Commercialized Intercollegiate Athletics and the 1903 Harvard Author(s): Ronald A. Smith Source: The New England Quarterly, Vol. 78, No. 1 (Mar., 2005), pp. 26-48 Published by: The New England Quarterly, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1559707 . Accessed: 05/11/2013 20:50

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This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:50:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CommercializedIntercollegiate Athletics and the 1903 HarvardStadium

RONALD A. SMITH

a fewyears after the War betweenthe Stateswas JUSTconcluded, the newly installed president of threwdown the gauntlet,a gesturehe lived to regret.In his 1869 inauguraladdress, Charles W. Eliot called on the college to excelin sports."There is an aristocracy,"Eliot toldhis audi- ence, "to which sons of Harvardhave belonged,and let us hope, will ever aspireto belong-the aristocracywhich excels in manlysports."' Among those manlysports, Eliot did not mean to includefootball, an activitythe facultyhad bannedin 186o. Butjust as Eliot was assuminghis post,Harvard football was risingfrom its ashes. By 1903,with Eliot stillin the presi- dent'sseat, football had become such a dominantforce in the college'sextracurriculum that a stadiumwas erectedto accom- modatethose eager to watchthe game. "As a spectacle,football is more brutalizingthan prize-fighting, cock-fighting, or bull- fighting,"Eliot protested, but hiscomplaints were drowned out bythe roar of the crowds pouring through the gates and thejin- gle of coins droppinginto universitycoffers." Intercollegiate athletics,the engineEliot hoped would firecollegians' charac- terand Harvard'sreputation, was racingdown the track,other institutionsof higherlearning in hot pursuit.And no one- neitherstudents, nor faculty,nor administrators,nor alumni- had thewill or theway to applythe brakes.

'CharlesW. Eliot,"Inaugural Address," 19 October1869, p. 22, HarvardUniversity Archives,Cambridge, Mass. 'CharlesW. Eliot,1905 AnnualReport to the UniversityOverseers, quoted by John Powers,in "LandmarkCelebration: After loo Years, Still Standing theTest ofTime," Globe, 14 November2003. 26

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Well intothe nineteenthcentury, the curriculumat the na- tion'selite colleges, dry and relativelyunchanging, consisted of rote recitationsfrom the classicsand boringsessions of bibli- callyinspired moral philosophy sandwiched between twice-a- day compulsorychapel services.Students hoping to enliven theirdays oftenmet stiffopposition. From 1636, when Har- vard, the nation's firstinstitution of higher learning,was founded,college presidents and theirfaculties claimed the au- thorityof in loco parentisto assertcontrol over students' lives. In pre-RevolutionaryHarvard, for example, students were pro- hibitedfrom hunting, fishing, or skatingunless they received permissionfrom Harvard officials.3 A 1774 publicationof Yale's regulationsstipulated that "If any Scholarshall play at Hand- Ball, or Foot-Ball,or Bowls in the College-yard,or throwany Thingagainst the College,by whichGlass maybe endangered . he shall be punishedsix pence."4Students regularly re- belled againstthese and the manyother restrictions on their lives, resistancethat occasionallyspilled over into riots.At Princeton,for example, students angry about the qualityof the foodbeing served to themburned down Nassau Hall in 1802, and on otheroccasions professors were injured, a fewfatally. In the earlynineteenth century, a Universityof Virginiastudent killeda professorwho had angeredhim, and in anotherinci- dent, a studentstabbed and killedthe presidentof Oakland College in Mississippi.5 In the late eighteenthcentury and intothe nineteenth,stu- dentsproposed, and the facultyand administrationsometimes approved,an innovation,the extracurriculum,a set of opportu- nitiesin threeareas: the intellectual,the social,and the physi- cal. Studentswanted to read and discussmodern literature, and so firstat Yale, in 1753, and soon in othercolleges throughout

3HarvardCollege Records,vol. 31, p. 154,Harvard Archives. 4The Laws ofYale-College (New Haven: T. & S. Green,1774), p. 11I sFrederickRddolph, The AmericanCollege and University:A History(New York: VintageBooks, 1962), pp. 44, 97-98.

This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:50:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 28 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY the country,they created literary societies and debatingclubs. Theywanted to improvetheir social life,and so in the 1820os and 1830sthey formed fraternities and othercommunal organi- zations.They also demandedopportunities for physical activity. By the mid-nineteenthcentury, when college athletesfound occasionto competeagainst their peers at rivalinstitutions, ath- leticshad alreadybegun to dominatethe extra-curriculum.6 It was not surprisingthat American colleges would initiate sports,first within individual campuses and lateracross them, forthe Englishuniversities, Oxford and Cambridge,had done the same a generationbefore. Once studentsin the elite En- glishinstitutions participated in such sportsas cricketand foot- ball (soccer style),it was onlynatural that American students would followtheir lead. At Harvard,a traditionof "Bloody Monday,"part of fall hazing in whichthe sophomoressought to "annihilate"the incomingfreshmen in a soccerfootball game, was establishedby the 1820os (see fig.1). By the mid-1840s, a Harvardsophomore wrote, "The greatannual battle between the Sophsand the Freshcame offat thebeginning of theterm. We 'licked'them 'all hollow'of course."7 Whilebaseball, , and footballwere popularon a num- ber of collegecampuses, not untilthe adventof the railroadin mid-centurydid intercollegiateathletics become widespread. Harvard'sintercollegiate athletics program was initiatedby stu- dentsin 1852, and fromthe first,it was a commercialaffair. The owner of the Boston,Concord, and MontrealRailroad, eagerto attracta vacationingclientele, offered the Yale crewan all-expenses-paid,eight-day excursion if theycould persuade the Harvardteam to row againstthem on New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee.'Harvard, which had been rowingsince itsfirst rowing club was formedin 1844,accepted the challenge

