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Articles

America and the Garrison Stadium: How the US Armed Forces Shaped College Football

Joseph Paul Vasquez III 1

Abstract American military institutions importantly shaped the popular sport of college football. From support at its two oldest service academies, interest in football spread through military units across the country with military actors involved in the formation of the country’s first collegiate athletic conference and the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Subsequently, the US military functioned as an agent of authoritative diffusion, fostering interest in college football after the First World War. Furthermore, military institutions, including the draft, affected not only which team would be most successful during the Second World War but also how civilians would play the game. These effects call to mind Charles Tilly’s work on state formation and security-driven resource extraction as well as Harold Lass- well’s garrison state idea.

Keywords conscription, draft, football, military, sport

1 Department of Political Science, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Joseph Paul Vasquez III, Department of Political Science, University of Central Florida, 4000 Central

Florida Blvd, Orlando, FL 32816, USA

Email: [email protected]

Armed Forces & Society 38(3) 353-372

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Introduction

College football is big business in the United States generating $6 billion annually and

collegiate logo licensing, stemming largely from interest in football, netting $3.5 billion

annually. 1

For a few institutions, it is a gold mine. Most visibly, the University of Notre

Dame benefits from having its home games telecast by the National Broadcasting

Company (NBC), but revenue can be generated without such sui generis circumstances.

For example, Ohio State’s football program generated $28 million in profit in 2005. 2

While college football trailed professional baseball’s popularity by 3 percent in a

2009 Harris Interactive survey, combined interest in college football, which benefited

from the support of military institutions, and the professional version it spawned

surpassed the popularity of ‘‘America’s pastime,’’ baseball, by 17 percent. 3

Having evolved from roots on the campuses of several elite Northeastern institu-

tions, college football was not always big business or a broadly appreciated pastime,

nor was its origin accidental. As political scientist Michael Mandelbaum writes,

‘‘The game [of football] began in universities because these institutions provided

the required concentrations of able-bodied young men and because, in the latter

part of the nineteenth century, they were home to the belief, which first appeared

in the British private schools, that competition in games helps instill desirable

traits of character and thus qualifies as a legitimate educational activity.’’ 4

How-

ever, unlike other games such as lacrosse that spread more slowly beyond elite

institutions, 5

it will become clear that football’s popularity grew due to the influ-

ence of American military institutions.

Military institutions certainly are not solely responsible for the current popularity

of college football or its economic impact. However, American military institutions

should be recognized as exerting important influence on the development of college

football over the span of sixty years from the final decade of the nineteenth century

to the middle of the twentieth century. Out of this experience—like vegetation from

a greenhouse—college football would ultimately flourish as it does today. Despite

not being recognized widely as such today, this relationship should not be com-

pletely surprising. First, military institutions and their advocates promoted football

around the dawn of the twentieth century by incorporating the game into military life

with the college game—its most prominent manifestation at the time—being the

major beneficiary. Thus, surging, broad-based interest in football resulted from the

effect of militaries as total institutions and authoritative innovators. Second, just as

Charles Tilly argued that raising military forces contributed mightily to state forma-

tion as leaders prepared for war by extracting resources—including people—from

their societies, 6

it will become clear that the game evolved as American military insti-

tutions drew conscripted manpower for fighting both world wars of the last century

from essentially the same pool of physically fit college-aged men who played college

football. With World War II, the game changed when one prominent military institu-

tion, the United States Military Academy at West Point, took advantage of a second

military institution, the draft, to achieve dominance on the football field. To the extent

354 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

that this effort was justified in official circles as a way of demonstrating the American

Army’s strength during wartime, it constitutes an attempt to manipulate amateur

athletics for symbolic advantage in keeping with Harold Lasswell’s work on the

garrison state. Furthermore, military teams beyond the service academies fostered

fierce competition in collegiate football that was passed on by men who coached

and played the game. In the immediate postwar period, how the game would

be played changed due to the tidal wave of veterans who went to college on the

G. I. Bill.

Military Influence on Football before World War I

Americans from social scientists to the late comedian George Carlin have recog-

nized similarities between war and football. 7

Thus, it is not surprising that while

‘‘[football c]oaches often sound like generals when they discuss their strategy,’’ 8

military officials sometimes sound like football coaches as when General Norman

Schwarzkopf described troop movements in the Persian Gulf War as analogous to

a football play. 9

Exploring why and how military institutions embraced the game,

however, is far more interesting than merely belaboring rhetorical similarities.

The conventional wisdom arising from the literature on the history of college

football from its inception with what has been acknowledged as the first game in

1869 through the 1950s can be easily summarized. Born at elite Northeastern col-

leges and universities and resembling rugby, football gradually spread across cam-

puses as changes in the rules of the game were pioneered by Yale’s coach and the

game’s foremost early promoter, Walter Camp. The game gradually moved south-

erly and westerly in the American sports world’s equivalent of Manifest Destiny

as young men who had played and coached the game in the Northeast dispersed

across the land. The modern era in the sport became fully realized in 1913 when

a squad from the then largely unknown University of Notre Dame coached by Jesse

Harper capitalized on recent rule changes to pass the ball forward to upset one of the

country’s top programs, the cadets from the US Military Academy at West Point,

New York. 10

Following the First World War, the 1920s were named the ‘‘Golden

Age of Sports,’’ partly because of the rise of radio as a mode of entertainment, and

college football specifically contributed to that era due to media interest in teams

such as those coached by Knute Rockne at Notre Dame and stars such as the Uni-

versity of Illinois’ Harold ‘‘Red’’ Grange. 11

After that decade, no particular team

or institution dominated the sport thoroughly until Army’s teams from the Military

Academy reigned supreme in the 1940s.

Since West Point teams figured prominently twice in the first half of the twentieth

century, several questions arise that should be of interest to scholars of sociology and

military institutions. For example, were military institutions particularly attracted to

the sport of football, which led this kind of recreational activity to receive attention

and resources that allowed it to succeed on the field of play against competitors?

Moreover, what role—if any—did military institutions have on civilian interest in

Vasquez 355

the game of football? Curiously, scholars of military institutions and sociology have

paid very little attention to these questions. 12

The US armed forces’ support for football began most prominently at its two

oldest service academies. The Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, first played

intercollegiate football in 1882 and West Point followed suit in 1890 when it

answered a direct challenge from its maritime rivals. 13

‘‘Prior to 1890, stringent

restrictions, dismissive official attitudes, and a fundamental lack of functional

organization prevented the growth of sports programs at the academies,’’ but by

mid-decade ‘‘the Military Academy’s sports program had become competitive with

established Eastern colleges such as Harvard, Yale and Brown.’’ 14

Interest in

football grew at the service academies and beyond in the 1890s, as sports became

increasingly a daily activity, an approach promoted by Army Lieutenant C. D.

