AHC & WI: American universities gracefully phase out football in 1950s?

Let's say a modest amount of statistical evidence is presented that football increases the risk of later cognitive and depression problems. Plus, just the common sense idea that there's no way an abrupt stop where the brain collides with the inside of the skull is good for a person. So, colleges phase out football easily and comfortably.

How do they do this and what takes its place?
 
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I think by the 1950s, its probably too late. If you want to remove football from North American atheltics, you probably need to have Teddy Roosevelt follow through on his threat to ban the game, Otherwise, I think the best you might get is that football evolves into a non-contact sport.
 
Let's say a modest amount of statistical evidence is presented that football increases the risk of later cognitive and depression problems. Plus, just the common sense idea that there's no way an abrupt stop where the brain collides with the inside of the skull is good for a person. So, colleges phase out football easily and comfortably.

How do they do this and what takes its place?

???
1) like anyone would care in the 50s. 'Man up, boy'.
2) there'd be riots on the streets. Is THAT what you mean by 'easily and comfortably', because that's what you'd get.

No. Nope. No way.
 
Nobody cared about long term brain damage at that time because there was a much higher risk of skull fracture from playing football back then. Plastic helmets were not universal and facemasks did not exist until 1953. CTE and long term brain damage are a concern now because facemasks made it safe to use your head to tackle and you simply could not do that in the 1950s and expect to live.

Note: boxing was also a more popular sport in the 1950s and everyone knew it caused brain damage. So, probably what, a 0% chance of this happening?
 
Many of the jesuit universities did including Georgetown, Marquette, DePaul and Loyola. They did it for cost reasons as fielding a football team is so expensive. Basketball took the place in the hierarchy.
 
Many of the jesuit universities did including Georgetown, Marquette, DePaul and Loyola. They did it for cost reasons as fielding a football team is so expensive. Basketball took the place in the hierarchy.

probably also because nobody went to their games...no paying rear ends in seats...but take a look at their basketball programs!!!
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Is it too much to ask to have US universities not fixate on sport?
In the UK there's not really anything of the sort.
 

Driftless

Donor
Is it too much to ask to have US universities not fixate on sport?
In the UK there's not really anything of the sort.

Once US Universities figured out that sport - most often American football, and secondarily basketball were cash-cows creating revenue up the wazoo, it was "game-over" (pun intended). There's some schools that either would not exist today, or would be much smaller institutions. It has become the proverbial cart before the horse.

Top Athletic Budgets in NCAA - 2014
 
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jahenders

Banned
Agreed. Once it got popular and became a big money maker, then eliminating it was impossible and controlling it limited. One thing that could potentially have changed it would have been if some of those big universities had decided early on that the "profits" from the football program go back into the university budget NOT back into the football program. That might have at least limited the growth and cost such that you wouldn't have college coaches with multi-million dollar deals.

An ancillary thing that could have contributed after WWII would be if the federal government had said, "Hey colleges, if you want federal aid going to student at your schools, you need to prove that you're using sports profits to keep tuition down." Not likely, but it could have helped. On an unrelated note, that could be part of the answer for keeping tuition costs down -- the Dept of Ed could just say, "No student loans, GI Bill, or grants to your school if your average tuition is above XXXX."

Once US Universities figured out that sport - most often American football, and secondarily basketball were cash-cows creating revenue up the wazoo, it was "game-over" (pun intended). There's some schools that either would not exist today, or would be much smaller institutions. It has become the proverbial cart before the horse.

Top Athletic Budgets in NCAA - 2014
 
???
1) like anyone would care in the 50s. 'Man up, boy'.
2) there'd be riots on the streets. Is THAT what you mean by 'easily and comfortably', because that's what you'd get.

No. Nope. No way.

Pretty much. In the 1950's It would be easier to make an anti-football argument around the fact that big time money-making athletic programs pervert the role of higher education, and will ultimately lead to the racial integration of the state university football factories in the South and Near South if they intend to remain competitive with northern schools who admit black athletes. Rather than go that route, many major colleges from Texas to Virginia decide to drop football and basketball or enforce rigid academic standards that essentially mean that majority of black and "low class" whites no longer can qualify. The NFL and NBA expand with farm systems to accommodate this.
 
It's all Teddy Roosevelt's fault. :) He, among others, tied athletic performance to a man's character and made it part of the education system.
 
Couldn't this leave a gap for real football (i.e. soccer) to emerge as a college sport in the US? With that, you could have a bona fide soccer culture in colleges, which could help to give the North American Soccer League a good kick start.
 
