the Naval Academy and the Pacific Coast Fleet Service Team. “Navy Bill” Saunders coached at Clemson and Colorado.24 Walter Camp, con- versely, parlayed his football experience into a military position. To condition navy officers, Camp developed an exercise regimen for troops, later dubbed the “Daily Dozen.” After the war, he published a do-it-yourself manual aimed at schoolboys, college players, and fac- tory or office workers. Camp proudly cited football’s wartime role, claiming that the American Expeditionary Force and fleet teams had found that “this game of mimic warfare developed the stalwart, coura-

Fielding Yost buys a Liberty Bond, Ferry Field, Ann Arbor, 1917. Fielding Harris Yost Papers, Box 8, Folder: Activities Football Related, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

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geous fighter.” He said that after soldiers returned to America, army discipline permeated society and football became common throughout the nation.25 Discipline was no longer about muscle control or manly honor and virtue; by the 1920s, it indicated ability to operate as part of a team. A modern man needed discipline because he was part of an army or industrial economy.

After the war, Major Frank Cavanaugh, who had been wounded in France, wrote football books and coached at Fordham. Unlike progres- sives, who had been concerned with athletes’ minds, bodies, and morals, Cavanaugh stressed physical sacrifice. In Inside Football (1919), dedicated to football players who died in the war, Cavanaugh included a section on “The Warrior’s Armor” (football helmets and pads) and claimed that he told his players that if they were “not will- ing to sacrifice an arm or a leg for the good of the cause,” they should not be on the team. West Point coach Charles Daly, who coached Robert Neyland, wrote that football was a sustained battle or “war game.” Daly cited Prussian military theorist Karl von Clausewitz and recommended the War Department’s Field Service Regulations to play- ers.26 Such language permeated even football books by non–army vet- eran coaches, such as Bob Zuppke and Knute Rockne. In 1925, Rockne published a fictional account of his Notre Dame experiences, dedi- cated to a player killed at Château-Thierry. The novel portrayed Coach Brown of Dulac University as a kind teacher who said football was “just a game” yet compared athletes to soldiers, likening defenders to “the infantry trying to capture the grounds where the hangars are be- fore the aeroplanes can leave the ground.” Water boys equaled “com- missary departments” and each coach acted as a defense secretary, “while the President and his cabinet can be likened to the chairman of the Board of Control and the faculty and alumni who make up th[ese] personnel.”27

Militarism was rampant in American culture during the early 1920s—even though it was falling out of favor with many academic intellectuals—when campuses began to consecrate sites of memory to fallen soldiers. At first, universities erected modest memorials. In 1919, Michigan students collected $400 to erect a flagpole on Ferry Field. This patriotic symbol, including the ritual flag-raising at games, was intended to show that Michigan had not forgotten the sacrifices of

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its war dead. Yet some observers thought the flagpole too meager. Mor- bidly assuming the voice of a dead veteran, one student wrote, “There is a Harvard spirit, a constant companion of mine, who was killed by the same shell that put me on the ‘flagpole list.’ His alma mater is erecting a chapel to the Harvard dead, with their names carved on the walls.” This fictional war veteran, forced to compete with Harvard even in the afterlife, was forever subject to his companion’s haughti- ness because Ann Arbor had not erected a suitable memorial. So some Michiganders suggested more suitable memorials, including a cam- panile, gateway, health building, or perhaps two flagpoles in front of the library.28 But soon such plans would seem inadequate. In the 1920s, colleges competed with one another to build massive and ex- pensive stadiums. In these arenas, generations of football players would supposedly display the physical and mental discipline that won wars, while perpetually inspiring spectators to take up manly physical culture. Yet no matter how strenuously colleges asserted patriotic rea- sons for stadiums, commercial or publicity-related motivations always lurked below the surface.