6Fora morein-depth discussion of the extra-curriculum,see mySports and Free- dom:The Rise of Big-Time College Athletics (New York:Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 13-25. 7"ASophomore in 1845,"Harvard Graduates' Magazine, December 1900, p. 205. 8JamesM. Whiton,"The FirstHarvard-Yale Regatta (1852)," Outlook, June 1901, p. 286, and CharlesF. Livermore,"The FirstHarvard-Yale Boat Race,"Harvard Gradu- ates' Magazine,December 1893,p. 226.

This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:50:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HARVARDSTADIUM 29 fromYale. And so, the quiet summerresort at CenterHarbor became the site of America'sfirst intercollegiate contest. Al- thoughthe two crews had no professionalcoaches nor regi- mentedtraining schedules, they did have commercialpoten- tial-at least the ownersof the railroad,area hotels,and the lake steamerthought so. On theday of the meet,the two teams took a practicerace in the large and heavy-keeledboats thathad been comparedto whale boats. Afterthe mile-and-a-halfcontest, which Harvard capturedby sevenand a halfminutes, the winnersreturned to the wharfand-regaled withale, mineralwater, and brandy- ate a heartymeal, rested a bit followingcigars, and returnedto thewharf for the official race. Harvardrowers were decked out in red,white, and blue outfitsas theireight-oared boat linedup againsttwo white-and-blue-cladYale crews. Framed by Red Hill in the background,Democratic presidentialcandidate GeneralFranklin Pierce and aboutone thousandother specta- tors looked on as Harvardwon again,by about fourlengths. Not for anotherthree years did Yale and Harvardcompete again,a hiatusthat might lead us to assume thatthe Boston, Concord,and MontrealRailroad had notrealized a profitsuffi- cientto justifysponsoring the event once more.9 Rowing,however, not only survived but prospered, as Brown, Pennsylvania,Trinity, and Dartmouthorganized crews in the mid-to-late1850s. By thebeginning of the Civil War, a number of easterncolleges had created rowingclubs. In 1864, Yale hireda professionalrower to coach itsteam, and in themidst of the CivilWar, it succeededin beatingthe Harvardcrew for the firsttime in a dozenyears. In 1870, Harvarddistinguished itself in intercollegiatesport when its college team became the firstto take a lengthytour. The team journeyedas far west as St. Louis, Chicago,and Milwaukeeand, onlya yearafter the transconti- nentalrailroad had been completed,even consideredtraveling

9JamesWhiton, "The FirstHarvard-Yale Regatta (1852)," Outlook,June 19ol, p. 289; CharlesF. Livermore,"The FirstHarvard-Yale Boat Race," HarvardGraduates' December Boston Magazine, 1893,p. 226; Daily EveningTranscript, 4 August1852, p. 2; and New YorkHerald, to August1852, P. 2.

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FIG. i.-The HarvardBloody MondayGame, 1857. Illustrationby WinslowHomer. Harper'sWeekly, vol. 1,1857, p. 489. Collectionof the author. to San Francisco.While on tour,Harvard played not onlycol- lege rivalsand amateurclub teamsbut suchprofessional teams as the PhiladelphiaAthletics, Cincinnati Red Stockings,and Chicago White Stockings.'oOf particularimportance was the Red Stockingsgame. Justthe yearbefore, Cincinnati had be- come the firstteam to pay all of itsplayers, after which it pro- ceeded to win its nextfifty-eight games, one victorybeing over Harvard,30-11, in Cambridge.When Harvardmet the pro team on its westerntour, Cincinnati had onlyrecently lost its firstgame in twoyears. Harvard built on an earlylead and was ahead 17 to 12 goinginto the lastinning. An errantplay by the Harvardthird baseman, though, opened the "floodgates,"and Cincinnatirose to victory.Continuing on its tour,which occu- pied forty-threedays in Julyand August,Harvard concluded its series with a 17-8 record,having lost to professionalteams only.No othersport at Harvard,with the possibleexception of crew,was as importantas baseball.By the mid-187os,however,

"'See mySports and Freedom,p. 57.

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Harvardwas to pursuea coursethat, in less thantwo decades, would have a majorrole in propellingfootball into dominance on thenation's college campuses." In 1846, JohnL. Sibley,longtime librarian at Harvard,de- scribedthe "classbattles" that marked football's origins at Har- vard:"The ball is throwndown among [the players] & the ob- ject of each class is to kickthe other & barktheir shins as much as possible."12The contestmoved one ofthe more sensitive stu- dentsto poeticreflection: Ofthe shins we've cracked, Andnoses we've whacked, Andthe eyeballs we've blacked; Andall in fun!13

"New YorkClipper, 30 July1870, p. 123; and W. D. Sanborn,"Baseball," in The Harvard Book,ed. F. O. Vaille and H. A. Clark,2 vols. (Cambridge:Bigelow, 1875), 2:340. 1"JohnL. Sibley,Private Journal, 27 August1846, vol. 1,p. 74, HarvardArchives. 13Quotedby John A. Blanchard,ed., in The H Bookof Harvard Athletics, 1852-1922 (n.p.: HarvardVarsity Club, 1923),p. 336.