Parkhurst and West Point alumnus Edmund L. Butts. 15

By 1892, football was played

from coast to coast on at least nineteen Army bases. 16

In the middle of the country and the middle of that decade, a military-affiliated

team, the Indianapolis Light Artillery, unwittingly triggered a revolution in intercol-

legiate sports in 1894. That year, the team’s contest with Butler University violated

the tradition of having only the top two teams of Indiana’s Intercollegiate Athletic

Association from the previous season play on Thanksgiving Day in Indianapolis.

Based on the outcome of the 1893 season, Purdue and DePaul University had

earned the right to play in Indianapolis on that day. As a result, James Smart, Pur-

due’s president, wrote to regional counterparts proposing a meeting that ‘‘restrict[ed]

games to college campuses and forbade players to accept pay or gifts.’’ 17

Out of this

meeting came America’s first athletic conference, known today as the Big 10 Con-

ference, which is an athletic and academic association of the largest Midwestern

research universities. 18

Smart’s letters conveyed mixed motives. He expressed con-

cerns ranging from practicalities such as lost game revenue and athletes’ physical

safety to principals of integrity and fairness in intercollegiate sports. Smart’s con-

cern for student safety when playing against the Artillery was probably apt since

newspapers depicted that squad as being bigger and older than their opponents and

with men who had previously played collegiately. 19

When the Spanish–American War occurred four years later, ‘‘a younger, refor-

mist generation of uniformed officers assumed a moral commitment to the soldier’s

welfare and used sport to combat desertion, alcohol, and the lure of prostitution.’’ 20

Before the war, troops of the Army’s Seventh Corps passed time in Jacksonville,

Florida, playing football. 21

One German naval officer in the Caribbean during this

period attributed US ‘‘military efficiency’’ partially to sports such as football that

‘‘harden the body and strengthen self-confidence.’’ 22

That report would have reso-

nated with Theodore Roosevelt, who once remarked about football, ‘‘I would

rather my boys play it than see them play any other sport.’’ As an avid sportsman

in an era when Social Darwinism thrived, he saw football as helping ‘‘revitalize an

effete population physically and mentally unprepared to defend themselves or take

their place on the world stage.’’ 23

Unsurprisingly, the future Commander-in-Chief

356 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

looked for former football players when raising his ‘‘Rough Riders’’ to fight the

Spanish in Cuba. 24

Amid the 1905 season that saw three football fatalities and eighty-eight serious

injuries, and after consulting with the Naval Academy’s coach, Paul Dashiell, and

Captain Palmer Pierce of West Point, President Roosevelt met with representatives

from Harvard, Princeton, and Yale to persuade them the game should be reformed or

risk having public backlash end it altogether. 25

Though not immediately successful,

it highlighted the need for change. Before the year’s end, sixty educational institu-

tions met to make the game safer, and the Military Academy’s Pierce, played a lead-

ing role as they ‘‘passed a series of ‘West Point’ resolutions calling for combining

the old [rules committee] with a new committee.’’ That group became known as the

Inter Collegiate Athletic Association with Pierce as its president. Within five years,

this group that he would lead for many years became known as the National Collegi-

ate Athletic Association (N.C.A.A.). 26

Concern with football injuries at West Point had existed since 1894 and by 1913,

its superintendent warned ‘‘football served no useful purpose in the physical devel-

opment of training of the Corps.’’ 27

By that time, rule changes of 1912 facilitating

the forward pass and yielding a ‘‘sleek, fast-moving version’’ of the game had not

reduced injuries at the Academy. 28

Nevertheless, within four years, the Army and

the Navy were systematically promoting football on bases nationwide to an unpre-

cedented degree.

World War I and College Football as Innovation Diffusion

The transformative power of military institutions has been acknowledged by scho-

lars. Beyond being powerful mechanisms for socialization as ‘‘total institutions as

argued by Erving Goffman,’’ 29

military institutions are often venues in which the

contact hypothesis plays out altering individual outlooks and behaviors. While some

scholars are skeptical of military institutions’ transformative powers concerning

nation-building or racial integration, 30

it would be hasty to reject their influence

completely. In fact, the American military had this effect on football’s popularity

in the last century in keeping with Everett Rogers’ notion of authoritative innova-

tions when changes are adopted most quickly within organizations because of sup-

port from highly placed individuals within the organization. 31

Moreover, men who

had military experience with the game would later act as agents of diffusion as fans,

players, or coaches.

Events precipitating that historic change began in 1916 with US forces mobiliz-

ing at Fort Sam Houston in Texas to help General John J. Pershing apprehend

Pancho Villa, whose incursions from Mexico had become increasingly problematic.

Back in Washington, reports came in from Texas documenting problems reminis-

cent of the Spanish–American War mobilization: drinking, prostitution, and vener-

eal disease (in the era before penicillin). 32

Secretary of War Newton Baker sent

Raymond Fosdick to investigate these accounts, and Fosdick recommended

Vasquez 357

emphasizing sports for leisure time recreation. 33

Prior to these events, scholars such

as Harvard’s Dudley Sargent had advocated broad-based athletic training programs

to help prepare for war. 34

With US mobilization becoming more likely for the First World War, Fosdick

went on to lead commissions on camp life and leisure time activities for Baker and

Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels. As the highest ranking civilian leaders of

the armed forces after only President Woodrow Wilson himself, these men were

positioned to make authoritative innovations regarding the institutional use of foot-

ball. Fosdick named Yale’s Walter Camp to be the Navy Department’s Athletic

Director and Joseph Raycroft, a Princeton physical education professor, as his War

Department counterpart. Of the two men, Camp pushed football more enthusiasti-

cally from his desire for competitions to fill ‘‘weekends and holidays.’’ Moreover,

‘‘Camp realized that service football competition . . . might be used to create an attractive football game (similar to the Army-Navy game) between army camp

teams and naval station teams.’’ 35

Though boxing was favored initially as more

affordable than football, these challenges were soon overcome. 36

With conscription pulling young men into the US armed forces, traditional collegi-

ate schedules were slashed. 37

However, the game survived and spread through mili-

tary camps and bases. During some wartime games, spectators heard bands play just

like at collegiate games or learned ‘‘college-type cheering and singing.’’ 38

In 1917 and

1918, the ‘‘collegiate’’ champions emerged from Rose Bowl games that paired two

armed forces teams against each other. 39

With the American Expeditionary Forces still

overseas in 1919, 75,000 US troops participated in American football abroad and the

championship game was ‘‘watched by the Army with all the interest ever called forth

by . . . a professional baseball World Series.’’40 As a result, Watterson declares, ‘‘The model of big-time football emerged live and well in the military camps, bringing tens of

thousands of recruits into contact with a sophisticated game heretofore known chiefly to

students at colleges or better known secondary schools.’’ 41

Thus, in keeping with the

idea that conscription is democratic in terms of egalitarianism and breadth, 42

exposure

to military football in this era of conscription had a democratizing effect on the game.

