History of College Football Review

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, figures, events, and concepts from the history of college football lectures, from its early origins in the Ivy League to its cultural and societal impact, including racial dynamics and major reforms.

Notre Dame's 1931-1937 Team Philosophy

Preferred to play and potentially lose to the best teams rather than dominate weaker opponents.

First Forward Pass in College Football

Introduced in a game between Notre Dame and Army.

Midwestern KKK (1920s)

Primarily anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant, believing immigrants held more loyalty to the Pope than the United States.

Knute Rockne

Notre Dame's football coach who used the team to unite Irish people facing discrimination and was instrumental in the team being called 'Fighting Irish' due to confrontations with Klansmen.

Knute Rockne's Innovations

Engaged people with his personality, used psychology, broadcast games for free on radio, allowed cameras at practices, gave lecture series, opened coaching schools, and became America's first celebrity coach with brand endorsements.

George Gipp

A Notre Dame player whose academic expulsion was overridden due to his value to the football team, highlighting the early influence of athletics.

Carnegie Report (1929)

A report that reformed college athletics, criticizing aspects like recruiting unqualified students, consuming too much time for intellectual activities, large stadiums, inflated coaches' salaries, and rising attendance.

Carnegie Report's Findings on Player Treatment

Identified practices such as players being paid under the table, given 'no-show' jobs, offered off-campus apartments, provided painkillers, pressured to return to play, and given access to fancy trainers.

Gates Report (1931)

Proposed controversial ideas for college athletics including cutting athletic dorms, shortening seasons, eliminating off-season training, and promoting intramural sports.

Identity Foreclosure

The psychological process of beginning to cope with the end of a piece of one's identity before it actually concludes.

Amos Alonzo Stagg

University of Chicago's coach in the 1920s, known for establishing college football as a grand 'spectacle' and a national model for economic engagement around games.

Stagg's Innovations for College Football

Established football as a spectacle, advocated for longer seasons and stadium building, involved non-university people, linked philanthropy to winning, connected football dominance to academic prestige, introduced scoreboards and advertisements, and developed modern recruiting.

'Student-Athlete'

A term created by the NCAA in the 1950s primarily to avoid having to pay players and to circumvent workman's compensation claims.

University of Chicago Shutting Down Football (1939)

Occurred due to declining attendance, the rise of high school football, Notre Dame's popularity, the university's adoption of crazy academic standards, Stagg's departure, and President Hutchins' belief that football had no place in a university.

President Hutchins' View on College Football

Believed that 'Football, fraternities, & fun have no place at a university' and were introduced to entertain those who shouldn't be enrolled.

Post-Civil War Goals of Former Slaves

Centered on acquiring property, being left alone, changing names, reuniting families, creating schools, and developing vibrant black business infrastructure.

'Psychological Wage'

A term describing how poor whites were encouraged to feel superior to black people, even if their own economic status was low, to maintain social hierarchy.

White Southerners' Post-Emancipation Goals

Aimed to reinforce black people's perceived inferiority and force them back into agricultural labor, often through systems like sharecropping.

Sharecropping

An agricultural system that kept black farmers in debt and beholden to white landowners, often receiving only a small or nonexistent portion of crop profits.

SEC (Southeastern Conference)

A college athletic conference whose formation and cultural significance are often linked to promoting regional sectionalism, with its geographic footprint largely overlapping the former Confederacy.

Grandfather Clause

A discriminatory legal provision used in the South that restricted voting rights only to those whose grandfathers had been eligible to vote, effectively disenfranchising African Americans.

Convict Leasing

A system where jails would arrest black individuals for minor crimes, then force them to work on farms, often to death, paralleling a new form of forced labor.

Reasons College Football is Important in the South

Rooted in the South's history of violence, the Civil War's legacy (inferiority complex), lack of professional sports, bragging rights, finding common ground, honor culture, masculinity, and providing a bridge to university for uneducated people.

Walter Camp (Yale)

Known as the 'Father of College Football' for his instrumental role in planning the sport and establishing many of its initial rules over a decade.

Ivy League Origins of College Football

Dominated by Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and UPenn, initially designed for wealthy individuals with eligibility rules favoring those who could afford to play.

Thanksgiving 1973 Game (NYC)

A pivotal event that transformed college football into a big business, characterized by fan events, extensive press coverage, and seating arranged by economic class.

Charles Elliot

President of Harvard, who despite the university's extensive investment in football (spring practice, medical staff), criticized the sport for detracting from academic reputation, entertaining non-collegiate society, consuming student time, and hindering academic ability.

Charles Elliot's Reforms for College Football

Proposed banning freshmen from playing, eliminating neutral site games, limiting athletes to one sport, and having football played only every other year to allow for rest and academic focus.

William Lewis

The first black player at Harvard, who, despite experiencing celebrity treatment and parades, was not treated like other black students at the university, highlighting the early complexities of race and athletics.

First Wave of Black Athletes in the Ivy League (1920s-1930s)

Comprised exceptional students who excelled both academically and athletically, raising questions about whether cheers were for the uniform or the individual.