The Rise of the Gridiron University: Higher Education’s Uneasy Alliance with Big-Time Football by Brian M. Ingrassia (review)

The relationship between higher education and big-time college football has created a thriving subgenre of sport history in recent decades. Many works leave the impression that football was something that happened while university faculties were focusing on other, loftier matters. Brian M. Ingrassia, however, broadens our understanding of the manner in which football and the academy became intertwined by demonstrating how many Progressive Era intellectuals embraced the game in its early years. Integral to the author’s investigation is the tale of the creation of the “ivory tower” university, filled with academics engaged in increasingly fragmented and arcane fields of inquiry.

Progressives initially saw great things for the marriage of football and the academy. It would instill discipline in students, and even in spectators, while relieving the nervous tension of too much study. Most importantly, however, a football team forged bonds between town and gown, making the increasingly cloistered academic world relevant to the broader public in a way that all their research could not. Professional coaches, such as Stagg and Yost, added their voices to the academic narrative that football built intellectually and physically strong college men. This combination of academic and professional propaganda, along with the popularity of the game among the public, cemented football firmly to the academy; it has remained steadfastly entrenched ever since.

As football rose in prominence, the sport became increasingly commercialized, and also more dangerous. In response to concerns over the lowbrow appeal of the game and publicized deaths, some progressives began to have second thoughts about the world they had created and began to call for reform. However, their efforts met with only limited success, due in large part to the persuasiveness of the original progressive arguments that allowed brawny young men entry into the ivory tower.

Within the book, universities such as Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Wisconsin, and Chicago are featured prominently. The Great Plains is represented solely by the University of Nebraska, whose Bugeaters/Cornhuskers fit the mold of a progressive university using football to make itself relevant to its state. Nebraska also epitomized the movement to tie football to patriotism by constructing Memorial Stadium in 1923 to honor veterans of American wars.

The Rise of Gridiron University is a must-read for those interested in the rise of big-time college football. It should also interest Progressive Era scholars. Though Ingrassia has crafted an engaging read that tells a fascinating story, the arcane nature of his intellectual history of football’s rise may not resonate with the general public. This is a pity, since his work could inform current football aficionados that anxiety-causing contemporary concerns such as violence and the so-called arms race are by no means exclusively modern problems.