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Big Blue and Big Red: Sports, Collective Identity, and the Invention of Tradition

Andrew McGregor / 26 March 2015

I’m going to be doing a bit of “thinking out loud” in this post. It’s an extension of a Twitter

conversation I had with Paul Putz about a month ago. We were talking about college sports

teams in predominantly rural states as a way for their residents “to explain ourselves to other

Americans” as well as the use of their success to “stick it to perceived antagonizers.” Paul was

referring mostly to the University of Nebraska football team, which for decades has had a strong

tradition and national “brand” as the Big Red. I commented that this mentality could easily be

applied to other states, particularly those in the Midwest. Likewise, many of them also use

similar terms to brand themselves.

Since that original conversation, I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic. Pieces of that original

conversation kept popping up as I worked through the first chapter of my dissertation, TAed a

sport history course, and watched the recent backlash against the racist events in Oklahoma. Matt

Hodler’s post last week, interrogating the different meanings of a “Real Sooner,” also hinted at

many of these issues. In this post I want to interrogate the concept of Big Red (or Big Blue) to

highlight its history and multiple meanings.

First, it is important to understand how and why university sports teams developed these

identities. Recently in the sport history course I work with, we discussed the creation of

“booster” universities during the 1950s. These schools used sports to put themselves, and their

states, on the map. It was a deliberate decision by administrators, politicians, and alumni to fund

big-time athletic programs. Booster clubs formed to raise money, help recruit, pay coaches, etc.

Legislatures joined in by appropriating funds to build bigger stadiums and arenas. Three of the

most notorious of these “booster” schools, are Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Nebraska (though

Nebraska followed later).

As a result of these “booster” universities, fans, who are predominantly alumni or citizens of

those states, developed a large collective identity centered around athletic success. These

collective groups and the teams they supported became known as the ”Big Red” or the “Big

Blue.” Many teams have followed this tradition and have begun referring to their fans as a part of

a “nation,” such as the Red Sox Nation. This, of course, causes everyone to immediately

breakout their copies of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. To be sure, many of these

“nations” and identities are imagined. But, I think in the case of those “booster” universities,

which tend to be found mostly in rural states, Big Blue and Big Red are a bit less imaginary.

College teams possess a bit more permanence for communities than professional teams do,

asAndy Linden explained last month in his post on NFL relocation. Public universities also tend

to symbolize states, particularly rural ones, more than any given city or metropolitan area. To be

sure, flagship universities do tend to create imagined communities of non-alumni fans who are

former residents of the state. The communities of non-alumni, in-state residents, however, aren’t

entirely imagined. In a world obsessed with microeconomics and the language of business, state

universities belong to more than just the students and alumni. They’re owned by all residents and

taxpayers of those states. And as such, many expect a good return on their investment (though

that public investment has been rapidly dwindling for several decades) in the form of

entertaining and competitive sports teams. Like the publicly owned Green Bay Packers, college

sports teams become collective entities with both real and imagined community connections.

They’re public utilities for mass entertainment and state pride.

While this is certainly a cynical perspective on the place of college athletics in our society, it gets

at the question of collective identity and sports. It also hints are deeper meanings to the

nicknames of teams and fanbases. Who or what is the Big Red? Why are they/it big? What does

it take to be a part of Big Blue? The answers to these questions shed light on, to borrow from

Eric Hobsbawm, “the invention of tradition.”

In his book The Invention of Tradition, Hobsbawm notes that there are three kinds of invented

traditions, which rely on maintaining a continuity with the past to make them appear older than

they really are. These types of invented traditions are:

“a) those establishing or symbolizing social cohesion or the membership of groups, real or

artificial communities, b) those establishing or legitimizing institutions, status or relations of

authority, and c) those whose main purpose was socialization, the inculcation of beliefs, value

systems and conventions of behavior.”

Booster universities take part in all three of these in various ways. They establish and symbolize

communities tied to their sports teams. They project the status, legitimacy, and authority of their

university through its athletic success (this is particularly true in the age of online universities

without sports teams). Finally, they are a remarkable force of socialization as they serve as the

foundation for the interactions of their students, athletes, alumni, and supporters. These

interactions project and display the values and beliefs of the universities and states through

athletic behavior. This is precisely why the “character” and “sportsmanship” of fans and athletes

matter to college administrators.

Equipped with this layered understanding of tradition, it is easy to see that what it means to be

“big” is malleable and coded with multiple meanings. The term includes things like big players,

big wins, big crowds, and a notion of being big-time. Big can also be understood as a synonym

for the strength and toughness exhibited by these teams, these states, and their fans/citizens.

Growing up, I often heard Nebraska fans proudly explain that Memorial Stadium became the

third largest city in the state during a football game. Because many of these fanbases are tied to

rural state, the Big Red and the Big Blue give them the notion that they’re relevant and matter.

This in turn, makes them bigger than their population, or economic and political clout. Sports

success provides the opportunity for them to transcend those issues and dominate national

headlines as much as their competition.

