STAGG'S UNIVERSITY: THE RISE, DECLINE, AND FALL OF BIG-TIME FOOTBALL

When the University of Chicago opened in 1892, nine former college or seminary presidents were on its staff, as were recognized leaders of several academic disciplines, among them John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, and Albert Michelson. President William Rainey Harper's faculty also included Amos Alonzo Stagg, associate professor of physical culture and coach of the football team.
For this first case study of college football by a social historian, Robin Lester has brought life to the story of a university football program that had an unusual beginning, a glorious middle, and a unique and inglorious conclusion.
The nation's first tenured coach and the most creative and entrepreneurial of all college coaches from the 1890s to the 1920s, Stagg headed a program marked by creation of the letterman's club and by the dominant use of the forward pass, of jersey numbers, and of the collegiate modern T formation.
As plainly as Stagg and Harper built a football program of national repute, the new sports industry on campus proved capable of changing or ignoring academic assumptions and standards. The logical commercial trail established by Harper and Stagg helped change football into a mass entertainment industry on American campuses, but football at Chicago did not follow its own logical development.

Robin Lester teaches at Francis Parker School in Chicago.