This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:50:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 32 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY At aboutthe same time,Thomas Wentworth Higginson, later a writerof some renown,fondly recalled the '"joyousshouts, the thudof the ball,the sweetsmell of crushedgrass ... [and] the magnificent'rush.' It seemed," Higginsonsaid, "a game for menand giants."''14 In 186o,a yearbefore sectional animosities broke out in civil war, however,the Harvardfaculty banned the game of "vio- lence & brutality"so lovedby its students.'5Staging an elabo- rate ritual,Harvard sophomores displayed their abhorrence of the facultyedict. While over one hundredfreshmen looked on, the sophomoresmarched slowly through town, as a pair of mournerskept beat on muffleddrums. Six pall bearerscarried a six-footcoffin containing the leather-covered bladder, and the remainingsophomores, wearing the tornshirts and pantsremi- niscentof past battles,followed. Four spade bearersthen pro- ceeded to dig a graveon the campusdelta, and the casketwas lowered into the groundas groans,sighs, and lamentations filledthe evening air. The class-appointedelegist took his place. "Exult,ye freshmen,and clap yourhands! The wise men who make big laws around a littletable have stretchedout their armsto encircleyou," he began. "And forthis once, at least, youreyes and 'noses' are protected,you are shieldedbehind theaegis of Minerva,"the Roman goddess of wisdom and war.'6 At other schools-includingBrown, Williams, Yale, and the U.S. MilitaryAcademy-faculty took Harvard's lead and bannedthe sport, yet students continued to breakbones as well as windowsat manyinstitutions of higherlearning. Football, eventhough duly buried, had refusedto die.

In 1869,shortly after Princeton met Rutgersfor the firstin- tercollegiatefootball game, Harvard began playingfootball

14Thomas WentworthHigginson, "The Gymnasium,and Gymnasticsin Harvard College,"in TheHarvard Book, 2:187. 15Sibley,Private Journal, 3 September1855, vol. 1,p. 366. "6Sibley,Private Journal, 3 September186o, vol. 1,pp. 536-40; New YorkClipper, 4 September186o, p. 172.

This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:50:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HARVARDSTADIUM 33 again.Early in thenext decade, studentsorganized the Harvard College Foot Ball Club, forwhich they soon drewup a code of rules.The footballof Princeton,Rutgers, Yale, and Columbia resembledsoccer, but Harvard'sgame was morelike rugby. Ac- cordingto Harvard'srules, a playercould pickup the ball and carryit but,strangely, only if he was beingchased. If the pur- suer abandonedthe chase,regulations stipulated, he wouldcall out,and theball carrierhad to stoprunning as well."If the run- ner did notat once also stop,the cry was takenup bythe whole pack of opponents,"according to The H Book ofHarvard Ath- letics,and the playerwith the ball was forcedto kickit down fieldor pass it to a teammate.17The opportunityto pickup and run withthe ball was a key elementin the developmentof Americanfootball, and, givenfootball's status today, Harvard's choice to forgothe soccer-likeversion of the game forits rugby equivalentwas probablythe most significantdecision ever made in the of history intercollegiateathletics.Is In 1872, Yale playedits firstintercollegiate football match, againstColumbia. Victorious, Yale went on to dominatethe sport.Soon afterYale's firstgame, a westernschool, the Uni- versityof Michigan,challenged Cornell to a contestin Cleve- land,halfway between the two institutions. Cornell students pe- titionedthe facultyto approvethe trip,but the requestwas unanimouslydefeated."19 The school's president,Andrew D. White,who earlierthat year had presenteda rowingshell to the Cornellcrew in hopes thatthey might win the intercollegiate regatta,adamantly refused to sanctionthe Michigan-Cornell contest.His explanationis memorable:"I will not permit30 men to travelfour hundred miles merelyto agitatea bag of wind."20

'7Blanchard,The H Book,p. 348. 'sParkeH. Davis, Football:The AmericanIntercollegiate Game (New York:Charles Scribner'sSons, 1911),pp. 51-56, forthe Princetonand Yale rulesand a discussionof theirdifferences. The codifiedHarvard rules can be foundin Blanchard,The H Book, p. 609. 9'CornellFaculty Minutes, 24 October 1873, Cornell UniversityArchives, Ithaca, N.Y.; and CornellReview, December 1873,p. 201. 2oHowardW. Peckham,The Makingof the Universityof Michigan, 1817-1967 (Ann

