Question: The Military Influence Test file shows the writing prompt. Theres 3 readings to pull examples and quotes from. It

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2012 38: 353 originally published online 22 November 2011Armed Forces & Society Joseph Paul Vasquez III

College Football America and the Garrison Stadium: How the US Armed Forces Shaped

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Articles

America and the Garrison Stadium: How the US Armed Forces Shaped College Football

Joseph Paul Vasquez III 1

Abstract American military institutions importantly shaped the popular sport of college football. From support at its two oldest service academies, interest in football spread through military units across the country with military actors involved in the formation of the country’s first collegiate athletic conference and the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Subsequently, the US military functioned as an agent of authoritative diffusion, fostering interest in college football after the First World War. Furthermore, military institutions, including the draft, affected not only which team would be most successful during the Second World War but also how civilians would play the game. These effects call to mind Charles Tilly’s work on state formation and security-driven resource extraction as well as Harold Lass- well’s garrison state idea.

Keywords conscription, draft, football, military, sport

1 Department of Political Science, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Joseph Paul Vasquez III, Department of Political Science, University of Central Florida, 4000 Central

Florida Blvd, Orlando, FL 32816, USA

Email: [email protected]

Armed Forces & Society 38(3) 353-372

ª The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0095327X11426255

http://afs.sagepub.com

Introduction

College football is big business in the United States generating $6 billion annually and

collegiate logo licensing, stemming largely from interest in football, netting $3.5 billion

annually. 1

For a few institutions, it is a gold mine. Most visibly, the University of Notre

Dame benefits from having its home games telecast by the National Broadcasting

Company (NBC), but revenue can be generated without such sui generis circumstances.

For example, Ohio State’s football program generated $28 million in profit in 2005. 2

While college football trailed professional baseball’s popularity by 3 percent in a

2009 Harris Interactive survey, combined interest in college football, which benefited

from the support of military institutions, and the professional version it spawned

surpassed the popularity of ‘‘America’s pastime,’’ baseball, by 17 percent. 3

Having evolved from roots on the campuses of several elite Northeastern institu-

tions, college football was not always big business or a broadly appreciated pastime,

nor was its origin accidental. As political scientist Michael Mandelbaum writes,

‘‘The game [of football] began in universities because these institutions provided

the required concentrations of able-bodied young men and because, in the latter

part of the nineteenth century, they were home to the belief, which first appeared

in the British private schools, that competition in games helps instill desirable

traits of character and thus qualifies as a legitimate educational activity.’’ 4

How-

ever, unlike other games such as lacrosse that spread more slowly beyond elite

institutions, 5

it will become clear that football’s popularity grew due to the influ-

ence of American military institutions.

Military institutions certainly are not solely responsible for the current popularity

of college football or its economic impact. However, American military institutions

should be recognized as exerting important influence on the development of college

football over the span of sixty years from the final decade of the nineteenth century

to the middle of the twentieth century. Out of this experience—like vegetation from

a greenhouse—college football would ultimately flourish as it does today. Despite

not being recognized widely as such today, this relationship should not be com-

pletely surprising. First, military institutions and their advocates promoted football

around the dawn of the twentieth century by incorporating the game into military life

with the college game—its most prominent manifestation at the time—being the

major beneficiary. Thus, surging, broad-based interest in football resulted from the

effect of militaries as total institutions and authoritative innovators. Second, just as

Charles Tilly argued that raising military forces contributed mightily to state forma-

tion as leaders prepared for war by extracting resources—including people—from

their societies, 6

it will become clear that the game evolved as American military insti-

tutions drew conscripted manpower for fighting both world wars of the last century

from essentially the same pool of physically fit college-aged men who played college

football. With World War II, the game changed when one prominent military institu-

tion, the United States Military Academy at West Point, took advantage of a second

military institution, the draft, to achieve dominance on the football field. To the extent

354 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

that this effort was justified in official circles as a way of demonstrating the American

Army’s strength during wartime, it constitutes an attempt to manipulate amateur

athletics for symbolic advantage in keeping with Harold Lasswell’s work on the

garrison state. Furthermore, military teams beyond the service academies fostered

fierce competition in collegiate football that was passed on by men who coached

and played the game. In the immediate postwar period, how the game would

be played changed due to the tidal wave of veterans who went to college on the

G. I. Bill.

Military Influence on Football before World War I

Americans from social scientists to the late comedian George Carlin have recog-

nized similarities between war and football. 7

Thus, it is not surprising that while

‘‘[football c]oaches often sound like generals when they discuss their strategy,’’ 8

military officials sometimes sound like football coaches as when General Norman

Schwarzkopf described troop movements in the Persian Gulf War as analogous to

a football play. 9

Exploring why and how military institutions embraced the game,

however, is far more interesting than merely belaboring rhetorical similarities.

