The once powerful University of Chicago football program had run into hard times before the Hyde Park school's president decided academia and football were not a good mix.
The University of Chicago Maroon's battle against the Huskies from Washington University on Nov. 23, 1929, at Stagg Field. Chicago won 26-6.
“I think it is important for one important university to discontinue football,” he said. “There is no doubt on the whole that sports have been a major handicap to education in the United States.” The president of Northwestern University, Franklyn Snyder, said his campus was enriched by sports. “It is my firm belief that football has a proper place in undergraduate activity, that it contributes to education,” Snyder said in 1940, shortly after the U. of C. dropped its program.
Fans considered the university’s longtime coach, Amos Alonzo Stagg, a veritable saint. Stagg oversaw the program from 1892 to 1932 and was a pioneer in the use of the forward pass and the first coach to call the Statue of Liberty play, among other innovations. His teams were known as the “Monsters of the Midway,” a moniker later bestowed upon the Chicago Bears, and in the early 1900s were credited with two unofficial national championships.
Executing the new formation in 1938, a halfback trotted behind the linemen toward the sideline before the snap. The defense moved with him, assuming he would block for the ball carrier. Instead the halfback pivoted, and the quarterback threw the ball to him. Chicago and Oberlin College ballyhooed their 1939 game as a clash of scholars. Chicago’s bookworms won. The only other school they beat that year was Wabash College.“The immediate reinstatement of football was asked yesterday by a resolution adopted by the university’s alumni club in a special luncheon meeting at the La Salle Hotel,” the Tribune reported in January 1940.
“President Hutchins has made the most of his bad teams,” a Tribune editorial observed. “The 60 to 0 defeats were worn almost as badges of merit. That was amusing for a time, but the joke wore thin.” Edna Waldvogel and Merritt Jennings watch a football game in the rain and cold at Stagg Field, circa 1928.
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