This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:50:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 34 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY Despite White'sdismissive remark, interest in the sportwas sufficientlyhigh that the Yale FootballAssociation called fora conventionin mid-October1873 to determinewhether a league,governed by a uniformset of rules,should be formed. Invitationswere sent to Harvard,Columbia, Rutgers,and Princetonbut not to Cornelland Michigan.Harvard, displaying its characteristicpropensity for individualism, chose not to at- tend.The college'sfootball captain, Henry Grant, understand- ing thatnumbers were on the side of the soccer formof the game,explained Harvard's decision. We cannotbut recognize in your game much but brute force, weight, and especially"shin" element. Our game dependsupon running, dodging,and position play. ... We areperfectly aware of our position in regardto other colleges. I assureyou we gavethe matter a fair dis- cussionlast spring. We evenwent as faras topractice and try the Yale game.We gaveit up atonce as hopeless.2 Grant'sprediction about the majorityopinion on footballwas correct.Yale, Princeton,Columbia, and Rutgersagreed to ad- hereto thesoccer rules, and mostother football playing institu- tionsaccepted their leadership. Going its own way, Harvard ac- cepted an invitationfrom McGill Universityfor a series of matchesin the springof 1874. The openingtwo matchestook place in Cambridge:the firstaccording to Harvard'shybrid rulesand usingits roundball; the second withMcGill's more classic rugbyrules and oblong ball. This firstintercollegiate footballcontest between a U.S. collegeand a Canadianone at- tracteda crowd of five hundredspectators, among them a groupof Yale studentscurious about the two varieties of rugby- stylefootball, all willingto paythe rather hefty fifty-cent admis- sions fee. Harvardwon the firstgame; the second ended in a scorelesstie. The McGill athletesbested Harvardin onlyone area,their neat uniforms, traditional English rugby suits of red-

Arbor:University of MichiganPress, 1967), p. 77; Kent Saagendorph,Michigan: The Storyof the University(New York:E. P. Dutton,1948), p. 150; and CornellEra, 31 October1873, p. 60. "HarvardAdvocate, 3 April1874, p. 113.

This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:50:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HARVARDSTADIUM 35 and black-stripedshirts, white pants, caps, and stockings;the Harvardplayers wore raggedywhite undershirts, dark pants, and, tied around their heads, the magenta handkerchiefs sportedby Harvardcrews." Followingthe match,the Harvard studentsagreed that McGill's was preferableto theirown less rigorousversion of the game. As one Harvard journalistnoted, "The rugbygame is in muchbetter favor than thesleepy game played by our men."23 The next fall, Harvard'srugby-style football team visited McGill and, in a contestbefore fifteen hundred spectators at the prestigiousMontreal Cricket Club, scoreda victory(fig. 2). Harvardhad treatedMcGill to a banquetin Boston,funded by gatereceipts, where champagne flowed freely; McGill returned the favorand, the nextday, hosted a spectatorsport not avail- able in Boston,a foxhunt.24 Besides McGill,the only school that played a formof football compatiblewith Harvard's was TuftsCollege. In the springof 1875, Tuftsand Harvardmet in the firstintercollegiate rugby game betweentwo U.S. teams.That Tuftswon the game was soon forgotten,especially by Harvard.The Harvardfreshman baseballvictory over Yale thatday was muchmore newsworthy. As the Harvard Advocatereported: "Our Elevens are not in practiceevery day, as our Nines are."s25Two years later,the Harvardeleven scored the victorythat had eluded themin the firstmatch. In thefall of 1875,when Harvard rejected an offerto join the soccer-playingschools for the second time,Yale relented.Al- ways mentionedsecond in any sentencecontaining the word "Harvard,"Yale wantedto playits rivalin all sports,including football.Because Yale needed Harvardmuch more than Har- vardneeded Yale, Yale decided to playHarvard using "conces- sionary"rules-rules thatessentially defined rugby, not soccer.

"Blanchard,The H Book,pp. 360-63. 23HarvardAdvocate, 14 May 1874,p. 8o. 24HarvardAdvocate, 30 October 1874, pp. 35-36, and Harvard Magenta,20 No- vember1874, pp. 53-54. 25HarvardAdvocate, 14 May 1875,p. 80.

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FIG. 2.-The Harvard-McGillFootball Game, Montreal,1874. Harvard Graduates' Magazine, vol. 13, 1905,p. 423. Collectionof the author.

This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:50:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HARVARDSTADIUM 37 Though a Princetonstudent writing in the Nassau Literary Magazineclaimed that "we standto lose muchand gainlittle by a change,"Princeton too-worried that it mightbe dropped fromthe eternaltriangle of Harvard,Yale, and Princeton- subscribedto the rugbyrules. In the fallof 1876, agreements were formalizedas studentsfrom Harvard, Yale, Princeton,and Columbia met to adopt standardrugby rules and to formthe IntercollegiateFootball Association. The two strongestteams, theydecided further,would meet each year on Thanksgiving Day in New York City to contendfor the championshipof rugbyfootball." The inauguralchampionship game, between Yale and Prince- ton,took place in 1876.Walter Camp capturedthe yardage that carriedYale to victory.First as Yale's studentrepresentative to the IntercollegiateFootball Association and thenas advisorto footballand athleticsat Yale, a role he filledfor fiftyyears, Camp influencedthe developmentof the new, hybridsport. Withinonly half a dozen years,he and his cohorthad trans- formedEnglish rugbyfootball into the Americangame we knowtoday. The chaos of the rugbyscrum, out of whichthe ball could flyin any direction,metamorphosed into the con- trolledscrimmage, marked by a set numberof attemptsor downs.In its originalconfiguration, the team had threedowns to makefive yards, and so the fieldwas chalkedin thoseinter- vals, resultingin the famed"gridiron." It was students,then, who gave initialform to what would become the dominant spectatorsport in America.As Camp,often called theFather of AmericanFootball, would comment: "Neither the facultiesnor othercritics assisted in buildingthe structureof collegeathlet- ics,it is a structurewhich students unaided have builded.""27

By the 189os, the ThanksgivingDay college footballgame was attractinghuge crowds.Launching each winter'ssocial sea-

6Davis,Football, pp. 66-70. 27WalterCamp, "College Athletics," New Englander,January 1885, p. 139.