As we already saw, the earliest permanent football stadiums were built at elite or urban universities, mostly in the Northeast. This changed after 1919. Universities in the West and Midwest, which pros- pered due to the influx of wartime federal dollars, led the stadium- building frenzy. In 1921, Stanford raced to complete an arena so that it could continue dividing gate receipts equally and playing home games in Palo Alto against the University of California, which was then building a larger, and more profitable, California Memorial Stadium in Berkeley. One observer, who wanted to use war memorial funds, wrote that Stanford Stadium would demonstrate the permanence of athletics at a university that had only recently reinstituted football. The Los Angeles Times declared that the new stadium, seating 65,000 specta- tors and featuring the West Coast’s largest scoreboard, would rival the Yale Bowl. To build this large facility so quickly, a team of Stanford en- gineering professors emulated Yale and carved the $210,000 arena out of the ground. Excavation began in June 1921, and by late October the earthquake-proof structure was complete and ready for the November dedication game. Planners had carefully taken into account the needs of the crowd that would flood Stanford’s semirural campus on game

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day. The arena was situated closer to Palo Alto than the previous field, and it included a large parking lot for automobiles. Stanford’s athletic management even convinced the Southern Pacific Railroad to con- struct a new station nearby for the convenience of spectators traveling by train. Unlike many other arenas, the massive and cheaply built Stanford Stadium, funded in part by war memorial funds and infused with the rhetoric of warfare at its groundbreaking ceremony, was quickly paid off.29

By comparison, the University of California took its time. Its hill- side stadium, first proposed in 1921 as a double-deck structure similar to the Polo Grounds, was completed as a single-deck ellipse in 1923. The $1.4 million arena, seating over 70,000, was dedicated to veter- ans, yet it was also needed for the practical reason of seating the multi- tude of football fans. Berkeley, a major beneficiary of wartime federal funding, had grown from 3,100 students in 1902 to 11,505 in 1922, when it was America’s largest university. Students wanted to watch sports, but so did the increasingly prosperous general public: 62,000 applied for tickets for the 1920 Stanford game, and many were turned away. The new stadium could accommodate this demand. Yet adminis- trators tried to stress the project’s pedagogical aspects. President William Wallace Campbell saw Memorial Stadium as an “educational

Construction of Stanford Stadium, 1921. Courtesy of Stanford University Archives.

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force” for training men and demonstrating sportsmanship to students and the public. But the 80,000 spectators who attended the first game against Stanford, including over 5,000 perched on the hillside, may have had other matters in mind. One sportswriter observed, “Every one of the 73,423 seats was occupied by a blood-thirsty partisan, who would gladly sink his, or her, fangs in your tonsils if you dared let out a peep when the other side crashed through for a yard or so.”30 Sports- manship, indeed.

Although California’s stadium competition was intense, by the mid- 1920s an even greater fervor captivated midwestern universities. By 1922, the University of Illinois, enrolling 9,084, was the nation’s fourth largest university; Ohio State University (OSU) was sixth largest, with 7,521 students. By comparison, in 1905, Illinois had been only ninth (2,944 students), and OSU fourteenth (1,860 students). During the war these institutions built premier football programs to rival traditional powers like Michigan, Chicago, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Zuppke’s Illinois squad racked up a combined 11–3 record in 1918 and 1919, while Ohio State won the 1920 Big Ten crown. By 1924, both universities had built arenas suited to their growing stature. According to fundraisers, stadiums would demonstrate patri- otism, develop male bodies, imply institutional supremacy, and ac- commodate the multitude of consumers. The connection between sport and conflict was explicit. During the war, Ohio State planned a combined armory, drill field, and football stadium. While OSU never constructed this facility, after the war its supporters began raising funds for a large arena. Boosters, who echoed the arguments used to justify the Yale Bowl, argued that the Ohio Stadium complex would serve a diverse and ambitious array of purposes. It would improve stu- dent health by facilitating physical education courses and military drill; provide a space for intercollegiate football, which inspired stu- dents to exercise; enable football to advertise the university; and unify the diverse elements of a university fast becoming one of the nation’s largest institutions of higher education and research.31

Ohio Stadium’s 1921–1922 planning and construction were a mas- sive project. This scope was fitting, since the resulting arena dwarfed Ohio Field’s old stands and—if its promoters had their way—would last virtually forever. First, engineers had to redesign the site to con-

