The current state of American Football as played by colleges and universities is at a crossroads today. The game and the players are becoming increasingly more professional. Players can now openly be paid by sponsors and even private individuals if the person is paying for an “endorsement.” That means that the schools that are rich are getting richer by paying the best players, while the less fortunate teams are left to pick up the crumbs of the remaining players.
What if I told you that a major college football program, one that had won national championships, decided to end its football program because of changes made to the state of major college football? Well, that’s what happened. This particular team began playing football way back in 1892. And they didn’t end football because they were bad at the sport historically. In fact, the opposite was true. It won 2 national championships over the years. They had a winning record against almost all teams they played (never lost to historical powerhouse Notre Dame, for example). They produced a Heisman Trophy winner (given to the best player in the country). And, and this is significant, it won its conference championship 7 times. And what if I told you that the conference this team was in was the Big Ten Conference?
Yes, you heard me right. The Big Ten is one of premier conferences in the United States today. They send a team to the College Football Playoffs almost every year. Teams like Ohio State and Michigan and Penn State and the others are always in the top ten year in and year out. And the leadership of this member of the conference decided that the state of football had reached the point where money meant more than competing and certainly meant more than academics.
The president of this university was Robert Hutchins. Hutchins felt strongly that the commercialism and the money that was becoming more and more important to the college game was unhealthy for the sport and the young men who were associated with it. He proposed to eliminate the program. But, as you can imagine, players, students, and alumni were outraged by Hutchins and his idea to discontinue football. So, to avoid student unrest because of his decision, Hutchins announced that the football program would be dropped…during the Christmas Holiday break time.
Well, you can imagine the fallout. Enrollment immediately declined. Alumni pulled their financial support. Sports news writers and announcers tore him to shreds in print and over the air. But Hutchins stood by his convictions. College football had turned professional, he argued, and his university wouldn’t be a part of it.
Eventually, the university recovered financially. In fact, today, it is one of the best-endowed institutions of higher learning in the world. The institution? Robert Hutchins was the president of the University of Chicago. And the outbreak of World War 2 in 1939 made people forget that he disbanded one of the best football programs in the United States that year.
The Rest of the Story 