This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:50:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 38 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY son, the eventwas embracedby New York City'selite. Cor- neliusVanderbilt, the Van Rensselaers,Mrs. William C. Whit- ney,James Varnum, and Mrs. Douglass Stewart,the matron dominatingthe New Yorknewspaper society pages, could be seen at the games.'sThe 1892 and 1893 contestsbetween Yale and Princetonepitomized the event'sheight of splendor.Over thirtythousand spectators attended Yale's 12-0 victoryover Princetonin 1892, and well over fortythousand watched Princeton's6-o win in 1893,a game playeddespite that year's bankingcrisis and depression.The 1893 gamewas precededby a four-hourparade up FifthAvenue to Harlemand thenon to the game site, ManhattanField. Spectatorslined the route, eager to see the resplendentcoaches and fours,blanketed in the schools'colors, and to catcha glimpseof society'sbest and the collegiatewarriors they championed. Once at Manhattan Field, privilegedticket holders sat in box seats valued at the enormoussum of fivedollars, ten timesthe cost of attendinga game. Mrs. Stewart,a newspaperre- ported,"might have poised as the goddessof Yale, wearinga Yale gown,real universitystyle, with trimmings of blue,"while Mrs. Whitneydisplayed her "caf6au laitbroadcloth, with gar- net and sable trimmings,made a la Russianand royallyfitted." While mostoohed and aahed overthe extravagance,social crit- ics deploredthe conspicuous consumption that had wrappedit- selfaround the college contest.29 Harvardremained immune from such criticismfor one rea- son: it was largelyabsent from the granddisplay. Only two of the famedtriad, Yale and Princeton,consistently took part in the gloriousoccasion; in fact,in the last two decades of the nineteenthcentury, they failed to meetin New Yorkonly twice. Once Wesleyantook the place of Princetonwhen its president bannedhis institution's participation after a disputewith Yale in

-8See,e.g., New YorkHerald, 27 November1890, p. 9; 27 November1891, p. 2; and 25 November 1892, P. 3. "gNewYork Herald, 25 November1892, p. 3, and 1 December 1893,p. 3; Richard HardingDavis, "The Thanksgiving-DayGame," Harper's Weekly, 9 December 1893, pp. 1170-71.

This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:50:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HARVARDSTADIUM 39 the previousyear's game. It was a longday for Wesleyan, which lostto Yale 61-o. Harvard,though generally more competitive than Wesleyan, fairedlittle better in football.The facultiesof Harvardand Yale, who threedecades beforehad buriedthe game on both cam- puses, could no longereffectively block the sport,and yetthe Harvardfaculty tried to do just that.The freedomstudents had exercisedin creatingintercollegiate athletics had notbeen met withan equal amountof responsibility, they insisted, which had a deleteriouseffect on academicstandards and the good name of theinstitution. Activities such as theThanksgiving Day game in "sinful"New York,the baseballteam's extended trips during whichit playedprofessional teams, and theweeklong festivities surroundingthe Harvard-Yaleregatta perplexed and disturbed the faculty.Moreover, increasingly eager to win intercollegiate matches,the studentsand alumniwho administeredathletics had begunhiring professional coaches. In 1882, concernedthat the baseball schedule had been extended to twenty-eight games,nineteen of which were played beyond Cambridge, and thatprofessional coaches were being hiredwithout their ap- proval,the Harvardfaculty formed an athleticcommittee of threefaculty members to overseeathletics at thecollege.30 One of the committee'sfirst actions was to firethe profes- sionalbaseball coach, and a fewyears later, it firedthe profes- sional crew coach as well; both actionsangered students.3' In 1883,in an effortto tamethe roughand tumbleof football,the committeescratched a rule thatrefrained from penalizing the act of "strikingwith [a] closed fist"until after a second infrac- tion.32Following the 1884 season,when the FacultyAthletic

3oHarvard AthleticCommittee Minutes, 15 June1882, HarvardArchives; John W. White,"The Constitution,Authority, and Policyof the Committee on theRegulation of AthleticSports," Harvard Graduates' Magazine, January 1893, p. og09,and Dudley A. Sargent,"History of the Administrationof IntercollegiateAthletics in the ,"American Physical Education Review 15 (1910): 252. 31'HarvardAthletic Committee Minutes, 27 September1882; and J.W. White,W. E. Byerly,and D. A. Sargent,athletic committee, to Mr. Storrow,crew captain,19 De- cember1894, in HarvardAthletic Committee Minutes, Harvard Archives. 32HarvardAthletic Committee Minutes, 22 November1883 and 12 March1884.

