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History of football Walter camp
Walter camp and american football
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The Rise of Intercollegiate Football and Its Portrayal in American Popular Literature
With the success of the Merriwell literature, juvenile sport fiction became abundant. In all subsequent stories, the model for traditional juvenile sport fiction, even continuing today, is the illustrious Frank Merriwell (Oriard, 1982). As the Merriwell series dwindled to a halt in the 1910’s, books began to dominate the world of children’s sport fiction. Oriard (1982) suggested the popularity of these books rose because “the juvenile sports novel combined the action of the dime novels with the middle-class morality of the Alger (rags-to-riches) novel” (p. 47). In 1912, the year Gilbert Patten retired as the author of the Merriwell stories, Owen Johnson published his children’s novel, Stover at Yale. Dink Stover looms as the hero of Johnson’s novel, which follows young Dink from his freshman year to the beginning of his senior year at the illustrious Yale University. Johnson’s novel while similar to the Merriwell series, establishes a new era in juvenile sport literature that starts the maturation process of the collegiate athlete-hero.
Many of Frank Merriwell’s challenges did occur on the playing field at Yale in a multitude of sports that included football, baseball, crew, and track. During most of these events, however, the precocious hero and his comrades usually solved a mystery or righted some wrong. In addition, Merriwell left college for a few years, and this respite from college life enabled the multifaceted young man to write a play, purchase a champion thoroughbred horse, and travel the world in his pursuit to stamp out all wrongdoing, all activities contrary to the ideals of amateurism. Stover receives the hero worship typical o...
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...mith, R.A. (1988). Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big-Time College Athletics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Smith, R.A. (1993). “History of Amateurism in Men’s Intercollegiate Athletics: The Continuance of a 19th-Century Anachronism in America.” QUEST. Vol. 45, pp. 430-447.
Standish, B.L. (1900). “Frank Merriwell’s Policy; or, Playing Columbia for Practice.” TipTop Weekly. No. 238.
Standish, B.L. (1901). “Dick Merriwell at Fardale; or, The Wonder of School.” Tip Top Weekly. No. 291.
Thelin, J.R. (1994). Games Colleges Play: Scandal and Reform in Intercollegiate Athletics. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Valenzi, K.D., Ed. (1990). Champion of Sport: The Life and Times of Walter Camp, 1859-1925. Charlottesville, VA: Howell Press, Inc.
Watterson, J.S. (1988). “Inventing Modern Football.” American Heritage. Sept./Oct., pp. 102-113.
...ause they are so well written. The expertly devised narrative voice, easy humour, compelling characterization, and thoughtful, even philosophical storytelling combine to create a series of books which compare favourably to many included on the Modern Library's recent list of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century, which seems not to contain a single novel set in the world of sport. It is a curious prejudice, this apparent lack of respect for literature concerned with sport, to which these novels represent a pointed and hearty rebuke.
Bissinger creates empathy in the reader by narrating the lives of once Permian heros. Charlie Billingsley, a Permian football player, “was somewhere at the top” while he was playing. It was hard for the football town of Odessa to forget “how that son of a bitch played the game in the late sixties”(80). While in Odessa, Permian players receive praise unmatched by even professional football. This unmatchable praise becomes something Permian players like Billingsley become accustomed to, and when he “found out that...you were a lot more expendable in college(80). This lack of appreciation that is equivalent to the one that they have received their whole life makes them go from “a hero one day to a broken down nobody the next”(81). With the realization of this reality, Billingsley becomes one of the many to spend life as a wastrel, living in his memory of playing for the Permian Panthers. The reader becomes empathetic towards how the once likely to succeed Billingsley, becomes another Odessan wastrel due to the over emphasis and extreme praise the Odessan football team receives. Bissinger does not stop with a classic riches to rags story to spur the reader’s empathy but talks about the effect the Odessan attitude toward football has on the health of its players. Just like in many parts of the world, in Odessa, sports equates to manliness and manliness equates to not showing signs of pain. Philip, an eighth grade boy aspiring to one day be a Permian Panther is lauded by his stepfather as he “broke his arm during the first demonstrative series of a game ...[but] managed to set it back in” and continued playing for the rest of the game. It is noted that Philip’s arm “swelled considerably, to the point the forearm pads...had to be cut off”(43). By adding details such as these, Bissinger
Critics feel that the term amateurism is only a term used in collegiate sports to show the distinguish the difference between professional and collegiate so that they don’t have to pay college athletes. College athletes are just as talented and just as exposed as professional athletes. The argument is for there to be a share in the profits for wage compensation amongst players is know as pay-for-play. College athletics is a corporate enterprise that is worth millions of dollars in revenue. Pay-for-play is an assumption that colleges and universities receive huge revenues from marketing their collegiate sports programs and that the profits from these revenues are not shared with players who perform in the arena. Which some feel that they should.
Shropshire, Kenneth L. 1996. In black and white: race and sports in America. New York: New York University Press.
Woods, Al. “College Athletes Should Be Paid.” Sports and Athletes: An Anthology. Ed. Christine Watkins. Greenhaven Press, 2009. 87-94. Print.
Pappano, Laura. “How Big-Time Sports Ate College Life” Norton Sampler: Short Essays for Composition, 8th ed. Pages 591-600. 2013.
The history of sports goes back since ancient times. It has been a useful way for people to explore nature and their environment. Sports include different activities and games such as football, soccer, basketball, and etc. to express their skills and talents. Also, sports are a way to relax and have fun; but are sports all our African Americans rely on? The dream to become future sports stars. The reason why Gates begins his essay with an anecdote is to show and compare how many african-american athletes were at work today and how little the chances of African-Americans becoming athletes are compared to being a lawyer, dentist, or even a doctor. African-Americans assume that they are born athletes and it’s because the school system doesn’t teach them reality and educate them to undertake more realistic goals for careers.
"College Athletic Programs Undermine Academics." Student Life. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2011. Opposing Viewpoints. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 27 July 2011.
Zimbalist, Andrew S. Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism And Conflict In Big-Time College Sports. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 27 Mar. 2014.
Miller, Patrick B. Wiggins, David K. Sport and the color line: Black athletes and Race relations in Twentieth-century America. 2004. The Journal of Southern History 70 (4) (Nov 2004): 990.
Milne, Ira Mark and Sisler, Timothy, ed. “Silas Marner.” Novels for Students. Vol. 20. Detroit: Gale, 2005. 166-182. Print.
Power, Clark. "Athletics vs. Academics." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 14 Jan. 2014. Web. 07 Apr. 2014.
Bernstein, Nina. 2011. “On College Campsus, Athletes Often Get Off Easy,” The New York Times, November 11. Retrieved November 14, 2013 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/us/on-college-campuses-athletes-often-get-off-easy.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0).
Menke, Frank G. The Encyclopedia of Sports. South Brunswick and New York: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1987. Print.
How did sports "both reflect and influence" North Carolinian society from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s? During this era, athletics in college, basketball in particular, proved that many native-born citizens became Americans through participation in sports in which their accomplishments merited praise. Sports effectuated life lessons learned as well as cultural values, including teamwork and sportsmanship. Race and gender played an enormous role in the history of sports. In one historical moment from Pamela Grundy's book Learning to Win: Sports, Education, and Social Change in Twentieth-Century North Carolina, she writes about men's college athletics between 1880 and 1901.