Moreover, as Charles Tilly argues that coercive war-making efforts led to the rise of the

state, interest in college football spread when the coercive war-making institution of

conscription in the US brought young men into contact with football.

During World War I, the war the military offered unprecedented backing for ath-

letics and continued postwar interest in football was predicted. According to Watter-

son, ‘‘the war created an insatiable demand for football in the postwar era which

even colleges could not satisfy’’ in the 1920s. 43

Data clearly supports greater post-

war interest as ‘‘there was a dramatic expansion of college football programs and

attendance at games’’ between 1919 and 1921. During this period, Mennell found

that thirteen colleges began playing varsity football, whereas only three schools had

taken up the game similarly between 1912 and 1918. Moreover, ‘‘while only three

new stadiums were considered in the six years immediately after the rule changes

[made the game more exciting], fourteen were considered in the three-year period

358 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

right after the war.’’ While the war itself could have slowed team formation and

stadium building due to the war’s financial burden, America’s late entry into the

war would probably only explain delays occurring between 1916 and 1918. Thus,

Mennell’s argument that ‘‘the service football program had significantly stimulated

interest in collegiate football’’ is persuasive. 44

In the Interwar Period, the service academies pursued policies that effectively

promoted football. First, they boosted interest in their teams and the game through

the media. Both of these institutions and Notre Dame uniquely allowed free radio

broadcasts of their games, albeit for different reasons. ‘‘Notre Dame wanted to reach

as many fans as possible, and the military academies, owned by the American peo-

ple, worried that selling their broadcast rights to private companies would prompt

criticism.’’ This approach helped these teams become ‘‘truly national teams

with huge followings.’’ 45

Second, athletics flourished at West Point after Brigadier

General Douglas MacArthur became its superintendent. 46

MacArthur had the fol-

lowing self-authored quote carved near the entrance to a campus gym, ‘‘Upon the

fields of friendly strife/Are sown seeds that/Upon other fields, on other days/Will

bear the fruits of victory.’’ 47

Furthermore, he boosted athletics by requiring cadets

to play intramural sports; asking members of Congress ‘‘to look for gifted young ath-

letes to appoint to the Military Academy;’’ and rewarding ‘‘his football stars with

special privileges’’ and ‘‘elite status on campus.’’ 48

West Point’s Success during World War II

While scholars have argued that the United States never became a praetorian regime

during the Cold War, the way football was used by the Federal Government during

the Second World War seems to be consistent with at least one aspect of Harold

Lasswell’s garrison state theoretical construct. 49

Writing months before the attack

on Pearl Harbor, Lasswell argued that it was likely that the United States would

become a militarized state, and he predicted that such governments would adroitly

employ symbols in an attempt to boost ‘‘morale’’ and unify diverse sectors in Amer-

ica’s industrial society. 50

Clearly, the military used amateur football to promote mor-

ale within the ranks as well as for training, but the sport was also used to boost

voluntary military recruitment. Such was the case in 1942 when President Franklin

Roosevelt made sure that the annual Army versus Navy game continued despite other

collegiate games being cancelled and prohibitions on ‘‘nonessential travel.’’ 51

Further

support for the notion that Army officials were aware of the symbolic value of football

can be found amidst explanations for why West Point decided to take a hiatus from

playing Notre Dame in the late 1940s. Along with concerns about gambling and ticket

scalping that followed a momentous tied game between those two teams in 1946,

Army officials feared that an increasingly bitter rivalry with the popular Catholic

school could undermine American Catholics’ support for the Military Academy. 52

Armed forces football reached its apex in the Second World War in the form of

legendary teams coached by Earl Blaik at West Point in this era when Army Chief of

Vasquez 359

Staff General George C. Marshall once declared, ‘‘I want an officer for a secret and

dangerous mission. I want a West Point football player.’’ 53

During Blaik’s tenure

from 1941 to 1958, Army football won two undisputed national titles and 77 percent

of its games. 54

Army’s football prominence resulted partly from the attrition afflict-

ing its athletic competitors as ‘‘shortages of cars, tires, fuel, and students’’ and

decreased game attendance led many colleges to suspend football during the war. 55

However, Blaik capitalized on many of the Military Academy’s unique institutional

advantages. Blaik, as a former standout athlete at the Academy during MacArthur’s

tenure, idolized its former superintendent. Like other players there in the early twen-

tieth century, he was allowed to play for the Academy despite having already grad-

uated from Miami University. While White House pressure changed this policy in

the 1930s, West Point began backsliding in the 1940s, and Blaik began recruiting

athletes away from other colleges. 56

Blaik was aided by MacArthur in landing the

Army job first and later helping to ‘‘change weight restrictions at West Point so that

he could recruit larger linemen.’’ 57

Army’s success was built on more than the discipline that Blaik instilled in his

players. While the war years were a famine for most college teams with conscription

gobbling up many stellar athletes for military service, they were a feast at West

Point. 58

Sperber writes that Blaik ‘‘used West Point graduates around the country

to scout for him; then, after selecting the best players from the pool, Blaik asked the

appropriate members of Congress to appoint these athletes to the academy.’’ Blaik’s

greatest ally, however, was probably not alumni or congressmen, but the draft itself.

During World War II, students attending West Point could delay military service and

graduate as commissioned officers. Thus, at best an Academy graduate might avoid

real combat if the war ended prior to graduation or at worst see combat as an officer

instead of an enlisted man. 59

To recruit the Heisman Trophy winning duo of Glenn Davis and Felix Blanchard,

Blaik was creative. To attract Davis, it appears likely Blaik requested an appoint-

ment for not only Glenn but also his twin brother. Alternatively, Blaik had Blanchard

appointed to the Academy after he was drafted while at the University of North Car-

olina. This method of Blaik’s, often derided as ‘‘draft board recruiting,’’ attracted

elite players from colleges across the country. 60

The pursuit of a high school star, Johnny Lujack, highlights Blaik’s aggressive

recruiting. In 1942, Blaik had Lujack’s congressman appoint him to the Academy even

though Lujack planned to attend Notre Dame. Complaints from West Point led Notre

Dame’s vice president along with Coach Frank Leahy to meet with Blaik and West Point

officials. In that meeting, Army officials argued to no avail that ‘‘when a boy is offered

an appointment to the United States Military Academy, no persuasion should be used to

keep him from accepting such an appointment.’’ Lujack later won the Heisman Trophy

in 1947 at Notre Dame and—ironically—made a game-saving tackle against Army in

1946 helping his team win that year’s national championship instead of Army. 61

With a greater wartime winning percentage (five points higher) than their Naval

Academy rivals (see Table 1), two undisputed national championships (1944 and

360 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

T a b

le 1 .