This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:50:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 40 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY Committeewatched contests closely and claimedthat football was "brutal,demoralizing to playersand spectators,and ex- tremelydangerous," the committee banned the sport outright.:3" Studentswere incensed and thealumni outraged. Bending to thepressure, the faculty voted in 1885 to expandthe committee by twomembers, one representingthe studentpopulation and one the alumni.Even with such modestrepresentation, the alumniand studentswere able to push theiragenda. Football had been dormantonly a yearwhen the athleticcommittee de- terminedthat the objectionablefeatures of the game had van- ished,even thoughno majorrule changesto preventbrutality had been instituted.By 1888, less than six yearsafter it had been formed,the HarvardAthletic Committee had been radi- callyrevamped. In its new incarnation,three students-often the captainsof baseball,crew, and football-andthree alumni joined thethree sitting faculty members, thus bumping the fac- ultyfrom the heightsof uncontestedpower to the depthsof loyal opposition.With this new configuration,the governing boardof the college, the Corporation, granted the athletic com- mittee"the entire supervision and controlof all athleticsports," despitethe factthat the committeewas also, at the same time, "subjectto the authorityof the Facultyof the College.""34The confusionover where power lay-faculty, president, governing board,or athleticcommittee-was a majorquestion for all col- leges,not just Harvard,in thelatter years of the nineteenth and throughoutthe twentiethcentury. One thingwas clear,how- ever: the empirethat students had builtwas no longertheirs alone.

As the influenceof the studentswaned, that of the alumni waxed.A primeexample of that influence was the alumni'srole

"HarvardAthletic Committee Minutes, 25 November1884, and "The Development of Football,"Outing, November 1889, pp. 146-47. 34"Reportof the Overseers,Presidents and Fellows,"15 October 1888, Series II, U.A. II, 10.7.2, HarvardArchives.

This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:50:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HARVARD STADIUM 41 in buildingthe firststeel-reinforced concrete stadium in the world.As earlyas the mid-189os,when a numberof faculty memberswere seeking to ban football,the athletic committee beganexploring the possibility of constructinga fitting space forthe game. Fromthe outset,the footballteam had playedmost of its gameson campus,where wooden bleachers were set up for spectators,but in time the fields on campuswere gobbled up as the university'sinfrastructure spread. Football was removed acrossthe river,into Boston, and ontoSoldiers Field, which athleticcommittee chairman Joseph Beale called "a flattreeless fieldsurrounded by shantiesand mud."35Daniel Turner,a memberof Harvard's department ofengineering, described the terrainas composedof "clay, loam, and muck,"which, after a lightrainfall, became "soft and boggy"; others thought that the area was malarial.36Nevertheless, the fieldwas drainedand preparedfor use; as a finishingtouch, wooden bleachers were erectedon the sidelines. PresidentEliot grumbled about the "more and morethou- sandsof hideouswooden seats in highbanks ... builtevery yearon SoldiersField." Soldiers Field groundscould not be "madebeautiful so longas thosesqualid banks of seats"were permittedto be erectedeach year, he insisted."7Eliot not only detestedfootball but, holding to an outmodedamateur ideal, disdainedthe presence of spectatorsduring athletic contests. Ofcourse, if no spectatorswere present, no seatswould be re- quired.Joseph Beale, the athleticcommittee's faculty chair- man,disagreed with Eliot's position.A structurewith the "beautyand antique charm of the Greek stadia" would dignify thegame, Beale argued,if only a wealthybenefactor could be locatedto fundthe project."8 Eventually Eliot relented. If seats

35JosephH. Beale, athleticcommittee chairman, to CharlesEliot, president, 23 June 1896, Eliot Papers,box 128,folder 615, HarvardArchives. 3:Daniel L. Turnerto Ira N. Hollis,9 April1897, Eliot Papers,box iio, folder143; Beale to Eliot,19 May 1897, Eliot Papers,box 128,folder 615. 37Reportof the President of Harvard College, 1898-1899, pp. 42-43. 8"Bealeto Eliot,8 July1896, Eliot Papers,box 128,folder 615.

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FIG. 3.-The HarvardCollege Stadiumduring the Harvard-Yalegame on 25 Novem- ber 1911.Courtesy of HarvardUniversity Athletics. were inevitable,at least the school should build "permanent and good-lookingseats along the sides of the football field.""39 By 1901, shortlybefore President William McKinley was as- sassinatedand Harvard'sown Teddy Roosevelt,class of 188o, assumed the presidency,Eliot reportedthat the athleticcom- mitteewould be replacingthe cheap wooden seatswith "seats builtof iron covered with concrete," a capitalimprovement that would be financedwith previous gate receipts,a fundamount- ing to $33,000.40 Withina year, the class of 1879 pledged $100,000 toward a concrete-and-steelstadium. Despite his viewsabout the sport of football,Eliot was a pragmaticman: he did not recommendthat the Corporationdecline the gift.He did,however, make it clearthat "the University bears no partof the risksof the experiment,for it will not have contributeda dollarto the cost of the structure."4'Under the leadershipof Ira Hollis,a Harvardengineering professor and head ofthe ath-

39Reportof the President of Harvard College, 1899-19oo, p. 35. 4*Reportof the President of Harvard College, 19oo-19ol, p. 1g. thePresident Harvard 4'Reportof of College,1902-1903, p. 41.