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trol the flood-prone Olentangy River. Second, they had to choose con- struction materials. Physics professor Thomas Mendenhall tried to persuade OSU trustees that a brick or stone stadium seating 45,000 spectators would serve the university better than a 63,000-seat sta- dium made of concrete. He argued that the stadium must last for cen- turies, and there was no guarantee that concrete was so durable. Ulti- mately, though, Ohio State ignored this warning and followed Harvard’s example by building a bigger, less expensive stadium of concrete.32 The huge number of seats also allowed more individuals to subsidize construction. Like the prewar Yale Bowl and other 1920s are- nas, Ohio Stadium was funded by a large number of small donations, or subscriptions, gathered by an army of fundraisers throughout a large geographical region. Stadium solicitors were instructed to tell potential donors that each $100 contribution improved the health of one of OSU’s projected 10,000 students, while the games held there would stimulate millions of spectators and draw attention to both the university and the state. Ohioans, said fundraisers, had to beat Stan-

Preparing plaster models of the 60,000-plus–seat Ohio Stadium, 1920. The Ohio State University Archives.

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ford, California, and Illinois in the stadium-building competition, or else lose out in the battle for national distinction.33

But not everyone agreed that Ohio State should build a stadium. In 1921, a potential donor in Wooster, Ohio, declared that he would not contribute because he believed the arena would exhibit a few players’ “physical prowess” without contributing to overall student health. This critic thought that universities sponsored teams mainly for pub- licity, and he argued that colleges should not advertise themselves through athletics. In response, OSU president William Oxley Thomp- son was ambivalent. On the one hand, he supported the stadium as a place for both general physical education and military training. The public had been appalled at the condition of enlisted men during the war, and many now saw athletics as virtual military training. The sta- dium itself, moreover, might encourage nonathletes to engage in valu- able physical activity. On the other hand, Thompson was not entirely convinced by such arguments and privately expressed skepticism about football’s ability to keep thousands of students physically fit. He

Construction of the reinforced-concrete grandstands of Ohio Stadium, circa 1922. The Ohio State University Archives.

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conceded, though, that his opinion mattered little and he felt helpless in the face of “public demand.”34 As the leader of a major, state- funded university, Thompson could not afford to alienate the public. The people wanted intercollegiate sport because it seemed patriotic, so they would have sport. Yet Thompson may have also realized the sta- dium’s long-term dangers. Although it might not always behoove the university to sponsor a militaristic sport—or at other times the people

Ohio Stadium fundraising, as characterized by a local newspaper cartoonist. The Ohio State University Archives.

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might want sport for other reasons—once the stadium was on campus, both it and football would be open to the desires of the ticket-buying, sport-consuming public.

Even though numerous individuals donated to the stadium cam- paign, by January 1923, OSU’s athletic board still owed $550,000 on the arena. This was despite a net income of over $159,000 from the sta- dium’s first season, when it hosted over 160,000 fans. Several seasons of such large returns may have paid construction costs, but the sta- dium did not just have to pay for itself. It was also expected to pay for Ohio State’s “complete recreation program,” which lost over $15,000 in 1922, not including coaches’ salaries. Several very successful cam- paigns would be necessary to climb out of that financial hole. Ohioans, nonetheless, loved their “horseshoe,” and students demon- strated tremendous enthusiasm. They had designated the 1921 Makio yearbook the “Stadium Number” and eagerly anticipated the new arena:

Picture the Ohio Stadium, rearing its bulky towers high into the sky, moulded into long white classic curves—a triumph of architec- ture. Picture it, close-packed with cheering onlookers, afire with zeal for the fame of the Alma Mater—the tens of thousands of them. Picture those men of Scarlet and Gray, p[y]gmies on the green carpet of the playing field but their hearts athrob with a mighty loyalty and a fighting determination—crusaders of the college. Here is the spirit of Ohio State, glimpsed in a moment’s emblazon- ment. Here, in a flash, the spirit of the Stadium Builders.35

This description captured the mentality of postwar football parti- sans. The men on the field were the university’s “crusaders,” demon- strating dedication to both alma mater and nation. Football was patri- otic, but it also drew publicity and fueled institutional competition. A standing-room-only crowd of over 70,000 packed Ohio Stadium for the 1922 dedication game versus Michigan. The stadium, moreover, quickly inspired stadium builders around the globe. Milton Springer of the Philippine Amateur Athletic Association expressed his desire to build an arena just like Ohio Stadium, which he considered “the finest and most modern in the world.”36