U n iq

u e n e ss

o f M

ili ta

ry A

ca d e m

y an

d N

av al

A ca

d e m

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al l S u cc

e ss

in th

e W

o rl

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ar II

E ra

, 1 9 4 1 – 4 5

M ili

ta ry

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y (W

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y (A

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n n ap

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1 9 4 1 – 4 5

N o n -W

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s 1 9 0 1 – 4 0 ,

1 9 4 6 – 8 5

W W

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1 9 4 1 – 4 5

N o n -W

W II

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1 9 4 6 – 8 5

W W

II E ra

1 9 4 1 – 4 5

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7 8 %

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7 3 %

(3 3 -1

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(4 1 7 -3

1 5 -5

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F iv

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2 0 0 5 ),

1 2 3 -4

, 5 6 2 -3

.

361

1945) and the two aforementioned Heisman Trophy winners (1945 and 1946),

Army’s cadets were college football’s supreme wartime juggernaut. 62

During the

war years from 1941 to 1945, Army’s average winning percentage increased by 8

percent over the average for successive five-year periods going back to 1901.

Furthermore, Army’s total winning percentage during WWII increased by 17 points

over its total for the years 1901 through 1940 and 1946 through 1985. Though

Washington did not officially enter the Second World War until the 1941 season was

nearly over, that season is treated as the start of the war here due to the threatening

international climate and the commencement of the military draft late in 1940, 63

which would have aided in recruiting for the service academies. Alternatively, even

though the War ended before the start of the 1945 season, Japan’s surrender in August

would have left prospective academy students with little time to change their educa-

tional plans for that season. While Army dominated the sport during this period, the

Naval Academy’s midshipmen also performed better with their average winning per-

centage during the war increasing by 12 percent over the average for successive five-

year periods going back to 1901. Moreover, Navy’s total winning percentage during

WWII increased by 20 points over the total for the years 1901 through 1940 and 1946

through 1945. Sperber, however, credits West Point’s greater dominance to Blaik’s

‘‘dynamism and ruthlessness’’ and a ‘‘cram school’’ that helped prospective football

players study for and pass entrance exams. Blaik’s wartime success bred success after-

ward as Army’s winning percentage in the five-year postwar period increased seven

points, while Navy’s winning percentage sank by an astonishing fifty-five points.

As can be seen in the chi-square scores reported in Table 1, the probabilities of the

service academies achieving winning percentages as high as they did during World War

II are probably not from random chance, given that Army, Navy, and both services com-

bined had scores surpassing conventional levels of statistical significance. The rela-

tively lower level of statistical significance for the difference between Army’s World

War II and non-World War II period when compared to Navy can be attributed to West

Point’s relatively greater performance outside of the Second World War time frame,

including the immediate postwar five-year span mentioned above.

Military Football beyond the Service Academies during World War II

The idea that football was beneficial for fighting men went beyond the wartime ser-

vice academies. Thus, football was a required component of the Naval Pre-Flight

Training programs (V-5) that popped up around the country. Beyond ‘‘boosting mor-

ale,’’ Watterson writes, ‘‘Military leaders believed that football built leadership qua-

lities, inculcated discipline, sharpened aggressive instincts, and taught its officers to

react quickly under pressure.’’ As a result ‘‘[e]ach unit of trainees engaged in scrim-

mages and intramurals, and the best players played against other colleges or against

military bases that also had their varsity teams.’’ 64

The committee which oversaw

the V-5 program included University of Minnesota Head Football Coach Bernie

362 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

Bierman and Captain Arthur Radford, Director of Aeronautic Training, who became

an admiral and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Another source of great influ-

ence on the program was the Naval Academy’s head football coach, Lieutenant

Commander Thomas Hamilton. 65

The V-5’s football component took flight in

1942 and spread to places such as Del Monte (California) Naval Air Station along

with college campuses at the Universities of Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, and

St. Mary’s College (California). 66

In its first year alone, ‘‘over 600 football games

were played in the intramural, varsity, or instructional phase of training.’’ 67

Nota-

ble Americans with military-related football experience during World War II were

future presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush, who coached and played,

respectively, in North Carolina’s V-5 football program. Additionally, many bases

such as Great Lakes Naval Training Center fielded teams outside of the V-5 pro-

gram, which also competed against colleges. Army bases had teams as well, but

they only competed against other military teams with the leadership of their

respective units or bases reveling in the bragging rights afforded by victory. 68

Two important V-5 football boosters were Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and

a predecessor, Josephus Daniels, who had embraced football during World War I. 69

Football’s benefits for military training were also extolled in college football movies

such as Appointment in Tokyo (1944) and game programs. Advocates for football’s

military training benefits included: William ‘‘Killer’’ Kane, a well-known naval

aviator; Tom Harmon, Michigan’s 1940 Heisman winner; and Columbia Univer-

sity’s coach, Lou Little. 70

Little declared that football should be played ‘‘hard and

intensively with an even more savage will-to-win than in peacetime.’’ 71

Service football’s results may have delighted military brass, but many college

fans disliked the change. With military coaches assembling teams with college and

pro players courtesy of the draft, they predictably beat many college squads. 72

For

example, between 1942 and 1944, Great Lakes and Iowa Pre-Flight won 79 percent

of their sixty-seven games. 73

One of the top teams of this period, the 1943 Great

Lakes squad, was coached by Paul Brown, who had led Ohio State to a national

championship the previous year. About Brown, a collegiate counterpart remarked,

he ‘‘must have stopped every monster of 270 pounds that came into the Naval

Station and put a football suit on him. All-Pro tackles, All-American, All-This and

All-That. We had a kid from our school on that Great Lakes team, an All-American

tackle, and he was playing third team there.’’

