I think it best if we not apply reason to bowl games. My wife, a Japanese-American who spent her formative years in California, may have summed it all up when she said of the Rose Bowl: ‘It was glorious! Those wonderful floats! Each one decorated with millions of flowers and beautiful girls! The Japanese gardeners would stay up all night fixing the flowers just so, and we kids would help. And when day came, and you saw that glorious thing going down the boulevard with the flowers that you had tended so carefully … It was something, I tell you. Something you never forget.’
‘What did you think of the football game?’ I asked.
‘Football? We all went home and went to bed. Dead tired from fixing the flowers.’
While in Miami savoring the delectable nonsense of the Orange Bowl, I had an opportunity to look into a problem which is causing considerable heartache nationally. I attended three football games played by the University of Miami, once one of the real powers in intercollegiate play. The opponents were among the best attractions in the country—Notre Dame, Alabama, Florida State—and on each occasion the vast Orange Bowl was less than half filled. The teams rattled around in cavernous silence, as mournful an exhibition of indifference as I have seen.
‘What’s happened to Miami?’ I asked friends of the school, and they put me in touch with James Bollings, a businessman serving as vice-chairman of the board of trustees and a stalwart supporter of college football:
You know our history. Energetic, wonderful school. Very young. Filled with the brightest ideas. You folks up north used to call us Swimming Pool U, but we had a lot more going for us than that. Topnotch professors. Fine tennis. A breathtaking football team. We played them all, still do. Texas, Oklahoma, Notre Dame. We had 75,000 in the stands, maybe 80,000 for Notre Dame. In our success and enthusiasm we helped finance building the Orange Bowl, then volunteered to pay a whopping 17.5 percent of the gate as rent. But we were still making money.
Then the professional Dolphins came to town, and although at first their team wasn’t very good, we could feel a ripple passing through the community. Our attendance began to falter. Then the Dolphins imported Don Shula, one of this country’s great coaches, the Dolphins caught fire with Csonka, Kiick and Warfield and our average attendance dropped to 16,000.
In response to my direct questioning, Bollings refused to concede that Miami University might soon have to drop football, but he did admit that no university could indefinitely absorb the heavy financial losses which accrue if its team has to compete head-on with a successful professional team. Shortly after our interview the University of Tampa, across the peninsula, announced that with the granting of a new professional franchise to that city, there was no way that college football could continue. Tampa was dropping the game.
So I made a list of the thirty-six college teams most often nominated as members of the so-called super-league, and only one was located in a city which sponsored a professional team. Run down the list: Oklahoma, Nebraska, Penn State, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Arkansas, Texas, Michigan, Missouri, Tennessee, Louisiana State, Alabama, Auburn. They all play in safe locations that offer no professional competition. The one exception is Southern California, which competes with the Rams, but Los Angeles is in many ways a special city, and there are even those who argue that it is not a city at all and is therefore not governed by ordinary laws.
The borderline case is one which should be followed most carefully. The University of Colorado is not actually in Denver and therefore not in direct competition with the Broncos, but Boulder is not far away and I fear that the future of Colorado football could be in jeopardy. If it survives, there would be hope for other schools similarly located; if it collapses, a shudder will pass through collegiate ranks.
Another case to watch is Georgia Tech, located in Atlanta, and therefore in competition with the Falcons. It is trying desperately to rejuvenate its program and return to big-time scheduling. It has hired a charismatic new coach with a good record, Pepper Rodgers, and I have heard fervent prayers that it succeed. Certain things are in its favor: it has a great tradition; it has always been supported by the Atlanta community; and there is some doubt that the Falcons, after their recent deportment, are entitled to be called professionals. At any rate, Colorado and Georgia Tech are the litmus papers for collegiate football.
In all the other big cities—Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco—college football has withered and, to a degree, college basketball as well. It is very doubtful that either will revive, because the professional game attracts those very people of the middle class who, while they did not attend the local college or any other, used to support it at the turnstiles. There is simply no reason why a workman in Philadelphia should attend a University of Pennsylvania game at Franklin Field when he can see real football at Veterans Stadium, where the Eagles play.