The conventional wisdom arising from the literature on the history of college

football from its inception with what has been acknowledged as the first game in

1869 through the 1950s can be easily summarized. Born at elite Northeastern col-

leges and universities and resembling rugby, football gradually spread across cam-

puses as changes in the rules of the game were pioneered by Yale’s coach and the

game’s foremost early promoter, Walter Camp. The game gradually moved south-

erly and westerly in the American sports world’s equivalent of Manifest Destiny

as young men who had played and coached the game in the Northeast dispersed

across the land. The modern era in the sport became fully realized in 1913 when

a squad from the then largely unknown University of Notre Dame coached by Jesse

Harper capitalized on recent rule changes to pass the ball forward to upset one of the

country’s top programs, the cadets from the US Military Academy at West Point,

New York. 10

Following the First World War, the 1920s were named the ‘‘Golden

Age of Sports,’’ partly because of the rise of radio as a mode of entertainment, and

college football specifically contributed to that era due to media interest in teams

such as those coached by Knute Rockne at Notre Dame and stars such as the Uni-

versity of Illinois’ Harold ‘‘Red’’ Grange. 11

After that decade, no particular team

or institution dominated the sport thoroughly until Army’s teams from the Military

Academy reigned supreme in the 1940s.

Since West Point teams figured prominently twice in the first half of the twentieth

century, several questions arise that should be of interest to scholars of sociology and

military institutions. For example, were military institutions particularly attracted to

the sport of football, which led this kind of recreational activity to receive attention

and resources that allowed it to succeed on the field of play against competitors?

Moreover, what role—if any—did military institutions have on civilian interest in

Vasquez 355

the game of football? Curiously, scholars of military institutions and sociology have

paid very little attention to these questions. 12

The US armed forces’ support for football began most prominently at its two

oldest service academies. The Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, first played

intercollegiate football in 1882 and West Point followed suit in 1890 when it

answered a direct challenge from its maritime rivals. 13

‘‘Prior to 1890, stringent

restrictions, dismissive official attitudes, and a fundamental lack of functional

organization prevented the growth of sports programs at the academies,’’ but by

mid-decade ‘‘the Military Academy’s sports program had become competitive with

established Eastern colleges such as Harvard, Yale and Brown.’’ 14

Interest in

football grew at the service academies and beyond in the 1890s, as sports became

increasingly a daily activity, an approach promoted by Army Lieutenant C. D.

Parkhurst and West Point alumnus Edmund L. Butts. 15

By 1892, football was played

from coast to coast on at least nineteen Army bases. 16

In the middle of the country and the middle of that decade, a military-affiliated

team, the Indianapolis Light Artillery, unwittingly triggered a revolution in intercol-

legiate sports in 1894. That year, the team’s contest with Butler University violated

the tradition of having only the top two teams of Indiana’s Intercollegiate Athletic

Association from the previous season play on Thanksgiving Day in Indianapolis.

Based on the outcome of the 1893 season, Purdue and DePaul University had

earned the right to play in Indianapolis on that day. As a result, James Smart, Pur-

due’s president, wrote to regional counterparts proposing a meeting that ‘‘restrict[ed]

games to college campuses and forbade players to accept pay or gifts.’’ 17

Out of this

meeting came America’s first athletic conference, known today as the Big 10 Con-

ference, which is an athletic and academic association of the largest Midwestern

research universities. 18

Smart’s letters conveyed mixed motives. He expressed con-

cerns ranging from practicalities such as lost game revenue and athletes’ physical

safety to principals of integrity and fairness in intercollegiate sports. Smart’s con-

cern for student safety when playing against the Artillery was probably apt since

newspapers depicted that squad as being bigger and older than their opponents and

with men who had previously played collegiately. 19

When the Spanish–American War occurred four years later, ‘‘a younger, refor-

mist generation of uniformed officers assumed a moral commitment to the soldier’s

welfare and used sport to combat desertion, alcohol, and the lure of prostitution.’’ 20

