When & How did football get a grip on colleges so strongly that it

Dec 13, 2022, 9:50 AM

now embodies and counts so highly towards the worth & national prestige of an institution almost as much as the academia side of that said university!

Can you imagine, say CLEMSON, not having a football program since 1897 til 2022 and what it would be without that sport?

Bet Most of us would not be Clemson football fans if we had to attend, graduate and/or be part of the Academia side of the University..nor would we be fans if Clemson never had a football team.

Saying, What would universities like Clemson, Alabama, Michigan, So Cal, OHst, etc be like today IF they had not slowly built their institutional brand up over the past 125 years on the back of college football?

Well, Coach Frank would say lil ole Clemson did have problems in the 40's & 50's getting players outside the region to come to Tigertown since they'd never heard of Clemson College.

Can you even imagine major colleges Not having a football program but instead putting their resources & time strictly onto academics?

That idea brings up the real fact that a university's college football program actually draws potential students into its enrollments thus helping its growth and budgets which is a fact when the football team wins a major bowl game or better yet a Natty..

while ironically the general national sports public often sees a university's overall strength academically thru how that institution fairs in college football..

thus the sport that infiltrated the halls of academia over 125 years ago rules too many university budgets & reputations and thus has become a bull in the arena of higher learning & research.

Now, the sport has grown so much that it's built huge stadiums on campuses, large support complexes, hired million $ coaches & staffs and become the face of the institution for millions of people around the globe..

and just recently the sport has veered from the early concept of recruiting high school players thru a partial or full scholarship offering for educational purposes (aka: Student-Athlete) to now recruiting unsatisfied players directly from other college football teams by luring or paying them huge sums of $ to play for them instead..

while these supposedly "Student-Athletes" can now take on high paying gigs as the advertising face of commercial companies.

Well, if either a deceased college sports fan, or a former football player or a coach from the early to mid 1900's were to be brought back from the dead they would think the sport of college football has gotten way out of hand and is ruling the academic university way too much in many instances from what its main core of existence was & still is..HIGHER EDUCATION & Research..

and not an on-site haven for a "campus" sport called football that has overstepped its original purpose.

What say you?

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The pendulum will swing back once the current state of football starts having a negative impact on the institution. Just saying, imo basketball
has already affected it negatively. Here's an article that supports the fact that once you lose the HS recruiting and the athletes start the one and done, interest goes down. People still love to follow and root for the home town guy.

Now that basketball crap is spilled over into football. Some like judge may say Dabo is a dinosaur but is he? Maybe he's 10 steps ahead of us and really a genius trying to save our beloved sport. Interesting theory.

https://morningconsult.com/2022/03/17/ncaa-march-madness-interest/