If this reasoning is correct, then the proposed collegiate super-league is best seen as a junior professional league restricted to those areas of small population which the real professionals do not wish to invade. Believe me, once the professionals decide to place teams in Birmingham and South Bend and Columbus, the university teams in those areas are in trouble.
Wherever I went in the big cities, or close to them, I found this same mournful tale. Two-platoon football, with its squads of sixty players and costly uniforms and proliferation of coaches and scholarship funds, was in trouble. And so was basketball. It no longer attracts crowds in New York. I attended a pair of superlative doubleheaders at Madison Square Garden, which used to be crowded on such occasions. The teams I saw were attractive: South Carolina and Southern California as visitors, Fordham and Seton Hall to attract local supporters. The attendance was about 4,000 in an arena which a few hours later seated 19,588 for a Knicks game. In cities like Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit the situation is worse.
Philadelphia was the exception. Through the most adroit publicity and intelligent scheduling, the Big Five—three fine Catholic schools, St. Joe’s, LaSalle, Villanova; one Ivy League, Pennsylvania; and one Jewish-black, Temple—put on some of the wildest college games on record, using Pennsylvania’s old Palestra. We were told endlessly that ‘Big Five basketball is the best in the nation,’ and we believed. This was a kind of high-class brainwashing, like the movies in Mexico; at every show a card flashes on the screen stating ‘Como México no hay otro’ (Like Mexico there is no other), and after a while that becomes accepted truth. When friends in other cities asked me, ‘If Big Five is tops, why were your teams eliminated in the first round of the NCAA last year?’ I explain, ‘We got bad breaks in the draw.’ For the past eighteen years Big Five teams have gotten bad breaks in the draw; they’ve usually been eliminated early; but loyal Philadelphians like me still believe they play the best basketball in the country.
But now even the Big Five is feeling the pinch of professional competition. Attendance is down. Enthusiasm has waned. The 1974 Christmas tournament was a bust. Philadelphia, the hotbed of sports, was beginning to show itself unwilling to support basketball when so many new professional sports like hockey, lacrosse, soccer and tennis competed for attention. In 1976 one superb doubleheader featuring four contenders drew 1,281 spectators.
In football, because of the way television money is distributed, the less-advantaged schools have diminished chances of survival. In 1974–75, for example, Penn State picked up over $1,150,000 in television and bowl money: $158,000 for their game with Maryland; $243,000 for their night game with Pitt; $243,000 for their game with Stanford; and $508,000 for their Cotton Bowl game with Baylor. But nearby Villanova, at one time as strong as Penn State, got nothing. And this disparity not only existed everywhere; it threatened to get worse.
It’s not television’s fault. Why should ABC or CBS bother with a game like Villanova-Temple when it could get Oklahoma-Nebraska? What fan in his right mind, even if he lived within the shadow of Villanova, would not prefer seeing the two leaders? So the big teams will split the $18,000,000 which tel
evision and radio yearly distribute, and the medium teams will get nothing.
The Villanova story is a horror. One autumn afternoon in 1973 those in charge of the university’s destiny convened to discuss the alternatives: either give up intercollegiate football altogether, or go big time! That a university could sensibly pose two such extremes, the second involving millions of dollars and complete restructuring of programs, was itself remarkable.
Common sense dictated that football be dropped; the budget demanded it and many strong Catholic colleges had demonstrated that it could be handled without loss of prestige. But a group of nostalgic alumni would not permit it; they’d finance one last shot. Promises were made; funds that did not exist and never would exist were earmarked; Lou Ferry, the respected old coach, was summarily fired; Chip Bender, a dynamic promoter, was given unusual powers as athletic director; and Villanova was off to the majors.
