Sports in America

by James A. Michener

  And some colleges may have to drop football altogether. If they do, what will be the consequences? A good deal of legend has grown up in answer to this question, and at one time I accepted most of it. For example, I remember when St. Jude’s discontinued its football program; the predictions were pretty dire, and I always thought the college had escaped only because it shifted quickly to basketball, whose successful teams took away the sting.

  I believed that if a college or a university dared to drop football, it would lose alumni support, meet with bitter criticism from the state legislature, suffer a drop in student enrollment, and generally hit the downward toboggan. But now we have an objective study of just what does happen. Felix Springer’s Appendix I to the Hanford report grapples with this question: ‘What actually happened to those 151 senior colleges who gave up football in the years 1939–74, with particular attention to alumni support, legislative reaction, maintenance of school spirit and diversion of attention to other sports?’

  Springer’s list contains many minor institutions whose names would not be readily recognized, but also many colleges of distinction, some of which had once been football powers:

  Even from this small sampling, one can see the concentration of schools from the eastern seaboard where preoccupation with football has sharply diminished in the last four decades. Here are Springer’s findings.

  First, one must keep in mind the circumstances that led to the discontinuation, and almost always the major consideration was money. The average school was pumping some $250,000 to $500,000 a year into a program that was providing no championships, few winners and little student participation.

  Second, almost every school that quit had a won-lost average below .500; students, alumni and the paying public were losing interest in such a drab performance. Numerous respondents said that if their students had continued to support the team, it would have been continued, but that without student support, there was really no reason for continuation.

  Third, an obviously faltering football program led alumni and the general public to question the ability of the school’s administration to carry on its other affairs respectably. Thus the football program was not only of itself negative but it was also casting the whole reputation of the school in a negative light.

  Fourth, those schools which felt themselves forced to surrender a once big-time program often said that they did so because of their situation in a large urban area which brought in successful professional teams which preempted public support.

  Fifth, to compete successfully against the professionals would require at least $1,500,000 a year for many years, and even this would not ensure success. Football had simply priced itself out of existence.

  Sixth, at least one school dropped football because of scandalous behavior on the part of the athletic department in illegal recruiting.

  What were the consequences of quitting? To an astonishing degree, no visible consequence at all, except that the dropping often served as a catalyst for improving the rest of the athletic program. Alumni giving did not drop. Alumni did not sever connections with their schools. Student applications for entrance did not diminish. And state legislatures did not cut yearly grants. In fact, businessmen and legislators alike tended to agree that when the school stopped pouring money down the football rathole it gave evidence of managerial responsibility; its reputation was enhanced rather than damaged. Springer notes that many schools launched successful fund-raising drives coincident with dropping football, as if having done so were evidence of the school’s determination to improve its general posture.

  A major consequence is one I have alluded to indirectly in discussing St. Jude’s. The better Catholic colleges were able to shift from big-time football directly into big-time basketball, and to make considerable money while doing so. Other colleges tried to do the same, but with less success. The differential might be that the Catholic schools had homogeneous student bodies accustomed to big-time sports, and they were able to shift their loyalties to basketball, or that Catholic schools were apt to be located in cities, where basketball was a popular sport.

  Springer is not enthusiastic about club football and intramural leagues as a substitute for a big-time varsity. He says such programs start enthusiastically, then peter out after the originating body of students departs. There is a real advantage in intercollegiate competition.

  On the moral side, almost every college or university that dropped football announced that it would honor athletic scholarships through the athlete’s year of graduation; most of the recipients had dreams of a professional career and shifted immediately to some other school. And among the few who did stay in school with a full scholarship but no obligation to play, not one said that he appreciated this opportunity to study. All felt they had been cheated of a chance to play professional ball.

  Finally, throughout all the schools there seemed to be an undercurrent of relief that they were through with the scholarship racket, the athletic dormitories, the necessity of providing tutoring for boys unable to meet ordinary scholastic requirements. But as I have previously indicated, the Catholic schools that freed themselves of the football burden quickly found themselves saddled with a basketball albatross, because, unfortunately, basketball players tend to be even more poorly qualified than football players.