One did not have to look as far as Manila, though, to see Ohio Sta-

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dium’s impact. The University of Illinois began planning its Memorial Stadium in 1921. Like counterparts in Columbus, students at Illinois understood the role stadiums played in the race for athletic and insti- tutional supremacy. They hyperbolically proclaimed that the new sta- dium in Champaign would be “the greatest achievement ever known in the history of the universities of America” and noted that a success- ful fundraising campaign would mark Illinois “as the most progres- sive, the most virile and most enlightened school and student body in the country.”37 But fundraisers did not just rely on competitive spirit; they also drew upon Great War memory. The stadium would honor “Fighting Illini” who had fallen in combat, revive old traditions, and instill the spirit of the war dead by developing living students’ bod- ies. A fundraising booklet even declared that if dead soldiers could speak, they would choose a magnificent athletic field. The stadium, as well as the large recreation field surrounding it, would “answer the call of living thousands” as well as “the imperious mandate of the dead hundreds.”38 Athletic director George Huff called Memorial Stadium a place where “Illini yet unborn” could “assemble to learn the tradi- tions of a long-ago past, to measure their spirit of devotion with the

Artist’s rendering of the façade and entryway to Ohio State’s new stadium. The Ohio State University Archives.

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spirits of [veterans], and to pledge their all to an enrichment of this spirit.” Retired university president Edmund James also linked the commemoration with the needs of present and future bodies. He called upon alumni to support the stadium, which would improve stu- dent health and intercollegiate athletics, while instilling “future gen- erations” with the memory of dead war heroes.39

Yet in reality there were other reasons for building Memorial Sta- dium. George Huff said that the arena would be a suitable venue for varsity athletics, and the need to stage big-time sport was obvious to anyone close to the fundraising drive, which stressed that old Illinois Field was simply not big enough for one of America’s best football teams. Promotional literature personified the field as an old soldier who was graciously stepping aside to be replaced by a fresh fighter. Fundraisers professed nostalgia for Illinois Field (which could accom- modate only 22,000, including standing room), but they desired a sta- dium holding at least 50,000. To underscore the modesty of Illinois’s facilities compared with its grand aspirations, promoters juxtaposed a

Ohio Stadium dedication game, OSU versus Michigan, October 21, 1922. The Ohio State University Archives.

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“Lest we forget those Illini who died in the war.” Great War memory and the promotion of University of Illinois Memorial Stadium. From University of Illinois, The Story of the Stadium, 1922.

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ground-level view of Illinois Field against aerial photographs of the Yale Bowl and Harvard Stadium. The Illini, this photomontage im- plied, could never claim athletic superiority, or even parity, without a suitable stadium. When the Chicago Tribune reported in 1920 that Illi- nois’s trustees had approved plans for a $1 million, 60,000-seat sta- dium, it did not mention a war memorial. It merely indicated that a new arena was needed because the old wooden stands did not allow the university to fulfill the 40,000 ticket requests for the 1920 Ohio State game.40 If Illinois did not build a larger arena, fundraisers warned, it would decline in football importance. The best Big Ten teams, including Michigan, Chicago, and Wisconsin, would no longer come to Champaign when they could go to other schools and “receive three times the amount of money in gate receipts.”41 While promoters sold the stadium as a war-memorial facility that would improve stu- dents’ physiques, they also knew it would serve the purposes of insti- tutional competition and provide entertainment to Illinoisans who would travel from all over the state—especially by automobile, on Illi- nois’s new network of good roads—to see football games there. In fact, fundraisers sometimes appealed blatantly to the public’s desire for consumer spectacle. If the promise of a memorial or recreation field did not sway potential donors, canvassers were advised to stress that each $100 pledge was good for one seat option for ten years, or two for five years. The stadium, officially, was a memorial and educational fa- cility. But it also provided a ritual space for leisure and entertainment for middle- and upper-class Illinoisans.42

The dangling of choice tickets before donors was a common fundraising tactic in the 1920s. No matter what reason, or mix of rea- sons, a university offered to build a stadium, it could always fall back on the promise of “preferred seating” to entice dollars out of donors’ pockets. In 1920, the Yale Athletic Association returned to this strat- egy when it tried to raise $250,000 to complete its arena. The associa- tion argued that the Yale Bowl had to be finished so football games could inspire students to participate in physical culture. In return for a $100 donation to the Bowl Completion Fund, the association prom- ised one “preferred ticket” for 15 years (up to 10 tickets for $1,000). Fundraisers insisted that this money would support physical educa- tion—not commercial spectacle. The promise of tickets in return for

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Modest Illinois Field juxtaposed against grand, aerial views of the Yale Bowl and Harvard Stadium. From University of Illinois, The Story of the Stadium, 1922.