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letic committee,groundbreaking commenced in the springof 1903; withinsix months, the stadium was complete.The perma- nentstructure seated nearly thirty-five thousand people; capac- itycould be expandedto aboutforty thousand when additional, temporaryseating was set up in the open end of the horseshoe stadium(see fig.3). The giftfrom the class of 1879 covered approximatelyone-third of the finalcost of $320,000,with gate receiptscollected duringthe next few years makingup the difference.42 In the shortterm, the constructionof the stadiummust have seemed likea curse.Facing off against Dartmouth on christen- ing day, 16 November1903, Harvardtook a drubbing(11-o), the firstever fromits rivalto the north.A week later,Yale pasted Harvard16-o, the secondof sevenconsecutive shutouts inflictedon Harvardby the New Haven Bulldogs.By contrast, Harvard'slast home game beforeit tookpossession of the new

42"Reportof the JointCommittee on the Regulationof AthleticSports," Harvard Graduates'Magazine, June 1907, p. 660, and "Yale's Football Team Defeated Har- vard,"New YorkTimes, 22 November1903, P. 3.

This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:50:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 44 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY stadiumwas supremelymemorable, as theteam squeaked out a one-pointvictory (12-11) over a team fromthe CarlisleIndian School,an industrialschool with a missionto inculcateNative Americanyouth with white, mainstream cultural values. The Indianswere coached by Glenn "Pop" Warner,who would go on to coach JimThorpe, possibly the greatestathlete of the twentiethcentury, win nationalchampionships at the Univer- sityof and threeRose Bowl gamesfor Stanford Uni- versity,and createPop WarnerYouth Football in 1929.43 In the 1903 Harvardgame, Warner opened the second half witha trickplay. Carlislereceived the ball, whichthey deftly concealed under the jersey of one player,who nonchalantly prancedinto the end zone beforeHarvard discovered the ruse. A youngdebutante from Brookline recalled the game. In a let- terto her sister,the wife of Bill Reid,who wouldbecome Har- vard'snext football coach,44 she wrote: It wasrather funny thou to see theIndian go shootingdown the field withthe ball up hisback and the other Indians were wild with joy that itworked. I supposeperhaps Harvard ought to haveknown where it wasbut I shouldn'tthink they had any right to conceal the ball. It was thelast game played at Soldier'sField for they play Penn next week at Phila.And Dartmouth the week after is inthe new stadium, which is goingto be perfectlyfine I think.45 Followingan awaygame in whichit scoreda victoryover Penn, Harvard returnedto Cambridge.Thenceforth, the football teamwould cross the into Boston, where for each and everyhome game of the nextcentury, it wouldstruggle to bestits intercollegiate rivals.

43JamesM. Smallwood,"Warner, Glenn Scobey(Pop)," The ScribnerEncyclopedia of AmericanLives: SportFigures, 2 vols. (New York:Charles Scribner'sSons, 2003), 2:482-83. 4Bill Reid kepta diaryin 19o5,from spring practice to the Yale game.It is the best primarysource on intercollegiateathletics that I have discovered.See myedition, Big- TimeFootball at Harvard,1905: The Diary of Coach Bill Reid (Urbana:University of IllinoisPress, 1994). 45LouiseLincoln, Brookline, Mass., to ChristineReid, Belmont,Calif., 1 November 1903, Thomas StetsonPersonal Collection, Falmouth, Mass. (Stetsonis Reid's grand- son.)

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Harvardhad long been a pacesetterin highereducation: alongwith Johns Hopkins, it pioneeredgraduate education; it raisedadmission and graduationstandards for the professional schools;it inauguratedthe case studymethod in itslaw school; it improvedpractices, such as requiringa bachelor'sdegree to be admittedto its degree-grantingmedical school; it freedits divinityschool fromthe trammelsof sect; it made attendance at religiousservices voluntary;it multipliedundergraduate electives;it created a universitystudent union; and it inno- vatedsabbatical leaves forits faculty.46In at leasttwo areas, al- thoughthere was significanttension between them, the uni- versitywas a pacesetterin athleticsas well: it createda faculty athleticcommittee, whose authority was recognized,to set lim- its on intercollegiateathletics; and it builta stadiumthat set a standardother institutionsof higherlearning would want to emulate or surpass. If the Harvard faculty,its voice soon muted by the presence of studentsand alumnion the HarvardAthletic Committee, had had fullsway, intercollegiate athleticswould have been seriouslycurtailed, if allowed to existat all. And yet it was preciselythis committee that took leadershipfor buildingthe world'sfirst permanent concrete stadium. There is no questionthat a permanentstadium hastened the commercializationof football,the leadingmoney generator for athleticsfrom the 188os to our day. For thatvery reason, a numberof individuals,both within and withoutthe academy, criticizedthe move. Shortlyafter the stadiumwas built, a muckraker,Henry Needham, proclaimed:"Harvard stadium standsbefore the college worldtoday as a glorificationof the gate money,the evil side of athletics."47Ira Hollis,the faculty

46HenryJames, Charles W. Eliot: Presidentof ,1869-1909, 2 vols.(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930), 2:61-64, 170-71; and Hugh Hawkins,Between Harvardand America:The Educational Leadership of Charles W. Eliot (New York:Ox- fordUniversity Press, 1972), pp. 59, 80. 47HenryB. Needham,"The College Athlete,"McClure's Magazine, June 1905, p. 268.