Along with Great Lakes and Iowa Pre-Flight, squads from Memphis Naval

Training, the 176th Infantry, Fort Riley and Del-Monte Pre-Flight were ranked

in the top twenty teams for 1943 based on mathematical calculations rather than

sportswriter or coaches votes. 74

Regarding its effect beyond the training ground, Donald Rominger writes that

‘‘V-5 played a redoubtable role in defining’’ the country and influenced high school

physical education curricula through instructional material and coaching clinics. 75

One cannot help but wonder how much of this program rubbed off on society more

broadly. With its martial focus, Rominger writes, ‘‘The aim of these activities was to

Vasquez 363

show every cadet that there was ‘no substitute for winning’ and that ‘gracious defeat

[should] be forgotten. 76

Its sports manual indicated that this approach would develop

rugged ‘‘ruthless determined competitors,’’ and unsurprisingly, he contends that this

creed was embodied ‘‘by a new generation of aggressive coaches, many of whom

carried ideas, if not learned in Preflight, certainly exercised there, to their high

school and college playgrounds.’’ 77

After their V-5 days, many coaches embodied rugged, if not ruthless, competition

with some winning multiple championships (see Table 2). 78

While the military experi-

ence with football during World War I served to generate interest broadly across society,

it appears that the military involvement with the sport in World War II may have served

to reaffirm—if not create—the hyper-competitive approach in that cohort of coaches.

After the Second World War, traditional college football rebounded. Between

1945 and 1946, the number of institutions playing intercollegiately skyrocketed

by 66 percent. 79

Since that time, the military has never exerted so great an effect

on the game because its subsequent military conflicts never required a commensu-

rate fraction of the country’s manpower. In the Korean War, US objectives narrowed

once China jumped in and MacArthur was pulled out for insubordinately provoking

an expanded war. Furthermore, during Vietnam, not only were the overall numbers

of troops needed not as great as during the world wars, but the maturing baby boom-

ers offered ample conscriptable manpower. As for the recall of MacArthur, it ironi-

cally came within five months of a major cheating scandal in 1951 that disgraced his

beloved Army football team by involving nearly forty football players and resulting

in the expulsion of ninety cadets. With Blaik’s ‘‘win at all costs’’ approach discre-

dited, one notable alumnus, retired Air Force General Carl Spaatz, called for West

Point to deemphasize intercollegiate sports. 80

Table 2. Prominent Football Coaches with Military Football Experience

Role Service era institution

Postservice head coaching tenure

Postservice head coaching (Only selected institutions listed)

Head coach winning

percentage

Coach: V-5 Program Bernie Bierman Del Monte and Iowa 1945–50 Minnesota .556 Bear Bryanta Georgia and North Carolina 1945–82 Texas A&M, Alabama .760 Don Faurot Iowa 1946–56 Missouri .464 Tex Oliver Saint Mary’s 1945–46 Oregon .389 Jim Tatum Iowa 1946–58 Oklahoma, North Carolina .714 Bud Wilkinson

a Iowa 1947–63 Oklahoma .815

Bear Wolf Georgia 1946–49, 1952–53 Florida, Tulane .322 Coach: Base program Paul Brown

a Great Lakes Naval Training Center 1946–62, 1968–75 Cleveland Browns .609

Player: Base program George Halas

ab Great Lakes Naval Training Center 1946–55, 1958–67 Chicago Bears .594

Coach: Service Academy Vince Lombardia US Military Academy, West Point 1959–67, 1969 Green Bay Packers .740

Note: a These individuals coached teams to professional or collegiate championships after their military

football experience. b Unlike the others listed here, Halas’ military experience was during World War I.

364 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

Encroachment? Military Influence on Civilian Play

While military institutions significantly boosted interest in college football

during the First World War and affected the teams that would be successful during

the Second World War, their influence did not end there. Following Japan’s

attack on the United States, the 1942 New Year’s Day Rose Bowl was moved to

North Carolina from Southern California fearing another attack before returning

to Pasadena the next year. However, the sport would change in more fundamental

ways foreshadowing its future.

One change came with the expanded use of freshmen on varsity teams. Prior to

World War II, colleges restricted freshmen from playing intercollegiately assuming

that higher education’s novices needed to focus on their studies, however, some col-

leges from smaller conferences wavered during the war. By 1943, many colleges

from major conferences successfully pushed the N.C.A.A. to allow freshmen to play

varsity sports since many of the nation’s physically fit young men had been scooped

up by military conscription. Another similarly motivated and significant innovation

was using athletes primarily on either offensive or defensive units rather than expect-

ing them to play on both squads. Since its earliest days, colleges had abided by the rule

that ‘‘players leaving the field could not return until the following quarter’’ in defer-

ence to the ideal of players being well-rounded athletes. However, that rule changed in

1942, allowing players to be substituted freely.’’ As a result, ‘‘imaginative coaches led

by the University of Michigan’s Fritz Crisler began to experiment with two-platoon

football.’’ Teams successfully adopting this new approach tended to be vilified by

football purists. 81

The war and conscription also pushed other aspects of college football beyond the

American South where they first took root. For example, athletic scholarships and

female cheerleaders were first used by institutions in that region. However, with

fewer men to fill out rosters and lead cheers on sidelines, schools nationwide became

increasingly interested in providing athletic scholarships, and women began to join

cheerleading squads. 82

After the war, Washington’s efforts to reward returning troops and help them

adjust to civilian life affected college football, too. With Uncle Sam paying veterans’

college expenses from 1945 to 1948 under the G.I. Bill, coaches gained veteran stu-

dent–athletes who were stronger and a larger talent pool for fielding powerful offen-

sive and defensive units. While government assistance gave veteran student–athletes

greater mobility, more institutions began giving ‘‘athletic scholarships’’ and boosters

increasingly used ‘‘creative’’ means to attract those geographically mobile players. 83

Recruitment of returning veteran athletes became increasingly intense. One former

collegiate star in the Navy was courted by twenty-five schools before going back to

his alma mater, where he was reportedly paid as much as $5,000 a year. Responding

to fears of professionalism in 1946, the N.C.A.A. started regulating financial aid for

student–athletes. 84

Despite the rising costs of fielding superior teams with separate

offenses and defenses such as Crisler’s Michigan Wolverines, which won the 1948

Vasquez 365

Rose Bowl 49–0, victories such as these ‘‘persuaded other big-time coaches to install

the two-platoon system.’’ 85

The immediate postwar years were a boom for college football, but this bubble

deflated as veterans graduated. This reality, along with the fact that freshmen had

been again ruled ineligible for varsity play, made it hard for some teams to continue

fielding both offensive and defensive squads. As a result, coaches began recruiting

more ‘‘ferociously’’ for high school prospects hoping to stock their lineups for future

years. 86

‘‘Whereas state colleges and universities had more money and jobs to

support athletes, the private colleges in or near urban areas suffered most grievously

from the football revenue and manpower crisis’’ with between thirty and sixty

colleges discontinuing intercollegiate football by 1951. 87

To ease this pressure, the

N.C.A.A. ended the postwar experiment with the wartime innovation of unlimited

substitutions. However, it reemerged in the 1960s to replicate the professional game

being increasingly viewed across the country. 88

Conclusion

The influence of American military institutions in shaping college football into the

cultural institution that it is today is not obvious. However, American military insti-

tutions contributed to its popularity, as well as the way the game has been played.