  But the bottom line of Springer’s report is that nothing happened. If the school took pains to keep its alumni and its surrounding community informed, if it explained the financial problem, if it carefully spelled out its reasoning to its student body, everyone accepted the conclusion as inevitable. Obviously this does not mean that Notre Dame would be free to drop football tomorrow, or Alabama, or Texas; they could not cite any reasons that would be persuasive, and if good reasons were found, they would not be accepted by either their local constituency or their national fans. Such schools are obligated to provide nationwide entertainment and they would be delinquent if they sought to avoid this responsibility. But the average institution, if it persuades its followers that it is in a position of financial suicide, can do pretty much as it wishes, especially if it argues that by so doing, the school’s financial and educational postures will be improved.

  During my research on these lugubrious topics I tried never to lose sight of the fact that sports should be fun, and I occupied my spare moments with the pleasant diversion of trying to determine where in America the college football fans were craziest; in other words, where was the nut capital of the nation?

  I visited eight universities in some depth, and could logically have voted for any one. Michigan seemed a special case, a center of academic excellence much like Juvenal’s ideal of a sound mind in a sound body. Year after year they produced absolutely topflight teams, only to see the gonfalons awarded to others; to sustain heroic partisanship after such disappointments required fortitude, and the Michigan fanatics had it.

  I lived for a while near the University of Colorado, whose fans will believe anything. They attend games in that marvelous stadium set against the Rockies, and through each October assure each other, ‘We’re number one,’ and even in late November they keep saying the same thing, when they ought to know better.

  To attend a game at Notre Dame, staying at the college inn a short distance from the stadium, and to watch the medieval mania that settles upon the institution as game time approaches is to see football at its best. If a stranger to this country could attend only one football game to inform himself as to what the game was all about, it should be at Notre Dame. Fans here must be the most loyal in America, but the exalted reputation of their school prevents them from becoming quite as nutty as those attached to competing schools.

  I grew up inside the sphere of Penn State influence and had participated in its maniacal partisanship. This university serves a gracious purpose in keeping alive in the northeast the tradition of big-time football: a frosty day, a long ride through rural Pennsylvania, the little mountain town with no industry except the university, the Nittany h
ills in bright fall colors, tailgate parties, some with a selection of hot dishes cooked on Coleman stoves, and a well-coached team rolling up its next victory. Those are pleasant memories. And I find innocent amusement in the way a Penn State fan can watch his team face one real opponent and ten teams called East Podunk State Teachers and then claim that once again Penn State is national champion. The hickory trees in the coal region produce some great football nuts.

  I had known Ohio State University rather intimately and had often expressed wonder at the hysteria which gripped the city of Columbus during football season. In the spring of 1970, in a town east of Columbus, some beer-drinking students at Kent State University caused minor damage along saloon row and later, in frustration over the war in Vietnam, had burned the ROTC building. Ohio officials, who recognized rebellion when they saw it, summoned armed guardsmen, who subsequently shot and killed four students. In November of that year Woody Hayes led Ohio State to a glorious 20–9 victory over Michigan, and the students fairly tore Columbus apart, causing substantial damage to property and considerable risk to life, but the same Ohio officials saw no need to call out the guard, because to show such high-spirited support of the football team was not only understandable; it was laudable proof of good citizenship.

  And one would have to rate Texas high. To see a football game in Austin with the Lone Star hoop-la, the stadium filled with fans screaming ‘Hook ’em, Horns,’ the team roaring down the field, the gigantic band playing marches, and the whirly-girly majorettes performing is, as the announcers say, ‘something else.’ The band is a state treasure, and the wealthy rancher who supports it a state hero, because in Texas they take football seriously. When the chancellor of the vast system had to fire the president recently, the only reason announced was that the latter had not been judicious in whom he invited to sit in the university box at the football games. The State of Texas could confer no higher accolade, and this courtesy ought to be dispensed with an eye to keeping legislators happy.

  But as my comparisons continued, the competition began to focus on two sites: Nebraska and Alabama—and to my chagrin I found that I lacked character. Whichever state I visited last seemed the winner.