Immediately Bender got in touch with schools already on the Villanova schedule and informed them unilaterally that their games were canceled to make way for big-time opponents. Thus West Chester, a traditional rival and formerly a teachers college, was told that it would be dropped so that Houston, a rising powerhouse, could be scheduled, which would bring in $100,000, Bender said. Wisconsin was lined up, and Boston College and Maryland and powerful Colorado. For future seasons there was talk of Ohio State and maybe even Notre Dame. Villanova would rise again!
Then things began to come unstuck. The new athletic director had found just the coach he wanted in Jim Weaver, who had a good record as a tactician and a reputation as a character-builder. He was hired with considerable hoopla, but he was on campus only briefly when he saw that the promises so glibly made by the alumni the preceding autumn were never going to be fulfilled. Instead of the five-year contract he had been offered, he got a one-year job. Instead of unlimited funds, he got barely enough to keep the program going. Instead of scores of talented boys ready to move onto the first team, he had trouble getting scholarship funds for a few possibles.
So on June 7, three months before the triumphal season was to begin, Coach Weaver secretly found himself a better job and signed a contract to coach at nearby Clarion State the next year, where they weren’t going big time but where they did keep promises. Announcement of his retiring would be kept secret until the football season was over, and he would do his best to salvage something for Villanova but his heart would be elsewhere.
I have spoken earlier of Bud Davis, the coach who was hanged in effigy before the season began; now we have Jim Weaver, who quit before spring practice had ended.
The Villanova players, unaware of desertion by their new coach, performed valiantly in their first four games, defeating Massachusetts, Toledo, Idaho; losing to Richmond by one point. But then they faced the real powers, and absorbed five crushing losses: Tampa 47–8; Houston 35–0; Boston College 55–7; Delaware 49–7; Maryland 41–0.
The worst was yet to come. In early November 1974, in the middle of the season, someone squealed about the secret contract; Coach Weaver had to confess that he had quit the team before the season began; he was fired on the spot and his team captain, Chuck Dreisbach, reported that in dealing with the team ‘Coach Weaver had always stressed the necessity for honesty.’
After its brief taste of big-time glory, Villanova went back to its old coach, Lou Ferry, the respected one; a new schedule; and a proposal that it play teams of its own caliber whose campuses could be reached by bus rather than jet plane. There was even talk that it might try to persuade West Chester to return.
At the same time that I was attending bowl games and following the ups and downs of big-time collegiate sports, I was meeting with those quiet and dedicated men and women who supervised the programs in the smaller colleges. I had the good luck to know Lew Elverson, the football coach at Swarthmore, whose teams had a ten-year record of something like 8–88, and he was taking the year off, a victim of shell shock no doubt, to survey several score of the better small colleges in the east to determine what they were doing or ought to be doing.
He told me, ‘It’s heartening. I see some of the most intelligent decisions being made. With support from faculty, student body and alumni.’
‘For instance?’
‘Well, the way they’re responding to the football problem. I’ve been to quite a few small colleges which used to attempt a full schedule of intercollegiate two-platoon football. And how many boys reported for the squad? Twenty-three. They didn’t even have enough for scrimmage. If one lineman got hurt, they had no substitute. And by the time the season was half over they had maybe seventeen or eighteen men. That couldn’t continue for long.’
‘What are they doing?’
‘They’re dropping two-platoon, for one thing. They’re shifting to club football, but they schedule games with other colleges, so the boys get the benefit of intercollegiate contacts. It works moderately well.’
‘Does a general evaluation take place at the time they’re questioning football?’
‘You better believe it. Everywhere I go men and women are sitting down to do some hard thinking. New programs. New allocation of budgets. New ways to achieve old targets. Colleges like those in the New England Small College Athletic Conference are making some very sensible decisions which may show the way to others.’
‘I don’t know that conference. Who’s in it?’
‘Eleven like-minded schools that are close enough to each other to make travel easy.’ He consulted a piece of paper and read off the list; it sounded like the Who’s Who of eastern colleges: ‘Amherst, Hamilton, Union, Bates, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Bowdoin, Trinity, Colby, Tufts, Williams.’
‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘I’ve been on every campus except Hamilton. Where is it?’
‘Central New York.’
‘At Hamilton?’
‘No. Colgate’s at Hamilton. Hamilton’s at Clinton.’
‘I thought the harness track was at Clinton.’
‘No. It’s at Vernon.’
We were beginning to sound like Abbott and Costello, so I broke the impasse. ‘Would Hamilton be a good place to visit?’
‘One of the best. They have a lively athletic director up there, man named Gene Long. He’d be glad to talk.’
So later, on my way to the Vernon race track, I stopped off for two days to visit Hamilton, a college founded in 1793 when Baron Von Steuben laid the cornerstone. It prospered, with an endowment of $30,000,000, a favorable teacher-student ratio and a reputation for solid scholarship. Originally a men’s college, it had in 1968 admitted women to a sister college, Kirkland, and now served as a prototype for the best in small American colleges. Its present enrollment, including Kirkland, is 1,570, and all know of the school’s remarkable tradition: ‘Of our first five hundred students back in the 1800s, three became United States senators, fourteen were congressmen, three were federal judges, nine were state supreme court judges, two were ambassadors, nine were college presidents, and four were national leaders of their respective religious denominations.’
One of the school’s current assets was Gene Long, a dynamo who had been a long-distance runner in college. Supported by the general faculty, he initiated a program for all incoming men. It was in parts and seemed to me exactly what I would sponsor if I were president of a small college. 1) Do 12 push-ups, 30 squat jumps, 3 chin-ups using front grip, and run 400 yards in 80 seconds. 2) If those requirements seemed too precise and physical-education-dominated, the student could elect to run one and a half miles in 12 minutes. (I told Long, ‘That seems too fast,’ but he said, ‘Not at all. Any freshman in reasonable condition ought to handle that.’) 3) In the winter he must demonstrate his proficiency in swimming, and if he cannot, into the pool for him. 4) In order to encourage lifetime sports, he must exhibit moderate proficiency in either golf or tennis, and if he can play neither, he must take instruction in the one of his choice.
These requirements seem reasonable. Many students, I am sure, would protest, but I really wo
nder if a young man is ready for hard intellectual work if his body is in such poor shape that he cannot pass such tests. And if he is in delinquent shape, should he not be quickly improved so that he forms health habits which will sustain him throughout his life? I would like to see a program such as this in operation everywhere.
If the incoming freshman passes his tests, and most do, he is free to choose from a complete program of eleven intercollegiate sports, plus three formal clubs in sailing, skiing and squash. Or he can elect to participate in a lively intramural program, which about 75 percent of the student body does. A recent questionnaire seeking student opinion on the program showed these results:
REACTIONS OF HAMILTON STUDENTS TO THE COLLEGE ATHLETIC PROGRAM
Thanks to a generous alumni, Hamilton had one of the first indoor hockey rinks, and this has always been a major sport; the present coach, an ex-marine, has been on the job for twenty-five years. Football presents a special problem, for barely enough men come out to field a proper team with the necessary depth. One of the most poignant comments I heard during all of my research came from Gene Long: ‘We’re one of those colleges whose alumni remember us principally on Sunday mornings when they run down the left-hand alphabetical listing of Saturday’s games in The New York Times. If we’ve won, they can find us. If we’ve lost, they have to scatter through the right-hand column to see who beat us and by how much. One important alum told me, “Just once I’d like to find Hamilton in the alphabetical listing.” ’
Many small colleges, in the present financial stringency, will have to quit two-platoon football; they will have no option. At schools like Hamilton, where there is a well-rounded program, reasonable alternatives will be found: Schedules with other small schools. Trips by bus rather than plane. No more putting up at the swankiest motel. No more purchasing uniforms for sixty and seventy players. No more coaching staffs with seven and eight men. But good, sound programs, perhaps of one-platoon teams, perhaps on an informal home-and-home basis to provide some spark to the competition.