10/30/2009 The Forgotten Ghosts of College Foot…

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SPORTS OCTOBER 30, 2009

The Forgotten Ghosts Of College Football

Four schools that had it all—and lost it

By D AR R EN EVER SON

There was a time once when the University of Chicago was known for something other than
economics and eggheads.

A century ago, Chicago was one of the kings of college football. Legendary coach Amos Alonzo
Stagg prowled its sidelines. Seldom did Chicago even play road games. Foes came to the South
Side because the paycheck was too good.

But 70 years ago this winter, the school disbanded its football team. The stadium became the
birthplace of the atomic bomb, when the first controlled nuclear chain reaction was performed
under its stands in 1942. Now a library stands there, which is exactly how Robert Hutchins
would've liked it. "When I am minded to take exercise," said Mr. Hutchins, the school president
who led the push to ax the team, "I sit down and wait until the mood has passed."

On a few campuses across the country, ghosts now reside where packed football stadiums once
stood. At these schools, the autumn Saturday experience cherished at so many other colleges—a
big game against a hated rival, with a championship possibly at stake—is gone, or is a shadow of
what it used to be. The reasons run the gamut from high-minded academic standards, low-
minded rule-breaking, changing times and just plain bad decisions.

Tulane University in New Orleans, a charter member of the Southeastern Conference, withdrew
after the 1965 season from what would become the country's best football conference. It figured
it would be better off as an independent. In 1949, Tulane won the SEC, but the school soon
became uncompetitive following a financially motivated decision to trim scholarships.

Minnesota, which won five national titles in the 1930s and 1940s under coach Bernie Bierman,
has never been the same since he left to serve in World War II. After he returned, his teams
struggled to adapt to changes in strategy. Minnesota—save for a blip in the 1960s—has struggled
ever since, as its local football talent has waned.

More so than any other sport, college football is beholden to tradition. The best high-school
players flock to the best programs, since that's where the crowds and the championships are.
Because of this, top teams seldom vanish for good—but it happens. "We haven't even won
occasionally," says Minnesota Athletic Director Joel Maturi. "We haven't been in the top two of
the Big Ten since 1967."

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In some ways, the disappearance of top-notch football from these campuses has had effects
beyond the field. It has shaped public perception of these universities, for better or worse, just as
"football schools" like Penn State and Ohio State have become known for six-figure crowds on
game day and boundless school spirit, which in turn aids fund raising. "It's definitely a positive,"
says Rennie Cook, executive director of the alumni association at Oklahoma. "The coolest thing
it does is it also allows us to shine a light on what's going on at the rest of the university."

To this day, Southern Methodist University in Dallas is trying to overcome the stain of having its
football program suspended in the late 1980s because of repeated rules violations, a rare
punishment known as the death penalty. Now SMU resides in a minor conference with faraway
schools like East Carolina and Central Florida—instead of being associated with nearby giants
Texas and Texas A&M.

"That death-penalty phrase is not part of our vocabulary," says athletic director Steve Orsini,
who in his 3½ -year tenure has made a point of not using the death penalty as an excuse for
continued failure. "I wouldn't be here and June Jones [SMU's $2 million-per-year coach]
wouldn't be here if we didn't believe we could return to the glory days of old."

Other schools are more modest in their aspirations. Tulane, off to a 2-5 start this season, is just
trying to boost interest. The team plays its home games before sparse crowds at the Superdome,
and last month Tulane and ancient rival LSU—which face each other Saturday—mutually agreed
to discontinue their series. "The mood around campus is very apathetic toward football," says
Tulane junior Nick Peruffo, the sports editor at the student newspaper.

Minnesota has at least solved its stadium issue: The team moved into the $288.5 million TCF
Bank Stadium this season, ending its stay at the Metrodome, whose climate-controlled
environment didn't attract warm-weather recruits as was hoped. Coach Tim Brewster, whose
team is 4-4, talks of someday reaching the Rose Bowl, an honor that traditionally goes to the Big
Ten champion. But conference rivals Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State all have stadiums with
more than double the capacity of TCF's 50,805, and all three more than doubled Minnesota's
$24.3 million in football revenues in the 2007-08 fiscal year. "I do think the Ohio States,
Michigans and Penn States have an advantage that the other schools don't have," says Mr.
Maturi. "But it's also been proven that the other Big Ten schools—quite frankly everyone outside
of Minnesota and Indiana—have found a way to do it on occasion."

The most famous ghosts of the gridiron are Yale, Harvard and their fellow members of the Ivy
League. After shaping the sport's rules in the late 19th century and dominating its early days, the
schools that would later form the Ivy resisted the national shift toward awarding athletic
scholarships and lowering admissions standards for players. Today, Ivy teams quietly live out
life in the lower-level Football Championship Subdivision. The Y ale Bowl—a landmark that
inspired the Rose Bowl and Michigan Stadium—had 3,879 for the Lafayette game Oct. 3.

But even the Ivies didn't go as far to demonstrate their commitment to education as Chicago. Mr.
Hutchins, the school's president from 1929 to 1951, was convinced that football had the same
relation to education that "bullfighting has to agriculture."

Mr. Hutchins never would've had enough support to ax the football team in 1939, historians say,
if Chicago's teams had still been the mighty Monsters of the Midway. (That nickname, now
associated with the NFL's Chicago Bears, originated with Mr. Stagg's Maroons; "Midway" refers
to a park that runs through campus.) Aiding Mr. Hutchins's cause was Chicago's massive decline
on the field—due in part to Chicago's higher academic standards. In 1939, Chicago's final major-
college season, the Maroons lost 85-0 to Michigan and 61-0 to Ohio State and Harvard.

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Dropping football helped build Chicago's image as a top destination for serious-minded graduate
students and faculty. Over 80 Nobel Prize winners have studied, taught or researched at
Chicago. "That's part of the magic of Chicago," says Robin Lester, who wrote a book about Mr.
Stagg and Chicago football. "That's their thing. It's still a serious place for kids to get an
education."

Today, Chicago is once again embracing athletics as part of a larger push to invest in campus life
beyond the classroom. Last week, the school celebrated the 40-year anniversary of the return of
varsity football; Chicago now plays on the non-athletic-scholarship Division III level. "We're still
being true to the notion that it's not in the interest of universities to create mass-entertainment
spectacles," says John Boyer, dean of Chicago's undergraduate college. "I always tell people that
those games in '39 were the best thing that ever happened to us."

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W1

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