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The Rise of Gridiron University: Higher Education's Uneasy Alliance with Big-Time Football (Cultureamerica)
Brian M. Ingrassia
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Description for The Rise of Gridiron University: Higher Education's Uneasy Alliance with Big-Time Football (Cultureamerica)
Paperback. Offers the most incisive account to date of the origins of college football, tracing the sport's evolution from a gentlemen's pastime to a multi-million dollar enterprise that made athletics a permanent fixture on US campuses and cemented college football's place in American culture. Series: CultureAmerica. Num Pages: 336 pages, 28 Photographs. BIC Classification: 1KBB; JNM; WSJS. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 229 x 152 x 18. Weight in Grams: 525.
The quarterback sends his wide receiver deep. The crowd gasps as he launches the ball. And when he hits his man, the team's fans roar with approval--especially those with the deep pockets. Make no mistake; college football is big business, played with one eye on the score, the other on the bottom line. But was this always the case?
Brian M. Ingrassia here offers the most incisive account to date of the origins of college football, tracing the sport's evolution from a gentlemen's pastime to a multi-million dollar enterprise that made athletics a permanent fixture on our nation's campuses and cemented college football's place in American culture. He takes readers back to the late 1800s to tell how schools embraced the sport as a way to get the public interested in higher learning-and then how football's immediate popularity overwhelmed campuses and helped create the beast we know today.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Ingrassia proves that the academy did not initially resist the inclusion of athletics; rather, progressive reformers and professors embraced football as a way to make the ivory tower less elitist. With its emphasis on disciplined teamwork and spectatorship, football was seen as a ""middlebrow"" way to make the university more accessible to the general public. What it really did was make athletics a permanent fixture on campus with its own set of professional experts, bureaucracies, and ostentatious cathedrals.
Ingrassia examines the early football programs at universities like Michigan, Stanford, Ohio State, and others, then puts those histories in the context of Progressive Era culture, including insights from coaches like Georgia Tech's John Heisman and Notre Dame's Knute Rockne. He describes how reforms emerged out of incidents such as Teddy Roosevelt's son being injured on the field and a section of grandstands collapsing at the University of Chicago. He also touches on some of the problems facing current day college football and shows us that we haven't come far from those initial arguments more than a century ago.
The Rise of Gridiron University shows us where and how it all began, highlighting college football's essential role in shaping the modern university-and by extension American intellectual culture. It should have wide appeal among students of American studies and sports history, as well as fans of college football curious to learn how their game became a cultural force in a matter of a few decades.
Brian M. Ingrassia here offers the most incisive account to date of the origins of college football, tracing the sport's evolution from a gentlemen's pastime to a multi-million dollar enterprise that made athletics a permanent fixture on our nation's campuses and cemented college football's place in American culture. He takes readers back to the late 1800s to tell how schools embraced the sport as a way to get the public interested in higher learning-and then how football's immediate popularity overwhelmed campuses and helped create the beast we know today.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Ingrassia proves that the academy did not initially resist the inclusion of athletics; rather, progressive reformers and professors embraced football as a way to make the ivory tower less elitist. With its emphasis on disciplined teamwork and spectatorship, football was seen as a ""middlebrow"" way to make the university more accessible to the general public. What it really did was make athletics a permanent fixture on campus with its own set of professional experts, bureaucracies, and ostentatious cathedrals.
Ingrassia examines the early football programs at universities like Michigan, Stanford, Ohio State, and others, then puts those histories in the context of Progressive Era culture, including insights from coaches like Georgia Tech's John Heisman and Notre Dame's Knute Rockne. He describes how reforms emerged out of incidents such as Teddy Roosevelt's son being injured on the field and a section of grandstands collapsing at the University of Chicago. He also touches on some of the problems facing current day college football and shows us that we haven't come far from those initial arguments more than a century ago.
The Rise of Gridiron University shows us where and how it all began, highlighting college football's essential role in shaping the modern university-and by extension American intellectual culture. It should have wide appeal among students of American studies and sports history, as well as fans of college football curious to learn how their game became a cultural force in a matter of a few decades.
Product Details
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2015
Publisher
University Press of Kansas
Condition
New
Series
CultureAmerica
Number of Pages
336
Place of Publication
Kansas, United States
ISBN
9780700621392
SKU
V9780700621392
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-13
About Brian M. Ingrassia
Brian M. Ingrassia is assistant professor of history at West Texas A&M University.
Reviews for The Rise of Gridiron University: Higher Education's Uneasy Alliance with Big-Time Football (Cultureamerica)
“A smart, well-written study of football’s complex relationship with higher education and the general public during the Progressive era. . . . The best history of early college football.”—American Historical Review “Ingrassia has written an important book about the development of a symbiotic relationship between institutions of higher learning and big-time football in the United States. Ingrassia’s book is well researched and thoughtfully argued. It is a worthy contribution to scholarship on the urgent public policy issue of the proper role of big-time athletics in academic institutions.”—Journal of American History “Ingrassia offers a fresh perspective on the origins of big-time college football. Other scholars have produced works on the same subject . . . [but] Ingrassia’s book stands apart because of its focus on the role of faculty in the development of big-time college football. As he persuasively argues, faculty in the late-19th and early-20th centuries ‘institutionalized athletics’ and played a key role in giving athletics a ‘permanent place on college campuses.’ . . . Ingrassia’s intriguing, insightful book makes an important contribution to the literature on intercollegiate athletics. Highly recommended.”—Choice “An outstanding contribution to the scholarship on the history of college football. . . . Ingrassia’s deeply researched argument overturns many of the assumptions in this field of study""—Michigan Law Review.