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A diagram of Illinois’s post–World War I system of good roads, which would make Illinois Memorial Stadium in Champaign accessible to millions of Illinoisans via automobile in the 1920s. From University of Illinois, The Story of the Stadium, 1922.

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donations, however, sounded suspiciously like a quid pro quo: “We want the money for the best interest of Yale and you want to assure yourself good seats, which are hard to get with the increasing de- mand.” So many spectators wanted to consume athletic spectacle that this was hardly an empty threat. Michigan athletic leaders were alarmed by the massive arenas being built in Columbus and Cham- paign. To replace Ferry Field’s motley stands (capacity 42,000) with a modern earth, steel, and concrete bowl seating at least 70,000, they sold donors tickets as well as institutional pride. Michigan Stadium bondholders, as one clever illustration showed, were guaranteed seats inside the arena, not out on the street. California, likewise, warned that once the 20,000 seats allotted to Memorial Stadium contributors were gone, none would be available to the public for ten years.43

Even with the widespread usage of such fundraising tactics, univer- sities could not afford to appear as though they were turning cam- puses into circuses or carnival midways. Stadiums were often built to resemble academic buildings. The stands at Chicago’s Stagg Field (for- merly Marshall Field) featured crenellated stone towers, mirroring the imposing gothic quadrangles located across 57th Street. The Univer- sity of Illinois consciously designed its 60,000-seat stadium—one of America’s largest sports venues at the time of construction—to fit the campus plan. Built with reinforced concrete, the façade incorporated red brick and stone so as to resemble the colonial-revival buildings then being constructed on the south side of campus. It was also in- tended to fit the university’s governance structure. Although con- struction was funded through donations, Memorial Stadium became university property upon completion. Any profits reverted to the Athletic Board of Control to fund “Athletic developments.” It was the university’s cash cow, a way to tap popular culture to pay for physical education and intercollegiate sport.44

Fundraising campaigns, however, did not always meet their goals. While some football proponents responded to critics by asserting that student-athletes were not exploited to pay off stadium debts,45 players probably were being exploited in some cases. After all, universities had to raise the money to pay the principal and interest on the bonds. Ohio Stadium, as we already saw, was not close to being paid off by 1923. Likewise, the debt for Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium (1923) was

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The proposed commemorative columns at Illinois Memorial Stadium. Even after ambitious fundraising goals were not realized, the columns were retained; other features of the stadium complex, such as a Greek theater, were not. From University of Illinois, The Story of the Stadium, 1922.

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not retired until 1940. In other cases, athletic departments reduced the scale of their ambitions to avoid the burden of debt. Illinois’s exten- sive drive, which encompassed all forty-eight states and the District of Columbia, raised only $1.7 million of a projected $2.5 million. This shortfall led architects to scale back their ambitious designs. The com- pleted structure included seating for 60,000 spectators, as well as 183 stone columns dedicated to the memory of students and alumni who died in the war. But since the facility’s first priority was intercollegiate sport, other features were cut. The original plans included a Greek theater for plays and lectures, but this nonathletic—and, presumably, less profitable—space, unlike the magnificent grandstands for football competitions, were never constructed.46

