The Opening Kickoff Read online

  The implication is that there was no real decision to cover football. The decision was to cover sports, and on a number of levels, football was simply in the right place at the right time. On a week-to-week basis, the fact that the games were largely played on Saturday gave the sport an instant leg up. The Sunday paper was the biggest one of the week, and editors needed something to fill the pages. “The daily newspaper was not redesigned to accommodate football,” said Oriard, “football was simply available for promotion.”

  On a broader level, though, the association with the nation’s elite colleges, and the respectability that went along with it, was also critical to the increase in newspaper coverage. “College football,” Oriard writes, “benefitted from the desire of the non-college-educated, ‘respectable’ middle class to emulate the social elite.” Hence, the focus that we’ve already seen on the activities surrounding the game—the carriages, the decorated houses, and the printed detail regarding the occupants of the boxes at the stadium. It all helped separate football from sports like boxing, which were less socially acceptable.

  It’s important to note that, for the vast majority of fans, the press wasn’t simply their entree into the game. It was the entirety of their football experience. Not only was this a time long before television and radio, but it was also a time during which long-distance travel remained a bit of a challenge for most people. Even if fans were able to make it to the game, there wasn’t a whole lot of room for them, as most of the stadiums of the day were still relatively small. For no other reason than mathematics alone, then, the importance of newspapers becomes clear.

  In 1889, for instance, the Yale–Princeton Thanksgiving Day game in New York City drew 25,000 fans from a city population of 2.4 million, meaning only 1 in 100 New Yorkers could have attended the contest. As Oriard points out, though, given the location of the schools that were playing in the game, it’s reasonable to assume that many of the fans came in from Connecticut and New Jersey. So it’s safe to conclude that the actual number of New Yorkers in attendance was far less than 25,000.

  Yet, at the time, the city had fifty-five daily papers, with a total circulation of nearly 1.8 million. So, even by the most conservative estimates, New Yorkers were roughly ninety times more likely to read about the game than actually see it. “The daily press in New York,” Oriard concludes, “had an impact on college football in the 1880s and 1890s greater than television on professional football in the 1950s and 1960s.”

  That meant that the writers did more than just report on the game; they served as the sole eyes and ears for many who considered themselves fans of the sport. Given this fact, the papers did everything they could to provide the best and most extensive coverage. Hearst, for instance, paid celebrity journalist Richard Harding Davis $500 to write about the Yale–Princeton game in 1895, a sum that Davis wrote to his brother “was quoted as the highest ever paid for a single piece of reporting.” The edition sold out. In the words of Davis, “The Journal people were greatly pleased.”

  The magazine industry flourished right along with the newspapers, aided by many of the same factors. Favorable postal laws also played a role in the rise of periodicals, which could be mailed at a second-class rate. As a result, the number of monthly magazines skyrocketed from 280 in 1860 to more than 1,800 by 1900. In the decade of the 1880s alone, magazine advertising grew at a rate of nearly 300 percent.

  As with the newspapers, much of the early magazine coverage focused on glorification of the game. For example, after Harvard beat Yale in 1890 for the first time in fifteen years, Davis wrote a laudatory piece in Harper’s Weekly, singing the praises of Harvard’s captain and star, Arthur Cumnock, a real-life precursor to Standish’s fictional Frank Merriwell. Davis credited Cumnock not simply with leading Harvard to football victories, but with changing the entire tenor on the Cambridge campus.

  When Cumnock arrived at Harvard, Davis wrote, “The prevailing tone was Harvard pessimism, and the manly thing, so the incoming Freshmen were told, and the chief end of man was to drink, and gamble politely . . . and cut recitations.” But in his four years, by Davis’s account, the football captain “threw all of his influence on the side of temperance in all things, fair play at either play or work, and showed at all times, whether on or off the field, the courtesy and modesty and strength of a gentleman.”

  The characterization didn’t seem like a stretch to the readers of the time. “The larger-than-life football hero,” Oriard notes, “lived in the popular imagination beyond conventional standards of vice and virtue. The hero-worship and contempt that football players continue to evoke today, the conflicts that routinely arise in college football between social, ethical, and moral and education values on one hand and popular heroism on the other, originated in football’s narratives of the 1890s.”

  Among those heroes was Pat O’Dea, who became a favorite of Midwestern writers starting in 1897. As the newspapers across the region chronicled his remarkable exploits, the Australian ascended from near anonymity to superstardom.

  Chapter Nine

  “Bigger Than Any of Pillsbury’s Great Mills”

  Though Pat O’Dea had briefly made an impression on those who had been following the Badgers closely in 1896, those ubiquitous newspapers expected little of him or the Wisconsin team as a whole heading into the 1897 season. That being said, newspaper predictions at that time were even more of an inexact science than they are today. One of the biggest challenges for prognosticators of the day was simply knowing who would actually enroll in school. In the days before scholarships, players came and went and new candidates might roll into town on the first day of classes and find themselves at practice that afternoon.