In the United States, particularly in the postwar era, sports have become embedded in our

national culture. They’re central to our identities as American citizens and patriots. In the Cold

War context, football, fitness, and other athletic competitions proved our strength and discipline.

For rural states mired in relative obscurity, or even worse, characterized as backwards and

unsophisticated, sports, and the invented traditions of Big Red and Big Blue, were an important

way to push back. They acted as a political technology to redefine previously held views by

offering corrective instruction.

One of the central themes I explore in my dissertation is how the University of Oklahoma used

college football to alter the state’s imagine and create pride for its citizens. Following the

publication of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, his “Okie” label offended many

Oklahomans. In 1945, Oklahoma had the opportunity to hire a new coach. Lloyd Noble, a

member of the Oklahoma Board of Regents, thought developing a winning football team would

help restore pride in Oklahoma and attract positive attention to the state. He proposed using the

opportunity to select a new coach as way to start this process. Indeed, throughout its history,

college football has proved to be an effective public relations tool. One of the first actions of

University of Chicago President William Rainey Harper was to hire Amos Alonzo Stagg as the

school’s football coach. Harper hoped to build a championship team that would attract publicity

for the new college. Noble was perhaps aware of this story, and hoping to emulate it at OU to

boost both the university and the state.

The “Big Red” football team at OU allowed Oklahoma to explain and demonstrates

its realcultural values as well as confront its detractors. The Sooners dominance over the football

world during the 1950s asserted that Oklahoma was tough, disciplined, and hard-working. It

proved Steinbeck was wrong. State Senator Bill Logan offered proof of the effectiveness of

the“Big Red.” Writing to OU Head Coach Bud Wilkinson from his hotel, while attending a

meeting of the Council of State Governments, he explained, “more compliments came to

Oklahoma because of our ‘Big Red’ boys and more than anything we’ve done.”

Despite these clear examples of boosterism and the deliberate actions taken by politicians and

university leaders to create pride using sports teams, it remains difficult to determine the extent

that these communities are imagined. The ambiguity and multiple meanings of terms like “Big

Blue” underscore their evasive nature. The concept of membership or citizenship is rarely

defined by these groups, and neither are the groups themselves. Hobsbawn argues that concepts

such as “patriotism” and “school spirit” maintain significance because of their “undefined

universality.” Illusive yet universal terms hint at shared traditions and collective behaviors

without needing to describe them. They also suggests a shared past which is crucial for the

establishment and success of invented traditions. Alumni, booster club members, the residency

of taxpayers, fans inside of stadiums, and members of teams are some ways that people might

tangibly be connected to the Big Red or Big Blue. Yet, there are likely still fans who fall outside

of these categories.

Likewise, there are many similar programs, such at the University of Kansas and the University

of Indiana, whose teams have come to symbolize their states and assert their importance without

using “big” phrasing. The terminology of these other schools, however, relies on similar

concepts of collective identity, citizenship, and state-patriotism. Like the Sooners in Oklahoma,

people from Kansas and Indiana are known as Jayhawkers and Hoosiers. How and why are

Kansas and Indiana different? One answer to that question is that I think they were less

deliberate in the creation of their sports programs. The invention of their tradition is less obvious.

There isn’t a clear moment when they decided to emphasize big-time sports and use them to

project a certain view of their universities and states. Whereas in Oklahoma, they were very

deliberate.

Another difference is the presence of rivalries. Nebraska and Kentucky are both the largest

universities in their states and their states’ land-grant institution (KU and IU aren’t land-grants).

This allows them to escape the common white-collar versus blue-collar divide that often

manifests itself in fanbases. This class divide is evident in the Indiana-Purdue rivalry. Being able

to avoid these rivalries gives the University of Kentucky and the University of Nebraska more

status and more authority to represent their states. Oklahoma, on the other hand, is rivaled by

Oklahoma State. Under Hank Iba Oklahoma State had a terrific basketball program, but still

never developed into a booster university or created a “Big Orange” collective identity. Why

then was OU chosen over Oklahoma State? The blue versus white-collar divide is one

explanation. The clearest difference, however, is that Oklahoma belonged to a major athletic

conference (Big 7) while Oklahoma State did not (Missouri Valley). You can’t build a booster

university with nationally prominent big-time athletics without being in a big-time conference.

Thus, like Kentucky and Nebraska, the University of Oklahoma held a higher status.

The concept of a “booster” university and the “Big Red” or “Big Blue” explored here, I believe

differs from other notions of collective identity because of their relationship with invented

traditions. Big Red and Big Blue refers to specific instance where a tradition was invented for a

particular purpose. They encapsulate the view of big-time college sports teams as publicly held

entertainment entities tangibly connected to taxpayers. They also underscore the traditional status

and authority of their universities, initially within their states but now more broadly in the

sporting world.

Andrew McGregor is a PhD Candidate at Purdue University and the founder of this blog. His

dissertation explores the impact of Bud Wilkinson and college football on the image of

Oklahoma. You can reach him via email at [email protected] or on Twitter:

@admcgregor85