  I flew out to Nebraska to watch as an entire state went bananas over football. Ranchers rode in from three hundred miles away, dressed all in red, they and their wives, and they painted the town the same color. At two in the afternoon on a Saturday the stadium was a pulsating red mass. Once I stopped at a town in the remote southwest corner of the state, and the local bank had purchased a monstrous billboard to proclaim ‘Go Big Red.’ I took the trouble to stop by the bank and ask why a business four hundred miles from the university would be so excited about football, and the banker said, ‘Our clients take it for granted that we’re solvent. But if they suspected for even one minute that we were not sound where Big Red is concerned, they’d drive us out of business.’

  I also heard about Reverend Kenneth McDonald, ‘as fine a clergyman as you’d want to meet, but he was called to a church in Michigan, where he can’t attend Nebraska games and has to listen to his parishioners praise Michigan football as if it was first class. So the Reverend builds himself a Big Red Shrine with portraits of Nebraska’s greats, and on game days he sits there and meditates.’ I asked if his Michigan parishioners interpreted this as an act of disloyalty, and my informant said, ‘No, they realize that religion requires a man to be faithful to what he believes.’

  One morning with my motel breakfast a copy of the Omaha World-Herald appeared, featuring a full-page color spread showing the home of Mr. and Mrs. V. Russel Swanson, and everything on the ground floor, including carpets, furniture, wallpaper, decorations and a three-wall bulletin board dominating the living room was a shattering red, including Mr. and Mrs. Swanson, two attractive people in their mid-forties, who during the football season dress only in red. As the newspaper proudly explained, ‘The Swansons not only go all-out for Big Red in decorating but they fly a “Number One” flag in their yard on game Saturdays.’

  I was so bedazzled by the article that I got in touch with Swanson, and he made these points:

  … The resurgence of Nebraska began when the university hired a new coach, Bob Devaney. A local radio announcer coined the jingle which became our state song:

  Get off your fanny

  And help Bob Devaney.

  … Nebraska football provides a plan for every pocketbook. The Extra Point Club can be joined for one dollar on up, and for five dollars you get the coaches’ printed comments following each game. The Touchdown Club costs twenty-five dollars or up, and a hundred dollars gets you a parking space. The Husker Educational Award rate is a thousand dollars and the Husker Beef Club contributes steers for the football training table. A two-thousand-dollar contribution to the press box carries the right to purchase tickets for the enclosed seating.

  … We love to wear red and are expected to wear it. Our family has red in all weights of coats, all lengths of dresses, shirts, sports coats, slacks, jackets, shoes, boots, lined boots, hats, caps, scarfs, sweaters, shorts, ties, gloves, mittens, socks, watches, pins, bracelets, earrings, buttons. One cartoon showed a manufacturer who said, ‘If it won’t sell, paint it red and send it to Nebraska.’

  … Our fans are so rabid that if the weather report on Monday warns of possible storms, fans from the western part of the state hurry to Lincoln early in the week so as not to miss the game.

  … Fans in other states think that football fever strikes the nation from late summer to midwinter, but in Nebraska we follow it longer. We expect news coverage from August practice, through the fall season, including bowl practice in December and the bowl game in January. The balance of January and February are ugh. We look at the line-ups in March, follow spring practice in April and attend the spring Red-White squad game in May. Somehow we manage through June, but pro football with some former Big Red players starts in July, which carries us back to August practice.

  … You might say that our big breakthrough came when we discovered that we could buy a bright-red bathroom with a Go Big Red toilet seat to sort of set the scene.

  The Swansons sent me color photographs of their bathroom and I decided on the spot, ‘Nebraska must surely be the football capital of the world.’