In the 1920s, all of the Big Ten universities, including Minnesota, Indiana, and Michigan, constructed new stadiums or expanded older facilities through subscriptions, bonds, gate receipts, or some combi- nation thereof. Meanwhile, some athletic leaders at the University of Chicago struggled unsuccessfully to replace their outdated facility. In 1921, Chicago turned away 30,000 who wanted to see the Maroons battle Wisconsin’s Badgers, and by 1925 Stagg Field (capacity 34,000) was the conference’s fifth smallest venue.47 Amos Alonzo Stagg, head coach and athletic director, worked tirelessly to convince the adminis- tration and trustees to build a new 100,000-seat, state-of-the-art arena. Since the campus block where the old field was located was too small, the new arena might be located on land the university owned either north of campus or south of the Midway. Stagg was not bashful in his efforts. A new stadium, he said, could provide space for physi- cal education, help Chicago retain athletic supremacy, and boost en- rollment. It would also enlarge Chicago’s donor pool and provide the university with up to $400,000 of revenue per year. This was roughly equivalent to a 5 percent return on $6 million, said Stagg, and he pointed out that a season’s worth of gate receipts was easier to secure than a multimillion-dollar endowment. Some welcomed Stagg’s over- tures. Trustee Ernest Quantrell opined that a stadium was “becoming just as much a requisite of up-to-date University equipment as a gym- nasium or physics lab[o]ratory.”48 But Stagg never got his new football arena. A new administration questioned the place of athletics in an in- stitution that was becoming even more academic and shedding

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William Rainey Harper’s legacy of public engagement. Instead, Chicago made do with an addition to the grandstands. While Stagg continued his pleading, the old concrete stands were treated with pitch and sodium fluorsilicate (“Lapidolith”), and the aging coach cor- responded with companies specializing in temporary seats.49 In the late 1930s, after Stagg retired, Chicago eliminated football and aban- doned the old field to other uses.

Chicago, as we will see in the next chapter, was changing its rela- tionship to the nonacademic public by the 1930s. The stadiums con- structed by its Big Ten counterparts, though, fully embodied the spirit of 1920s college football. Campus arenas like Ohio Stadium and Illinois Memorial Stadium supposedly educated thousands of students, not just a few players, yet also provided valuable national publicity through consumer spectacle, which aided institutional competition. Designed to fit campus plans, the arenas were funded with donations, not tuition dollars or state funds. This arrangement enabled universi- ties to disclaim that they directly funded semiprofessional sporting events, but it would also come to limit the amount of control they had over the meaning of athletics. In addition, profits generated by these structures were not always funneled back into the university treasury. Rather, sometimes there were only vague promises, like Illinois’s pol- icy that gate receipts would fund athletics (a statement that may or may not have meant that the stadium would fund physical education). The athletic department was a semiautonomous unit at many universi- ties by the 1930s, distributing revenue among sports programs and athletic facilities as its leaders, or university administrators, saw fit.

Although some argued that sport was an essential part of modern universities, stadiums were hardly the same as physics laboratories, lecture halls, or gymnasia. Once colleges built permanent structures for an athletic spectacle open to the ticket-buying public, they had become sponsors of popular culture. The athletic field was a space for consumers, whether or not the players were technically professionals. The games, therefore, had to be made legible, or visible, to the large crowds of spectators who bought tickets. By the 1890s, Penn, Prince- ton, Chicago, and other leading football programs installed score- boards so that all spectators could follow and understand the game. While some writers argued that accurate scorekeeping and careful at-

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tention taught mental discipline, these strategies also helped specta- tors consume and enjoy the games. Athletic programs also profited from the more literal appetite for consumption displayed at concession stands. In 1921, the Georgia Tech Athletic Association conceded to lo- cal vendor R. J. Spiller “the right to sell soft drinks, cigars, peanuts, candies and other refreshments usually sold at athletic contests” at Grant Field for three years. Spiller, in turn, paid Tech’s athletic pro- gram $1,000 per year. Apparently, Tech wanted to capitalize on the brisk business that Spiller’s stand conducted, as this figure was almost double the rent stipulated in his contract for 1920–1921.50

Since so much money could be made (and lost) in sport, universities hoped to reduce the impact of chance, or risk, upon the lucrative spectacle. One way was through insurance policies. To protect against costly damage to the Marshall Field stands, Stagg, with guidance from the university legal counsel, insured them against $14,800 worth of damage in 1910. Universities also bought policies to protect against in- clement weather. If more than one-tenth of an inch of rain fell at Grant Field on October 20, 1923, Hartford Fire Insurance would pay Georgia Tech’s athletic association $5,000 to compensate for lost ticket rev- enue. Such weather conditions or property damage might be expen- sive, but the cost to life could be even greater. While critics had long charged that football could physically harm players, it was also be- coming apparent that the many spectators who paid to see the games could die or be injured if someone was trampled by an excited mob, a fight broke out, or the stands collapsed under the weight of the crowd. This is why Chicago carefully regulated the crowd at the turn of the century, and it is also why Georgia Tech carried substantial in- surance coverage against injury or death in the 1920s.51