Thank you everyone for your very good responses. :) And I quite agree that this is a real challenge. Especially since what I have in mind is that direct health concern is a major contributing factor, say at least 40%. Alright, some ideas I have:

1) maybe the phase out starts at the high school level with cost being a big factor, and with some doctors saying, Given these new studies I can no longer sign off on football and give it a clean bill of health,

2) and maybe that's the way it plays out in the face of uncertainly. Instead of banning football seeming like the active step, maybe signing off on football becomes seen as the active step for which we don't have enough information,

3) families are in general considerably more pro-education. The GI Bill is the major contributing factor for this angle, with other interesting minor contributing factors, (*even though repeated head trauma often causes such things as impulsiveness, poorer emotional skills, poorer executive functioning skills, etc. Let's say this part is at first not well understood),

4) per jahenders above, the idea that football profits should be plowed back into the university might slow down the growth of the major powerhouse programs, and

5) there is an interesting sidenote I read that in around 1960(?), at one of the major schools, maybe Notre Dame(?), or maybe Ohio State(?), or one of the other major programs, the president of the university cancelled the team's participation in a bowl game for which they had earned a spot, citing as his reason that students were over-emphasizing football ? ? ? I mean, it's absolutely incredible. It's something that's almost unimaginable today. Perhaps he just didn't lift his university's rule against bowl participation like he was expected to lift? But no, I think he actually cancelled. Will try and look this up.
*I might be thinking of Notre Dame's resurgent 1964 season, the first with Ara Parseghian as head coach.
 
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Do you think, rather than ending the programs, that they could merely be divorced from the colleges? Creating a professional "Minor League" for baseball?
 
I think by the 1950s, its probably too late. If you want to remove football from North American atheltics, you probably need to have Teddy Roosevelt follow through on his threat to ban the game, Otherwise, I think the best you might get is that football evolves into a non-contact sport.

There's an alt history story with that premise. Although Teddy only bans the game in colleges. The outcome of the story is basically...

* Football is punted from colleges but survives in the wild to gain popularity. Professional football ends up organized more like baseball, with a vibrant AAA league to help foster young talent. The lack of college teams almost means there's over 75 'Federal Football League' teams in the country.

* With far less public and alumni interest thanks to the lack of "amateur" sports in college, higher education is isolated from mainstream American life. The Great Depression proves devastating. By 1939, there are fewer than seventy-five state-supported colleges left in the country, as state governments can't justify spending tax dollars on them. Even then, "state-supported" is more like "state-assisted" and they have to raise their tuition almost as high as private universities, and ultimately only one person out of a hundred can afford to attend a state university.
 

CaptainRex

Banned
1950s?

The same time doctors said smoking is great for your health and the most common building material was the poison asbestos?

And dumped toxic waste in rivers? Where you could openly carry guns on planes. You have to change the whole culture into the nanny state a lot sooner
 
The Notre Dame football program did not participate in bowl games from 1924 till 1969. Over forty years for crying out loud! Apparently, one big reason was that their first semester straddled the winter holiday.

http://www.und.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/112014aac.html

' . . . Notre Dame adopted a new academic calendar in 1969, meaning the first semester of school ended in mid-December and didn't resume until Jan. 5, easing the logistical and travel challenges the previous school calendar placed over student-athletes by keeping them in class until the first semester ended in late January.

'In addition to the changes in class scheduling, the lucrative $340,000 payout for an appearance in a major bowl certainly caught the attention of Notre Dame administrators, who agreed any bowl profits would be used to help fund minority scholarships. . . '
Plus, before 1968, the vote for national champion was made BEFORE bowl games. So, Notre Dame was only one year slow in adopting to the new circumstances.
 
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I know essentially nothing about the subject but a quick Google search came up with this, from The College Football Encyclopedia:

Despite rapidly growing popularity, college football was in serious trouble in the early twentieth century. The rules changes of the 1890s led to only a brief decrease in the rate of injury and death on the playing field. By 1905 the public outcry against the game's brutality was so great that several colleges (including Columbia, the third school to take up the sport) banned football, and others threatened to do so. Even President Theodore Roosevelt, hardly a pantywaist, demanded that reforms be made. The movement led to the creation of a body that five years later, in 1910, became known as the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The NCAA since has been the major power in formulating rule changes and in setting up and policing the procedures under which members operate their football programs.

http://www.collegefootballpoll.com/history_of_college_football.html

I don't know. Can anyone who actually knows something about football confirm or elaborate on this?
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Ya. Why not something simple. Sealion comes to mind.

Even in the 1950s college ball was deep rooted, much more so than the pros at the same time.
 
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