A two-mile, eight-oared barge race between two teams in 1852 was the first recorded American intercollegiate competition. Harvard defeated Yale on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire and their athletic rivalry began. The College Rowing Association was founded six years later by Brown, Harvard, Trinity and Yale.
New England was also the site of the first intercollegiate baseball game. Amherst and Williams met on the diamond in 1859, five years before either Yale or Harvard had a baseball team.
Princeton and Rutgers have the distinction of playing the first intercollegiate football game. The game they played on November 6, 1869, resembled soccer and rugby more than modern-day football. The desire to standardize football rules led Princeton to invite Harvard, Yale, and Columbia to form the Intercollegiate Football Association [IFA] in 1876. The IFA, the first forerunner of the National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA], was in existence until 1894.
The IFA provided a forum for the discussion of the sport’s techniques and regulations. And although IFA membership increased, discord between the IFA members was common. Moreover, despite the discussions and quest for standardization, football became a brutal, dangerous, and deadly sport.
By 1905, debilitating injuries and deaths were occurring with alarming frequency. During the particularly gruesome season in the fall of 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt invited representatives from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to the White House. He spoke to them about the brutality and the effect it had upon the sport’s credibility. Little action resulted from the meeting.
The impetus for reform was the death of 19-year-old Harold Moore, Union College’s star quarterback, in a game against New York University on November 25, 1905. Unfortunately, Moore’s was but one of the 18 deaths that season. In addition, 159 were seriously injured. Henry L. MacCraken, NYU’s chancellor, was dismayed by Moore’s death and he wired Charles Eliot, Harvard’s president, and implored him to organize a meeting of college presidents to reform or abolish football. Eliot politely declined. Two representatives from Harvard, Roosevelt’s alma mater, were invited to a second meeting with President Roosevelt. Despite the President’s influence, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton did little to lead the way for reform.
1911-12 College Football Team
MacCracken was more successful. He invited 19 collegiate representatives to a meeting at New York’s Murray Hill Hotel. Representatives from 13 institutions attended the December 8, 1905 meeting. After heated debate about abolishing football, a majority voted to retain, yet reform, football, but little was accomplished. A second meeting took place on December 28, 1905 and all major academic institutions playing intercollegiate football were invited. Sixty-two institutions sent representatives; together they formed the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States [IAAUS]. Palmer Pierce of West Point was elected its first president. Notably absent from this meeting were representatives from Yale, Harvard, Princeton, University of Chicago, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania and the United States Naval Academy.
The IAAUS had neither legislative nor executive powers; its role was seen as an educational one. In December 1910, at the fifth annual convention of IAAUS, the organization’s name was changed to the National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA]. During the early years, the NCAA’s focus was on standardizing game rules and educating game officials. Any legislation enacted by the organization was subject to a “home-rule” principle.
A 1911-12 college football team played on what appears to be rainwater ot ice. The fogginess of the sky is only the discoloration of the print and not a weather phenomenon. The photos are from a college co-ed’s scrapbook.
The Football Rules Committee was established early in the history of IAAUS and it met with moderate success. This success indicated to the IAAUS/NCAA members that perhaps the rules for other sports could be standardized. In 1908, a rules committee for basketball was formed. Committees to standardize the rules for track and field (1910), soccer (1911), swimming (1913), wrestling (1917), volleyball (1918), boxing (1919), ice hockey (1923), gymnastics (1927), baseball (1928), lacrosse (1929), fencing (1932), golf (1935), and tennis (1937) followed.
REFERENCES
Bailey, W. S. & Littleton, T. D. (1991). Athletics and academe: An anatomy of abuses and a prescription for reform. New York: American Council on Education & Macmillan Publishing Company.
Bucher, C. A. & Dupee, R. K., Jr. (1965). Athletics in schools and colleges. New York: The Center for Applied Research in Education, Inc.
Guttman, A. (1991). The anomaly of intercollegiate sports. In Andre, J. & D. N. James. Foundations: History and philosophy of sport. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Knight Foundation, Inc. (1993). A new beginning for a new century: Intercollegiate athletics in the United States: A final report. Akron, OH: Author.
Lawrence, P. R. (1987). Unsportsmanlike conduct: The National Collegiate Athletic Association and the business of college football. New York: Praeger Publishers.
Yaeger, D. (1991). Undue process: NCAA’s injustice for all. Champaign, IL: Sagamore Publishing Company.
(c) Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013. All Rights Reserved.