While large universities and urban colleges were the main builders of campus arenas and purveyors of intercollegiate football in the 1920s, smaller schools also capitalized on spectator sport. In 1926, the Haskell Indian School in Lawrence, Kansas, dedicated its new stadium in a 36–0 victory over Bucknell. The grand structure, built with stu- dent labor, seated 10,500. For some critics, this arena demonstrated misplaced priorities, since the $250,000 raised in a national campaign might have been spent on new dormitories. Nevertheless, the stadium was built and the first game drew 20,000 white spectators, as well as

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1,600 representatives of seventy Native American tribes who gathered for a powwow. Observers such as Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work saw Haskell’s football success and stadium as evidence of a suc- cessful assimilation policy. Indian athletes, however, often saw sport in a different light. Football could demonstrate their strength and in- telligence, or it could serve as a means of avenging centuries of vio- lent, Anglo-American colonization. Haskell’s administrators, writes one historian, could never “fully control the meaning that spectators, journalists, and the students themselves” ascribed to football. The game could signify pan-Indian spirit as much as it demonstrated as- similation. Likewise, while white spectators might have supported the imposition of white society’s rational order upon Native Americans, they might have also embraced the supposedly savage anti-moder- nity—or apparent disorder—of Indian culture and football.52

Some white enthusiasts even appropriated a stereotypical view of Native American culture to celebrate the intercollegiate spectacle. Sev- eral universities, including Illinois, Stanford, and Miami (of Ohio), be- gan using Indian mascots or nicknames in the 1920s. The Illinois Me- morial Stadium campaign utilized Native American imagery, and soon after the arena’s 1924 debut, students began putting on a red-face pag- eant during game-day ceremonies. A white student dressed in Indian- style clothing and wearing warpaint masqueraded as “Chief Illini- wek” and performed a dance to rouse the “Fighting Illini.” This expression of whiteness occurred in a campus structure during a uni- versity activity, yet it was based on Wild West shows, popular lore, and circus performances, not academic scholarship. Eighty-plus years of these performances showed, perhaps better than any other exam- ple, how little control university intellectuals had over the athletic spectacle carried out on campus. The mascot was immensely popular among generations of students, townspeople, and Illinois sports fans, but by the 1980s some activists—including Native Americans and university professors—challenged it as insulting and misrepresenta- tive of Indian culture. In turn, such critiques spawned a “Save the Chief ” movement among students and townspeople, who claimed that Chief Illiniwek was a symbol honoring Native Americans and cele- brating Illinois history. While scholars marshaled academic arguments to oppose the “Chief,” their influence was limited. After all, arenas

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like Memorial Stadium were thrown open to the public every autumn Saturday, as were the rituals and meanings of college sport.53

By the late 1920s, college football was a popular-culture institution throughout America. This was especially apparent in southern univer- sities, which were quickly approaching the athletic prestige of col- leges in the Northeast, Midwest, and West. Many southern stadiums opened in the 1920s: Tennessee’s Shields-Watkins Field (1921), Vander- bilt’s Dudley Field (1922), LSU’s Tiger Stadium (1924), North Carolina’s Kenan Field (1927), and Duke Stadium (1929).54 These stadiums were relatively small, usually seating 10,000 to 30,000. In one of the larger southern venues, the University of Georgia staged one of the most sig- nificant contests of the 1920s. Sanford Stadium in Athens replaced Sanford Field, both named for English professor and athletic director S. V. Sanford, who later served as university president. The old field was built in 1909 with the intention that it would last forever, but by 1926 it could no longer hold the big crowds that turned out for Geor- gia football. Completed in 1929, Sanford Stadium was financed with donations and $180,000 in loans. The new arena seated 32,000, less than half the size of the Yale Bowl or Michigan Stadium, but this was in a town with fewer than 15,000 residents. To dedicate the stadium, S. V. Sanford convinced Yale to send its football Bulldogs on their first trip outside the Northeast. It was not difficult to fill the new arena for this historic meeting. Ticket applications poured in from distant lo- cales like New Hampshire; Chicago; Los Angeles; and Santiago, Cuba. On October 12, 1929, twenty-three special trains carried thousands of spectators from Atlanta to Athens. This “big iron parade” was joined by specials from Savannah, Raleigh, Birmingham, Montgomery, Louisville, Memphis, New Haven, and New York. Approximately 7,000 automobiles and 60 aircraft also made the trip to Athens.55