This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:50:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 46 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY memberheading the athleticcommittee when the stadiumwas built,soon regrettedhis leadershipon the matter.Just two years afterits ,he noted thathe was "not thor- oughlyconvinced of the wisdomof buildingit, and if I had it to do over again, realizingits cost, I should not consentto its Moorfield another member construction.'"48 Storey, faculty who sat on the committeewith Hollis, also condemnedthe stadium.Chastising the class of 1879 for its contributionto its construction,Storey wrote, "Twenty-five years ago Harvard College taughtits studentsto care for nothingso much as forathletic sports," and he called its $1oo,ooo gift"misplaced expenditures."49Even PresidentEliot's successor,A. Lawrence Lowell, admittedthat Harvardhad made a mistakein build- ing such a mammothmonument to football,and he proposed limitingintercollegiate competition to one contestper year, presumablyagainst Yale.50 However,while such criticswere vocal and prominent,they were also undoubtedlyin the minority. Approximatelya decade afterHarvard built its concretesta- dium,its two principalcompetitors, Yale and Princeton,con- structedtheirs, both largerthan Harvard'swith Yale's nearly twicethe size. FollowingWorld War I, collegestadiums sprang up acrossthe nation, and Harvard'swas oftentaken as thepoint of departurefor other institutions hoping to playbig-time foot- ball in the styleof Harvard,Yale, and Princeton.In other words,with its stadium,Harvard set the termsfor the athletics race a centuryago. By the 1920s, the school'sadministrators and governingboard considered fillingin the horseshoe and increasingthe stadium'sseating capacity to oversixty thou- sand, and in 1927, the athleticcommittee voted to build an eighty-thousand-seatstadium. Not to be outdone,Tucker Burr, speakingfor his class of 1879, called fora stadiumof "at least

48Quotedby Needham, in "The College Athlete," p. 268. 49Storeyquoted in "Reportof the Joint Committee on theRegulation of Athletic Sports,"Harvard Graduates' Magazine, June 1907, p. 660. 5"Greekvs. RomanSports," Outlook, 22 January1930, p. 136.

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100,000, and preferably150,000ooo" in 1928.5~That none of those stadiumswas builtspeaks to Harvard'sserious, ongoing debate overthe place of athletics,especially football, in higher education. The commercialismthat intercollegiate athletics in general and stadiumbuilding in particulargenerated has now spread throughoutAmerican universities and into otherareas. Derek Bok, presidentof Harvardfrom 1971 to 1991, has addressed thatcreeping commercialism in his Universitiesin theMarket- place: The Commercializationof Higher Education.5"Bok's concernis multifaceted.He decriesthe entrepreneurial univer- sitythat conducts corporate-funded research in secrecy;that in- vitesfor-profit internet companies funded by venture capitalists to offerprograms that are principallyintended to makemoney forother university purposes at the expenseof students;that condonesindustry-subsidized educational programs for medical doctors;that creates conflicts of interestin researchon human subjects;and that engagesin otherquestionable commercial practices.With its first intercollegiate crew meet in 1852 and its new stadiumin 1903, Harvard adopted an entrepreneurial model thatis now commonplacein nearlyall facetsof univer- sitylife in the twenty-firstcentury. And while Harvard has, for over a century,maintained a beautifulstadium now listedas a nationalhistorical treasure, some mightargue thatwhat grew out of the firstcommercially sponsored intercollegiate athletic conteston Lake Winnipesaukee,New Hampshire,and the first footballstadium built a half-centurylater has notbeen entirely salutary.

51"HarvardAthletic Association Statement of Assets and Liabilitiesas of28 February 1923,"President Lowell Papers, 1922-25, folder 6A; HarvardAthletic Committee Min- utes,12 December 1927;Tucker Burr to WilliamBingham, Harvard Athletic Director, 17 April1928; and "Meetingof the HarvardUniversity Planning Board, 30 April1928," PresidentLowell Papers,1925-28, folder 72B, HarvardArchives. The HarvardBoard of Overseersbelieved that the present53,000 seats (permanentand temporary)were adequate and that no new stadiumor bowl should be built (see HarvardOverseers Minutes,15 May 1928). "Derek Bok, Universitiesin theMarketplace: The Commercializationof Higher Ed- ucation(Princeton: Press, 2003).

This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:50:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 48 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY RonaldA. Smithtaught sport history at Penn State University from1968 to 1996,when he retiredas ProfessorEmeritus. He has writtenover one hundredarticles and threebooks on col- lege sport history,including SPORTSAND FREEDOM: THE RISE OF BIG-TIME COLLEGE ATHLETICS (Oxford UniversityPress, 1988), BIG-TIME FOOTBALL AT HARVARD,1905: THE DIARY OF COACH BILL REID (University of Illinois Press, 1994); and PLAY-BY-PLAY:RADIO, TV, AND BIG-TIME COLLEGE ATHLETICS (JohnsHopkins UniversityPress, 2001). He is cur- rentlyworking on thesecond of a three-bookseries begun with SPORTSAND FREEDOM.

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