From its early existence at Annapolis and West Point—two total institutions, mil-

itary support for football spread to bases across the country, with the collegiate game

becoming more broadly appreciated during World War I before becoming domi-

nated by armed forces teams during the Second World War. Wartime conscription

played a critical role in these processes, first by bringing large numbers of people

from many walks of life into uniform and contact with the game during World

War I, before pulling top athletes toward either base teams or pushing them in the

direction of the service academies, especially West Point, in World War II. Thus,

just as conscription built state power in accord with the writings of Charles Tilly, the

association between amateur football and America’s militaries—buttressed by con-

scription—from the last centuries’ world wars helped to perpetuate national interest

in college football. This association, however, not only promoted interest in collegi-

ate football, but it also infused the sport with a martial ethos and spirit would be con-

sistent with Harold Lasswell’s warnings about the militarization of America. While

the United States never developed into a garrison state, it was not for the lack of

an attractive social institution like college football that was poised to transmit and

reinforce many fundamental military values.

Over time military influence on college football has grown generally weaker.

This trend occurred as US military institutions developed more sophisticated

training centers using simulation technology to replicate combat conditions more

faithfully than any sport ever could. 89

Furthermore, because of America’s departure

from conscription, extended military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have not

encroached on the world of collegiate athletics to the degree seen in both world wars.

366 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

These wars conform to what Michael Mann refers to as ‘‘spectator-sport militarism’’

in which most citizens are engaged in the conduct of war not as participants who

must bear the burden of sacrifice, but rather as fans with luxury seats on the fifty yard

line. 90

While Pat Tillman notably gave up a professional football career to fight and

die as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan, his experience has not been widely shared

due to America’s volunteer military.

In the future, researchers might consider several lines of inquiry related to

this subject. For example, they might consider the way military institutions have

influenced the development of other sports, such as equestrian competitions or

Nordic-derived contests such as the biathlon? Or as was true of rugby in Britain

during the First World War, has collegiate football ever been used to promote

US military or political goals beyond those explored here? 91

Alternatively, could

America’s service academies ever regain their dominance on the college football

field even with an unlikely return to conscription given their rigorous academic

and weight standards that limit recruitment?

Acknowledgments

The author thanks editor Patricia Shields, three anonymous reviewers, Joshua Brewer,

Charlotte Vasquez, and Joseph Paul Vasquez, Jr. for their helpful comments or contributions

to earlier drafts of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,

and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/

or publication of this article: The author benefitted from a Byron K. Trippet Summer Stipend

and Research Funds while working on this project as a faculty member at Wabash College.

Notes

1. ‘‘The Business of College Football, Part 1-Big Time Ball & Part 3-The Licensing Game,’’

The Nightly Business Report (Transcripts), accessed November 12 & 14, 2007, www.pbs.

org/nbr/site/features/special/college-football_home/. Here, ‘‘football’’ refers to the game

played by that name in the United States and Canada as opposed to the global games of

the same name that Americans would usually call soccer or rugby.

2. ‘‘The Business of College Football. Part 1-Big Time Ball,’’ The Nightly Business Report.

These results are atypical since only 2 percent of Division I-AA ‘‘reported operating sur-

pluses in the 2008 fiscal year.’’ Libby Sander, ‘‘At What Price Football?,’’ The Chronicle

of Higher Education 56 (February 19, 2010), accessed October 21, 2011, Academic

Search Premier.

3. Bryan Curtis, The New York Times 5 (February 1, 2009) accessed July 15, 2010, Lexis

NexisAcademic.

Vasquez 367

4. Michael Mandelbaum, The Meaning of Sports: Why Americans Watch Baseball, Foot-

ball, and Basketball and What They See When They Do (New York: Public Affairs,

2004), 148.

5. Lisa Schulte, ‘‘Review of Our Game. The Character and Culture of Lacrosse by John M.

Yeager,’’ Journal of Sports History 35 (2008): 188-89, accessed July 18, 2011, http://

www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH2008/JSH3501/jsh3501zh.pdf.

6. Charles Tilly, ‘‘War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,’’ in Bringing the

State Back In, eds. Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschmeyer, and Theda Skocpol (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 169-91. Over the past 150 years, American

military activities led to not only government activities such as home mail delivery and the

creation of social welfare programs, but societal phenomena such as racial integration and

collegiate grade inflation. Rene Sanchez, ‘‘Real Men Deliver Mail; Smithsonian Honors

Letter Carriers,’’ The Washington Post, July 13, 1987, accessed May 27, 2011, Lexis Nexis

Academic; Alan Wolfe, ‘‘The Mothers of Invention,’’ New Republic 208 (January 4– 11,

1993): 28-35; Henry Rosovsky and Matthew Hartley, Evaluation and the Academy: Are

We Doing the Right Thing? (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences,

2002), 7, 11, accessed July 10, 2010, http://www.amacad.org/publications/evaluation.aspx.

7. Mandelbaum, The Meaning of Sports; George Carlin, Braindroppings (New York:

Hyperion, 1997), 52-3; Carlin’s hilarious routine can be viewed online at http://www.you

tube.com/watch? v¼om_yq4L3M_I. 8. Murray Ross, ‘‘Football Red & Baseball Green,’’ Chicago Review 22 (1971): 36.

9. See http://www.youtube.com/watch? v¼7BaSwaBPg6 M. 10. Frank P. Maggio, Notre Dame and the Game that Changed Football: How Jesse Harper

Made the Forward Pass a Weapon and Knute Rockne a Legend (New York, NY: Carroll

& Graf, 2007), 86-7, 101-22.

11. Seasons of Change,’’ From the DVD Series nar. Burt Reynolds, Rites of Autumn (Lions

Gate Home Entertainment, 2002).

12. Despite the interesting linkages between football and military institutions, they have

never before been examined in great detail in the pages of Armed Forces & Society

(AF&S). For example, a search of the journal’s online archive shows no articles published

between October 1974 and May 2011 in which the words ‘‘sports’’ or ‘‘football’’ were

contained in the abstract or offered as a keyword. At best the word ‘‘sport’’ shows up

in a total of thirty-one articles. ‘‘Football’’ specifically shows up in a total of fifteen arti-

cles or book reviews published in AF&S during that period. In those articles, ‘‘football’’ is

referred to variously and does not reflect any two or three particular aspects of scholarly

interest in the subject. A search of much more comprehensive databases reveals a similar

oversight. For example, searches on May 11, 2011, of the JSTOR and Academic Search

Premier databases for articles including both the words ‘‘sociology’’ and ‘‘football’’ in

their abstracts along with the words ‘‘military’’ or ‘‘armed forces’’ in their full texts

returned only one article. In that one article, the role of military institutions was only men-

tioned in passing.