Before the war, troops of the Army’s Seventh Corps passed time in Jacksonville,

Florida, playing football. 21

One German naval officer in the Caribbean during this

period attributed US ‘‘military efficiency’’ partially to sports such as football that

‘‘harden the body and strengthen self-confidence.’’ 22

That report would have reso-

nated with Theodore Roosevelt, who once remarked about football, ‘‘I would

rather my boys play it than see them play any other sport.’’ As an avid sportsman

in an era when Social Darwinism thrived, he saw football as helping ‘‘revitalize an

effete population physically and mentally unprepared to defend themselves or take

their place on the world stage.’’ 23

Unsurprisingly, the future Commander-in-Chief

356 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

looked for former football players when raising his ‘‘Rough Riders’’ to fight the

Spanish in Cuba. 24

Amid the 1905 season that saw three football fatalities and eighty-eight serious

injuries, and after consulting with the Naval Academy’s coach, Paul Dashiell, and

Captain Palmer Pierce of West Point, President Roosevelt met with representatives

from Harvard, Princeton, and Yale to persuade them the game should be reformed or

risk having public backlash end it altogether. 25

Though not immediately successful,

it highlighted the need for change. Before the year’s end, sixty educational institu-

tions met to make the game safer, and the Military Academy’s Pierce, played a lead-

ing role as they ‘‘passed a series of ‘West Point’ resolutions calling for combining

the old [rules committee] with a new committee.’’ That group became known as the

Inter Collegiate Athletic Association with Pierce as its president. Within five years,

this group that he would lead for many years became known as the National Collegi-

ate Athletic Association (N.C.A.A.). 26

Concern with football injuries at West Point had existed since 1894 and by 1913,

its superintendent warned ‘‘football served no useful purpose in the physical devel-

opment of training of the Corps.’’ 27

By that time, rule changes of 1912 facilitating

the forward pass and yielding a ‘‘sleek, fast-moving version’’ of the game had not

reduced injuries at the Academy. 28

Nevertheless, within four years, the Army and

the Navy were systematically promoting football on bases nationwide to an unpre-

cedented degree.

World War I and College Football as Innovation Diffusion

The transformative power of military institutions has been acknowledged by scho-

lars. Beyond being powerful mechanisms for socialization as ‘‘total institutions as

argued by Erving Goffman,’’ 29

military institutions are often venues in which the

contact hypothesis plays out altering individual outlooks and behaviors. While some

scholars are skeptical of military institutions’ transformative powers concerning

nation-building or racial integration, 30

it would be hasty to reject their influence

completely. In fact, the American military had this effect on football’s popularity

in the last century in keeping with Everett Rogers’ notion of authoritative innova-

tions when changes are adopted most quickly within organizations because of sup-

port from highly placed individuals within the organization. 31

Moreover, men who

had military experience with the game would later act as agents of diffusion as fans,

players, or coaches.

Events precipitating that historic change began in 1916 with US forces mobiliz-

ing at Fort Sam Houston in Texas to help General John J. Pershing apprehend

Pancho Villa, whose incursions from Mexico had become increasingly problematic.

Back in Washington, reports came in from Texas documenting problems reminis-

cent of the Spanish–American War mobilization: drinking, prostitution, and vener-

eal disease (in the era before penicillin). 32

Secretary of War Newton Baker sent

Raymond Fosdick to investigate these accounts, and Fosdick recommended

Vasquez 357

emphasizing sports for leisure time recreation. 33

Prior to these events, scholars such

as Harvard’s Dudley Sargent had advocated broad-based athletic training programs

to help prepare for war. 34

With US mobilization becoming more likely for the First World War, Fosdick

went on to lead commissions on camp life and leisure time activities for Baker and

Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels. As the highest ranking civilian leaders of

the armed forces after only President Woodrow Wilson himself, these men were

positioned to make authoritative innovations regarding the institutional use of foot-

ball. Fosdick named Yale’s Walter Camp to be the Navy Department’s Athletic

Director and Joseph Raycroft, a Princeton physical education professor, as his War

