The men talked a little too loosely on the train home. They had been riding in a Pullman car from Atlanta to Washington from Saturday night to Sunday morning, and now that work was done, they felt free to talk. And they… spoke very freely.
The previous day, November 2, 1907, the Georgia State football team lost 10-6 to Georgia Tech in Atlanta. On the train heading north were three men who had participated in that game, but apparently not enrolled at either school. Four days later, one of the passengers, Florida Ingram, sent a letter to the state of Georgia and several newspapers about what she had heard.
“Two of them were players on the Georgetown team and lived in or near Washington, D.C., and the third, with whom I traveled to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was He said he had no connection to Athens University, but was paid $150 in cash and a trip to Atlanta to play Georgia in Saturday afternoon's game. ”
Additionally, the men used fake names and even played at other universities under different names, all of which was true. A few days later, Grantland Rice blew the whistle for the Tennessean in Nashville. Georgia coach George Whitney was furious, but he blamed his alumni for arranging the players and said he was just going along with it. Whitney was still banned by the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association from ever coaching in the South again.
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Although it was a scandal, it was not the only scandal involving powerful people in the early history of college football. For those who think the era of NIL and unrestricted transfers is the Wild West, imagine the era of ringers and so-called “Trump” athletes.
The first intercollegiate game of any kind was a boat race between Harvard and Yale in 1852, writes author Murray Sperber in his 2004 book College Sports Inc. . The race was organized by businessmen who wanted to develop New Hampshire's lake region, and some members of both crews were not students enrolled in the schools they represented. They were professional rowers and ringers.
“Therefore, there were two factors at work in the first collegiate sports contest in American history: the event was entirely commercial, and the participants were cheating,” Sperber wrote. “The history of intercollegiate athletics went downhill from there.”
Joe Guyon (left) is inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the College Football Hall of Fame. (AP)
Sperber is now retired and living in the Bay Area, but he can't help but observe what's going on.
“The current situation of college athletes running around looking for cash seems similar to the earlier days when they were called by accurately descriptive terms like 'tramp athletes' and 'ringers.' ” he says.
Everything is coming full circle.
There may have been no rules regarding player payments or transfers in the beginning, but they were still frowned upon. In 1961, the NCAA instituted a membership-wide rule requiring players to sit out for one year after transferring. But before that, many conferences had this rule in place. The one-year rule was first applied in his 1898, when Columbia University, Harvard University, and Penn University established this rule among themselves. Six years later, a conference informally known as the “Big Nine” was convened, and several years later more schools joined and similar rules were enacted. The Southern Collegiate Athletic Association, which founded the ACC and SEC, passed his “Migration Rule'' in 1921, which prohibited any player from playing at a second school.
“The 'so-called' vagrant athletes are hereby forever eliminated,” University of Georgia athletics professor SV Sanford wrote in June 1922.
As time will tell, eternity was not accurate.
But Sanford and others who run college football believe the simple idea that if there is competition, people will try to buy the best participants, even if there are rules against it. He was trying to address a problem that would prove a century later. .
In the fall of 1889, football pioneer Walter Camp accused Princeton and Harvard universities of letting paid players play and recalling players who had graduated. The following year, Yale accused Princeton of using paid athletes. Princeton denied it and proposed decriminalizing graduate and professional school students, which Harvard happened to lean heavily on.
The University of Michigan was accused of using seven ringers in an 1892 game against Purdue. Western teams were often accused of taking paid players from Eastern schools, and vice versa. The debate over eligibility rules led to Western schools forming the Western Conference in February 1896. By 1901, the “Big Nine” had his one transfer rule that was very reminiscent of modern graduate school transfer rules. They were university graduates who entered directly into professional schools such as law, engineering, and medicine.
It became a loophole that anyone could take advantage of.
As author John Kriek writes in his book Stagg vs. Yost: The Birth of Fierce Football, Chicago coach Amos Alonzo Stagg and Michigan coach Fielding Yost were the best. In 1902, two players left Chicago during preseason camp to join Michigan.
“National Signing Day did not exist at that time,” Kirk wrote. “Verbal commitments meant nothing. And even unofficial regulations, let alone rules prohibiting scouting athletes who are already training or enrolled in a rival's preseason camp,” There were no raids like this happening all the time.”
Nebraska lineman John Tobin was in training camp in 1903. Mr. Stagg then sent his assistant from Chicago, who had been in Nebraska the previous year, to put Tobin on the train for Chicago. The Stags aggressively raided Nebraska, gaining “graduate transfers” from Yale, Washington State, Arkansas, and several small schools.
Nebraska responded by bringing back center Charles Borg, who was traded to Chicago. Coach Stagg immediately replaced him with a Washington player.
“In most cases, the attackers behaved as deplorably as their attackers did, jumping from school to school as soon as a more attractive offer came along,” Kirk wrote.
As reported through presidential documents in Kirk's book, the University of Michigan paid players to come back for another year. There was also a letter from the captains of the University of Washington and Jefferson College football teams to the players at the University of Michigan, asking whether the University of Michigan would match the sweet offers it received from both Dickinson College in Pennsylvania and Cornell University in New York. , in other words, can I pay his full tuition for one year?” If he plays soccer in the fall and baseball in the spring, he will be able to pay for room and board. ”
Another great figure in college football was heavily involved in acquiring transfer players. Carlisle Indians coach Pop Warner brought in players from other schools, particularly Haskell Institute, a boarding school for Native Americans.