13. Michael MacCambridge, ‘‘Army,’’ and Seth Wickersham, ‘‘Navy,’’ in ESPN College

Football Encyclopedia, ed. Michael MacCambridge (New York, NY: ESPN Books,

368 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

2005), 122, 561. President Grover Cleveland prohibited Army–Navy games between

1893 and 1899 after an argument over the game nearly led to a duel between a general

and an admiral. Mandelbaum. The Meaning of Sports, 156.

14. Steven W. Pope, ‘‘An Army of Athletes: Playing Fields, Battlefields, and the American

Military Sporting Experience, 1890–1920,’’ The Journal of Military History 59 (1995): 439.

15. Pope, ‘‘An Army of Athletes,’’ 438, 440.

16. Report of the Secretary of War. House of Representatives. 52d Congress, 1st Session. Ex.

Doc. 1, Part 2. Volume V (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1892), 484-91.

17. Purdue Archives, Letter of James Smart to Andrew S. Draper (University of Illinois

President), Papers of James Smart, (University Letter Book, November 19, 1894), 881;

‘‘Foot-ball Extra! Butler the Victor,’’ The Indianapolis News, Extra Edition (November

29, 1894): 1.

18. John Sayle Watterson, College Football (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,

2000), 50.

19. Purdue Archives, Letter of James Smart to Andrew S. Draper, 881; Purdue Archives, Let-

ter of James Smart to Charles Kendall Adams (University of Wisconsin President),

Papers of James Smart, University Letter Book, 1894 (November 22, 1894): 887; ‘‘The

Artillery Veterans,’’ The Indianapolis News (November 29, 1894): 1; ‘‘Foot-ball Extra!

Butler the Victor,’’ 1.

20. Pope, ‘‘An Army of Athletes,’’ 436.

21. Report of the Commission Appointed by the President to Investigate the Conduct of the

War Department in the War with Spain. Senate. 56th Congress, 1st Session. Document

No. 221. Vol. 3. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1900), 476-7.

22. Office of Naval Intelligence, Notes on the Spanish-American War. 1900. Senate. 56th

Congress, 1st Session. Document No. 388. (Washington, DC: Government Printing

Office, 1900), 8.

23. Watterson, College Football, 64-5.

24. Mandelbaum, The Meaning of Sports, 143.

25. Watterson, College Football, 64-6, 69 and Sal Paolantonio, How Football Explains

America (Chicago, IL: Triumph Books, 2008), 22; Jack Clary, Army vs. Navy: Seventy

Years of Football Rivalry (New York: Ronald Press Co, 1965), 42; Barry Wilner and Ken

Rappoport, Gridiron Glory: The Story of the Army-Navy Football Rivalry (Lanham, MD:

Taylor Trade, 2005), 32; John S. Watterson, ‘‘The Gridiron Crisis of 1905: Was it Really

a Crisis?’’ Journal of Sports History 27 (2000): 294.

26. Watterson, College Football 74: 77-8.

27. Report of the Secretary of War, House of Representatives. 53rd Congress, 3d Session. Ex.

Doc. 1, Part 2. Vol. I. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1994), 624-6.

28. Watterson, College Football 131, 136, 140.

29. Giuseppe Caforio. ‘‘Some Historical Notes,’’ in Handbook of the Sociology of the Military,

ed. Giuseppe Caforio (New York: Kluwer Academic, 2003), 19-20.

30. Ronald R. Krebs, ‘‘A School for the Nation?: How Military Service Does Not Build

Nations, and How it Might,’’ International Security 28 (2004): 85-124.

31. Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 3rd ed. (New York: The Free Press, 1983), 30.

Vasquez 369

32. James Mennell, ‘‘The Service Football Program of World War I: Its Impact on the

Popularity of the Game,’’ Journal of Sports History 16 (1989): 251; Pope, ‘‘An Army

of Athletes,’’ 442; Raymond Blaine Fosdick, Chronicle of a Generation: An Autobiogra-

phy (New York: Harper, 1958), 147. Army ‘‘combat football’’ evolved similarly in the mid-

1970s using up to sixty players. Described as a hybrid of ‘‘American football, basketball,

soccer, rugby and the Civil War draft riots,’’ it was brought to Hawaii from the US Second

Infantry Division in South Korea where it had been ‘‘an outlet for troops frustrated by gar-

rison duty and denied access to the fleshy delights of Seoul.’’ Richard W. Johnston, ‘‘New

Army Game,’’ Sports Illustrated (Vault), July 21, 1975, accessed June 14, 2010, http://

sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ article/ magazine/ MAG1090072 /index.htm.

33. Mennell, ‘‘The Service Football Program of World War I,’’ 251.

34. Donald W. Rominger, Jr., ‘‘From Playing Field to Battleground: The United States Navy

V-5 Preflight Program in World War II,’’ Journal of Sports History 12 (1985): 253;

Edward Marshall, ‘‘Athletic, Not Military, Training,’’ The New York Times (March 28,

1915). Magazine Section, SM6.

35. As the foremost early promoter of amateur football, one can only wonder whether Camp

saw the armed services as a vehicle for expanding the public appetite for college football.

Mennell, ‘‘The Service Football Program of World War I,’’ 251-2, 254.

36. Mennell, ‘‘The Service Football Program of World War I,’’ 252-3.

37. Watterson, College Football, 139.

38. Mennell, ‘‘The Service Football Program of World War I,’’ 256-7.

39. MacCambridge, ESPN College Football Encyclopedia, 1152; Leland ‘‘Trig’’ Watson,

‘‘The Amazing Great Lakes football team of 1918.’’ http://www.nsgreatlakes.navy.mil/

history/1943football.html; Mandelbaum, The Meaning of Sports, 141.

40. Pope, ‘‘An Army of Athletes,’’ 452.

41. Watterson, College Football, 140; Mennell, ‘‘The Service Football Program of World

War I,’’ 248, 259-60.

42. Friedrich Engels, quoted by Sigmund Neumann and Mark von Hagen in Engels and Marx

on Revolution, War and the Army in Society, Makers of Modern Strategy, ed. Peter Paret

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 277.