  But then I went to Alabama, where the first eleven people I met—businessmen, professors, housewives—took me aside to assure me confidentially that ‘Bear Bryant is the greatest man this state has ever produced.’ I wondered why they should be so insistent, until Alf Van Hoose, one of the best sportswriters in Alabama, confided, ‘They’re afraid of writers. Jim Murray and that smart-aleck columnist from Georgia have said ugly things about the Bear, but let me tell you this, Michener, when you get to know him you’re going to find that he’s even better than we say. This man is simply the greatest.’ Wherever I went I heard that Bryant was a demigod, a man with such unusual powers that they defied ordinary description, and when I had a chance to test the reality against the fable, I found that what Van Hoose had said was correct. I doubt if there is any sports figure in America who comes close to dominating his community the way Bear Bryant dominates Alabama. When David Mathews, the bright young president of the University of Alabama, was chosen by President Ford to join the Cabinet in Washington as head of Health, Education and Welfare, a wire service phoned the university for a photograph, and the girl in the office sent back a shot of Bear Bryant. When she was reprimanded for her mistake, she asked, ‘It’s Bear’s university, isn’t it?’ So I concluded that whereas people in Nebraska liked football, they didn’t really put their heart into it the way those fans in Alabama did.

  But in late December as I was about to start writing this book, I was invited back to Nebraska to speak at the university and a little thing happened which turned the scales. I was seated next to the chancellor, a wise and witty man who explained that in his state football was the total mania for several understandable reasons. ‘We did win the national championship twice, and that de
lighted everyone. Secondly, Nebraska is almost unique in that we have no second university to divert attention. Even Oklahoma has Oklahoma State, a very strong school. Colorado, Alabama, Kansas. You name them. Their loyalties are divided, but not us. If you live within the confines of this state, you’re a Nebraska fan. And thirdly, we have no competition from any professional teams. We are football.’ A cynic sitting on my other side whispered, ‘He leaves out the fact that the State of Nebraska has no opera, no drama, no symphony, no exalted social life and not much intellectual life. In this state if you don’t go for football, you’re a pariah.’ As I pondered this, he added, ‘And it’s the same throughout the Big Eight. Our football is good because we haven’t anything else. And if you look at it honestly, that holds true for Ohio State and Arkansas and Penn State and Texas and Auburn and all the powers. They support football because their towns don’t offer anything else.’ But then I heard the clincher. It was a merchandising feat described by a man who sat opposite me. He said, ‘This friend of mine is cleaning up. He’s invented something that’s selling like mint juleps in the Sahara. It’s a gadget that you fix to the wall in your bathroom. It dispenses bright-red toilet paper, and each sheet is imprinted with the slogan “Go Big Red,” which under the circumstances is rather appropriate, don’t you think? But what makes this gadget superlative is that it also contains a transistor radio pre-tuned to the Nebraska broadcast, so that if you should be called away unexpectedly from the television, you wouldn’t have to miss a single play.’ Eat your heart out, Alabama!

  But it wasn’t as simple as that, because the next month I was invited to attend inductions to the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, and I saw this state in its off-football season, and the passion with which it praised its ancient heroes. As they came to the podium, these great baseball players, and golfers, and racetrack drivers evoked empathies I had never witnessed before. They were the grain and fiber of Alabama, more important than politicians and bankers, and finally the old-time football players came forward, the deeply revered predecessors to the Namaths and the Stablers, and these men were living gods. In the course of the festivities Bear Bryant had occasion to announce that if Alabama went to a bowl game next New Year’s, ‘and we will, because since 1962 we’ve gone to fourteen of ’em and we don’t intend to stop now. Well, if we go, I’m gonna invite every livin’ member of our 1926 team which beat Washington in the Rose Bowl to attend as guest of the university, and if the college won’t pay the freight, I will.’ There was a hush, then Pooley Hubert, architect of that first win, Alabama 20–Washington 19, rose and tried to express his thanks, but his voice choked. He was very tall, a powerful fullback in his day, and he tried again as the audience leaned forward. Finally he blurted out, ‘Bear, you the greatest sonofabitch ever been born.’ The crowd roared its ratification of this judicial opinion, and the woman seated next to me on the dais, widow of the quarterback Bryant preferred, Pat Trammell, whispered, ‘You know, he really is the greatest,’ and without any thought of further reconsideration of my vote, I had to decide that any state which would express such affection for a curmudgeon coach who had failed to win once in eight straight bowl games had to be the looniest football center of them all.