Department counterpart. Of the two men, Camp pushed football more enthusiasti-

cally from his desire for competitions to fill ‘‘weekends and holidays.’’ Moreover,

‘‘Camp realized that service football competition . . . might be used to create an attractive football game (similar to the Army-Navy game) between army camp

teams and naval station teams.’’ 35

Though boxing was favored initially as more

affordable than football, these challenges were soon overcome. 36

With conscription pulling young men into the US armed forces, traditional collegi-

ate schedules were slashed. 37

However, the game survived and spread through mili-

tary camps and bases. During some wartime games, spectators heard bands play just

like at collegiate games or learned ‘‘college-type cheering and singing.’’ 38

In 1917 and

1918, the ‘‘collegiate’’ champions emerged from Rose Bowl games that paired two

armed forces teams against each other. 39

With the American Expeditionary Forces still

overseas in 1919, 75,000 US troops participated in American football abroad and the

championship game was ‘‘watched by the Army with all the interest ever called forth

by . . . a professional baseball World Series.’’40 As a result, Watterson declares, ‘‘The model of big-time football emerged live and well in the military camps, bringing tens of

thousands of recruits into contact with a sophisticated game heretofore known chiefly to

students at colleges or better known secondary schools.’’ 41

Thus, in keeping with the

idea that conscription is democratic in terms of egalitarianism and breadth, 42

exposure

to military football in this era of conscription had a democratizing effect on the game.

Moreover, as Charles Tilly argues that coercive war-making efforts led to the rise of the

state, interest in college football spread when the coercive war-making institution of

conscription in the US brought young men into contact with football.

During World War I, the war the military offered unprecedented backing for ath-

letics and continued postwar interest in football was predicted. According to Watter-

son, ‘‘the war created an insatiable demand for football in the postwar era which

even colleges could not satisfy’’ in the 1920s. 43

Data clearly supports greater post-

war interest as ‘‘there was a dramatic expansion of college football programs and

attendance at games’’ between 1919 and 1921. During this period, Mennell found

that thirteen colleges began playing varsity football, whereas only three schools had

taken up the game similarly between 1912 and 1918. Moreover, ‘‘while only three

new stadiums were considered in the six years immediately after the rule changes

[made the game more exciting], fourteen were considered in the three-year period

358 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

right after the war.’’ While the war itself could have slowed team formation and

stadium building due to the war’s financial burden, America’s late entry into the

war would probably only explain delays occurring between 1916 and 1918. Thus,

Mennell’s argument that ‘‘the service football program had significantly stimulated

interest in collegiate football’’ is persuasive. 44

In the Interwar Period, the service academies pursued policies that effectively

promoted football. First, they boosted interest in their teams and the game through

the media. Both of these institutions and Notre Dame uniquely allowed free radio

broadcasts of their games, albeit for different reasons. ‘‘Notre Dame wanted to reach

as many fans as possible, and the military academies, owned by the American peo-

ple, worried that selling their broadcast rights to private companies would prompt

criticism.’’ This approach helped these teams become ‘‘truly national teams

with huge followings.’’ 45

Second, athletics flourished at West Point after Brigadier

General Douglas MacArthur became its superintendent. 46

MacArthur had the fol-

lowing self-authored quote carved near the entrance to a campus gym, ‘‘Upon the

fields of friendly strife/Are sown seeds that/Upon other fields, on other days/Will

bear the fruits of victory.’’ 47

Furthermore, he boosted athletics by requiring cadets

to play intramural sports; asking members of Congress ‘‘to look for gifted young ath-

letes to appoint to the Military Academy;’’ and rewarding ‘‘his football stars with

special privileges’’ and ‘‘elite status on campus.’’ 48

West Point’s Success during World War II

While scholars have argued that the United States never became a praetorian regime

during the Cold War, the way football was used by the Federal Government during

the Second World War seems to be consistent with at least one aspect of Harold

Lasswell’s garrison state theoretical construct. 49

Writing months before the attack

on Pearl Harbor, Lasswell argued that it was likely that the United States would

become a militarized state, and he predicted that such governments would adroitly

employ symbols in an

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