43. Watterson, College Football, 140.

44. Mennell, ‘‘The Service Football Program of World War I,’’ 249-50, 259-60.

45. Murray Sperber, Onward to Victory: The Crises that Shaped College Sports (New York,

NY: Henry Holt, 1998), 82-3.

46. Paolantonio, How Football Explains America, 76.

47. Mandelbaum, The Meaning of Sports, 167-8.

48. Paolantonio, How Football Explains America, 77; Sperber, Onward to Victory, 138-9.

49. For detailed analysis of this concept, the following are recommended: Aaron Friedberg,

‘‘Why Didn’t the United States Become a Garrison State?,’’ International Security 16

(1992): 109-42; Raymond Aron, ‘‘Remarks on Lasswell’s ‘The Garrison State,’’’ Armed

Forces & Society 5 (1979): 347-59; and Jay Stanley, Essays on the Garrison State (New

Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1997). Thanks to a reviewer for recommending application

of this concept.

370 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

50. Harold D. Lasswell, ‘‘The Garrison State,’’ The American Journal of Sociology 46

(1941): 458-9.

51. Jack Clary, Army vs. Navy: Seventy Years of Football Rivalry (New York: Ronald Press,

1965), 141.

52. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 157-62, 165-6.

53. Joe Lapointe, ‘‘The Army-Navy Rivalry Reaches Symbolic Proportions,’’ The New York

Times (December 6, 2002), accessed June 9, 2010, LexisNexisAcademic.

54. MacCambridge, ESPN College Football Encyclopedia, 118, 123-4.

55. Murray Sperber, Onward to Victory, 87, 93, 97; Watterson, College Football, 201.

56. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 138-9.

57. Paolantonio, How Football Explains America, 80.

58. Ibid.

59. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 140; Watterson, College Football, 206-7. Draft eligibility

also led many college coaches to enlist to possibly coach military teams. Sperber,

Onward to Victory 96: 116-7.

60. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 140.

61. Ibid., 95-6.

62. Kevin Gleason. 2005. ‘‘Army.’’ In ESPN College Football Encyclopedia, ed. Michael

MacCambridge (New York, NY: ESPN Books), 118-20.

63. George Q. Flynn, The Draft, 1940–1973 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas), 22, 31.

64. Watterson, College Football, 202.

65. Rominger calls Hamilton’s Advocacy of Violent Games to Foster Resilience and Aggres-

siveness in Trainees ‘‘Social Engineering at its Zenith.’’ Rominger, Jr., ‘‘From Playing

Field to Battleground,’’ 252, 254, 257.

66. Rominger, Jr. ‘‘From Playing Field to Battleground,’’ 256 and Benjamin Hare, ‘‘Here

comes the Navy: Football at Military Training Centers during World War II,’’ North Cen-

tral College Undergraduate Archives Publication, 2006.

67. Rominger, Jr. ‘‘From Playing Field to Battleground,’’ 257.

68. Wilbur D. Jones, Football! Navy! War!: How Military ‘Lend-Lease’ Players Saved the

College Game and Helped Win World War II (Jefferson, NC: MacFarland, 2009), 16,

131. A contest such as this appears in Robert Altman’s cinematic farce M*A*S*H

(20th Century Fox, 1970).

69. Hare, ‘‘Here comes the Navy,’’ 7; Rominger, Jr. ‘‘From Playing Field to Battleground,’’

255, 260; Sperber, Onward to Victory, 110.

70. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 97-8, 127, 133-4 and Hare, ‘‘Here Comes the Navy,’’ 14.

71. Jones, Football! Navy! War!, 44.

72. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 110-1.

73. Statistics based on data gleaned from Hare, ‘‘Here comes the Navy,’’ 5; MacCambridge,

ESPN College Football Encyclopedia, 1191, 1195.

74. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 110, 113, 116. Attempting to Replicate life at Home Some-

what, ‘‘Bowl Games’’ were played after the 1944 season in Locales such as Algeria, Ber-

muda, Dutch Guinea, England, France, Hawaii, Ireland, Italy, and Iran. Jones, Football!

Navy! War!, 204-5.

Vasquez 371

75. Rominger, ‘‘From Playing Field to Battleground,’’ 262.

76. Ibid., 256.

77. Ibid., 263.

78. Rominger, ‘‘From Playing Field to Battleground,’’ 261, 263-4; MacCambridge, ESPN

College Football Encyclopedia, 77, 82, 91, 113, 121, 124, 278, 367, 412-3, 469-70,

493, 527, 554-5, 593, 602, 655, 657, 671, 689, 768-9, 866, 893-4, 993; Gerry Brown and

Michael Morrison, eds., ESPN Sports Almanac 2009 (New York, NY: Ballantine Books,

2008), 256, 277; Pro Sports Halls of Fame: Football, 1963–1978. Vol. 5 (Danbury, CT:

Grolier Educational, 1997), 76-7, 110-1; Jones, Football! Navy! War!, 64, 66, 68; Man-

delbaum, The Meaning of Sports, 156, 171-2; http://static.nfl.com/static/content/public/

image/history/pdfs/TeamCapsules /Chicago.pdf.

79. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 170.

80. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 344-9. For more on the cheating scandal of 1951, which was

the subject of the movie Code Breakers, for America’s ESPN television network, see Bill

McWilliams, A Return to Glory: The Untold Story of Honor, Dishonor & Triumph at the

United States Military Academy, 1950–53 (Lynchburg, VA: Warwick House, 2000).

81. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 92-4, 112-3, 248-9.

82. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 93-4 and Watterson, College Football, 201.

83. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 168 and Watterson, College Football, 202-3, 208-9.

84. These rules ‘‘Precluded Support from Athletic Boosters.’’ Watterson, College Football,

205, 209.

85. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 249.

86. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 112-3, 248-9.

87. Sperber contends that thirty colleges stopped playing intercollegiate football, but Water-

son puts the number at higher than fifty. Watterson, College Football, 242 and Sperber,

Onward to Victory, 438.

88. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 437, 443.

89. Nevertheless, it should be noted, as a reviewer points out, that newly commissioned offi-

cers often lead military football teams bringing them into close contact with enlisted

troops to build unit cohesion.

90. Michael Mann, States, War and Capitalism: Studies in Political Sociology (Oxford, UK:

Blackwell, 1988), 184-5.

91. Tony Collins, ‘‘English Rugby Union and the First World War,’’ The Historical Journal

45 (2002): 797-817.

Bio

Joseph Paul Vasquez III, is a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at the

University of Central Florida. He is a veteran of the US Army and holds a PhD from the Uni-

versity of Notre Dame. He is currently working on a book manuscript examining the political

constraints imposed by conscript militaries on democracies at war.

372 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)