Staged two weeks before the 1929 stock market crash, Sanford Sta- dium’s dedication game was the Athens social event of the year. An Atlanta newspaper wrote of the townwide celebration as “a salutation to the great god, Gridiron,” that included many “luncheons . . . teas, dinners, and dances” for thousands of visitors. The state of Georgia declared the day an official holiday, and some predicted the game would be the “most brilliant event” the university had ever hosted.56

Hotels and boardinghouses were packed. National Guardsmen di-

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rected traffic. Vendors hawked balloons on streets or in hotel lobbies; scalpers sold tickets illicitly; and florists peddled red roses to Geor- gians, or violets to Yale’s rooters. Some in the crowd flouted Prohibi- tion by purchasing quarts at local establishments; others were entranced by a novelty toy, the yo-yo. Many spectators stopped by the Georgia Hotel to listen to Yale’s band play “Dixie” as it marched to the stadium. Ralph McGill of the Atlanta Constitution marveled at the spectacle: “There never was a day like this in the history of all Dixie football. Never was there such a parade before. It was a great bizarre crowd bent on a good time, and it was having it. There was no disor- der—just a great, good-natured mob in a fine little city that was set- ting a record for fine and unadulterated hospitality and good sense.”57

Early 1800s educators and Progressive Era social scientists would have been horrified by McGill’s carefree statement about the “mob” and “disorder,” but it was a different time and place, and southern football was becoming a big deal.

The game was a triumph for Georgia and a disaster for Yale. Accord- ing to the New York Times, Georgia’s 15–0 victory “put the crowning touch to a perfect day for southern football.” To call this contest an upset was an understatement; Yale was still one of the nation’s premier teams and it had just routed Vermont the prior Saturday. The Times noted that this game was one of several that demonstrated the growing football parity between various regions (as well as the possible effects of the warm southern climate on players used to chilly New England autumns). Sportswriter Allison Danzig even pointed out that the vast numbers of spectators attending the games demonstrated the logic of building bigger or newer stadiums.58 Football attracted attention and made money, and the universities that provided large arenas on cam- pus for the spectacle seemed to be the biggest winners. Of course, this would change after the stock market crash. But for the time being, few worried about the economy or its effects upon college sport.

Historian John Sayle Watterson writes that huge football arenas, which became a standard variety of campus architecture in the 1920s, were “a sign that big-time football had drowned out all hopes for more modest athletic programs.”59 The massive, reinforced-concrete stadi- ums, no doubt, created a visible and permanent presence for big-time football on post–World War I campuses. Whether built for war mem-

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ory, publicity, fundraising, interinstitutional competition, or a desire to accommodate the public demand for athletic spectacle—or some combination of these factors—stadiums welcomed popular culture to campus. But it is also important to remember that arenas were con- crete representations of the fragmentation of the modern mind and the inaccessible nature of the intellectual work carried out in an ivory tower filled with academic disciplines. College athletics, a popular and consumable ritual, had become ensconced within a semiautonomous department located between the academy and the cultural market- place. This department fulfilled the public’s desire for consumerism and provided a way for universities to maintain visibility in a public sphere from which many intellectuals had become disengaged, often by necessity. College sport, unlike the abstract intellectual spaces oc- cupied by professional academics, inhabited a visible university unit that welcomed the American people’s dollars and cultural desires. While football may have seemed like middlebrow culture, it was really lowbrow culture wedged between the university and society and en- joyed by spectators who saw it as a respectable pastime. By the 1920s, as academics became more critical of both America’s love affair with football and the growing divide between intellectuals and the public, they tried, with only limited success, to do something about it.

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