Peter Hauser, captain of the 1907 team, is credited with throwing the first true long pass in history, a 40-yard pass against national champion Penn, according to author Sally Jenkins in her book The Real All-American. In the book, he refers to this long pass as “three people, or one of three.'' Four iconic moments in the evolution of football. ”
Hauser spent his first two years at Haskell, then five at Carlisle, sitting out a year in between.
Things went the other way. Jimmie Johnson, who was captain of his team at Carlisle in 1903, attended Northwestern Dental School, where he played for two years and was inducted into the College's Football Hall of Fame.
Edward Rodgers, another College Football Hall of Famer, played at Carlisle from 1897 to 1900 and then at Minnesota from 1901 to 1903.
Joe Guyon, who is also a CFB Hall of Famer, played under Warner at Carlisle College from 1912-1913, then under John Heisman at Georgia Tech from 1917-1918, and played for quite a while. has a career of
Obviously, there wasn't always a four-year playing limit, especially at military academies. Chris “Red” Cagle was a star player in Southwest Louisiana (now Louisiana Lafayette) from 1922 until 1925, then in the Army where he played four years, where he was an All-American. became. Earl “Red” Bleich, who later became a national championship winning coach at Army, played three seasons (1915-1917) at Miami (Ohio) and then two years at Army. Harry Wilson, an All-American during his three years at Penn State, played four more years at Army and faced Navy seven times.
The Army and Navy were essentially independent and used transfers in building their football powers. Of course, it was a time of loose organization. It was in his 1919 that the NCAA was founded, and even back then, conferences tended to set their own rules. Then came the World War II era, which basically suspended all regulations and caused a lot of movement before and after military service.
even deeper
A season in which some college football teams were able to play and others were not.
One program that has taken advantage of it is, ironically, the Army. Felix “Doc” Blanchard won his Heisman trophy when he was in the Army from 1944 until 1946. However, he spent his freshman season at the University of North Carolina and transferred to West Point because of the war.
Notre Dame had a number of postwar transfers, including George Conner, who was a second-team All-American at Holy Cross College and won the Outland Trophy with Notre Dame in 1946.
Oklahoma used the postwar transfer as a springboard for its program. Paul “Buddy” Burris started his career at Tulsa, played in the Sugar Bowl against Tennessee, and was a three-time All-American with the Sooners after the war. .
And then there is the story of Thomas Edward “Shorty” McWilliams, who finished in the top 10 of Heisman voting at two different programs: Mississippi State in 1944 and Army in 1945. McWilliams then returned to Starkville for three more years.
And lest anyone wonder if money was involved, it's cataloged in Sperber's 1998 book, “Paths to Victory: The Crisis That Shaped College Sports.” As such, there have been various reports that money is involved in these transfers and recruitment in general.
For example, Time magazine reported in 1946 that the University of Oklahoma “spent $200,000 to acquire a good team.” Sports magazine reported in 1951 that Washington's star running back Hugh McElhaney said, “I made so much money that I couldn't afford to graduate.”
Eventually, college football became more organized and the NCAA's police recruiting ability strengthened. (One can only imagine how much that would have curtailed under-table payouts.) The NCAA passed transfer rules that have been in place for decades. Transfers had to take a year, so transferring to a junior college was seen as the most immediate solution for players.
Then the unraveling began. First, there's the graduate transfer trend, and Russell Wilson's move from North Carolina to Wisconsin helped popularize it. Then came the waiver applications where lawyers like Tom Mars helped players like Justin Fields move from Georgia to Ohio State without sitting in 2019. This led the NCAA to implement a one-time waiver, which went into effect three years ago. This was when NIL was legalized.
That was unpleasant enough, but in the past year, all transfer and NIL rules have been invalidated and a lawsuit is pending. And for now at least, we're back to where we started. That means paying to play, but now it's done more legally and openly.
even deeper
How the Unrestricted Free Transfer Era Works in College Football
Sperber has written four books on college sports, three of which focus on the intersection of money, athletics, and academics. He sees all the changes and thinks change is natural. Whatever he thinks about the amateurism argument, the money flowing into the sport has changed everything. However, Sperber noted that another change is the time constraints athletes have, including practice time, training time, film time, and year-round commitments.
“It’s much more intense,” Sperber said.
But Sperber is a sports fan and a lifelong fan of the San Francisco 49ers, watching that team go to the Super Bowl with many of the same players. He is also a fan of his Golden State Warriors, who won his four NBA titles with the same core players. And Sperber recognizes that NIL and transfers make it extremely difficult to retain players in college sports.
It's a battle between player rights and fan experience.
“I understand why they would do that. But as just a fan, it's offensive,” Sperber said. “It's not the same.”
Editor's note: This is part of a series of stories examining the transfer portal, the NIL, and its impact on college sports. The spring football transfer portal window will be open from April 16th until his April 30th. See all Transfer Portal articles here.
(Top photo of Felix “Doc” Blanchard: Associated Press)