  The Milwaukee Sentinel’s season-preview piece on the Wisconsin team didn’t mention O’Dea and had a rather tepid take on the Badgers’ prospects. Another Milwaukee paper felt the same way, describing various Badgers as “fat,” “slow,” “unnecessarily rough,” and having “much to learn about the game.” Of O’Dea, the paper mentioned that he was “perhaps the most phenomenal punter in the country,” but saw him as essentially a one-trick pony, adding that “his value as a football player remains somewhat problematical.”

  Less than a week later, though, on the day of the season opener, the Minneapolis Journal painted a much rosier picture for the Badgers, indicating that, over a two-day span, Wisconsin had gone from looking like a group “that would find it difficult to hold its own with first class high school teams” to one that now appeared “strong.”

  The improvement was due to the new talent that had arrived on campus for the opening of classes. Coach King now had thirty candidates to choose from, though only four had been in the previous year’s first eleven. Fullback Pat O’Dea, “the kangaroo kicker,” was singled out among the most promising players. The paper mentioned that O’Dea did not have the “line-smashing” abilities of his predecessor, John Richards, but that he was superior as both a punter and sprinter. It concluded noncommittedly, “it is possible that O’Dea has solved the fullback problem for Wisconsin.”

  There wasn’t much time to work out the kinks. The Badgers began preseason practice just a week before the season opener, scheduled for October 2 at home against Lake Forest. King spent the first few days focusing on the most rudimentary of skills—things like falling on loose footballs and basic tackling techniques. The latter was aided by the advent of the tackling dummy, a wooden apparatus that players used to hone their skills.

  Coaches were always on the lookout for the next great advancement, and the dummy is a prime example. During the 1897 season, Penn’s coach, George Woodruff, eschewed the wooden version for “the live dummy,” and volunteered himself for the position. Disgusted with his team’s tackling struggles, Woodruff appeared at practice “in great wads and rolls of padding and invited his charges to throw him.” The Minneapolis Journal raved about the brilliance of Woodruff’s plan, noting, “it is impossible to hurt
the live dummy in any tackle with the armor used.” Reinforcing its reputation for institutional ingenuity, rival Harvard took things a step further, sending a heavily padded ball carrier into the line for forty-five straight minutes during its practice. The Journal scribe was clearly impressed, reporting that the Harvard “plan worked admirably.”

  Teams also spent a significant portion of the preseason coordinating signals, which, in the days before the huddle, were the method of communicating which play would be run. The need for signals became apparent when football moved from the scrummage to the scrimmage. Teams had to have some sort of coordinated plan when the ball was snapped. In the early days, most squads called their plays with the use of gestures, but over time, opponents became adept at deciphering those movements.

  Coded audible signals were the next logical step. Captains would yell out sentences with certain key words embedded within them. For instance, Yale’s signals from 1882 included such utterances as “Look out quick, Deac!” and “Play up sharp, Charley!” Eventually, teams happened upon the idea of using numbers instead of words. There is some debate as to where and when precisely the numerical signals were invented. Historian Alexander Weyand credited a player at the Pennsylvania Military College in 1887, who he said came up with the idea of using cadets’ serial numbers as a means of communicating who would carry the ball. Amos Alonzo Stagg claimed that the numerical signals were invented by Yale in 1889, when he was a part of the varsity team.

  Regardless of their origins, the signals quickly evolved into an integral part of the game. “They became more and more complex in the later ’90s,” Stagg recalled, “running into problems in addition, multiplications, subtraction, even division, until football threatened to become an advanced course in mental arithmetic.” The challenge was compounded by the rapid-fire nature of the game. After a ball carrier was brought down in the early days, players scrambled back to their feet and lined up right away. The snap came just ten seconds or so after the prior play had ended—making many of today’s no-huddle offenses, where a play is signaled in from the sidelines after which the quarterback might spend fifteen seconds relaying blocking assignments, look slow by comparison. So, it was imperative that everyone was on the same page. “Signal practice” was a critical part of every team’s pregame routine.

  That complexity, and the limited preparation time at the outset of the season, led most of the major teams to schedule what amounted to practice games to get them ready for their higher profile opponents. Wisconsin’s 1897 schedule was a case in point. The Badgers rolled through their first five games against an assortment of small college and high school teams by a combined total of 115 to nothing. While it was tough to glean too much about the team given the level of the competition, the Chicago Tribune quickly recognized O’Dea’s individual talent. After the Badgers’ season-opening 30–0 win over Lake Forest, the paper concluded simply, “Pat O’Dea is a wonderful kicker.” But how wonderful was his team? That wouldn’t be known until the Badgers’ October 30 showdown with Minnesota, a matchup that generated enormous enthusiasm on the Wisconsin campus.

  News of the impending game dominated the pages of the Daily Cardinal all week, as the paper reminded the students that “the Varsity must win this game and that all possible support is necessary to achieve this end.” The editors excerpted an article from the Minneapolis Journal with a less-than-flattering scouting report on the Gophers. Minnesota was coming off a loss in one of its build-up games to Iowa State, which, at the time, was considered to be a second-tier opponent. “The University outfit,” it said of Minnesota, “which had been touted a world beater all season, is showing up in poorer form as far as playing the game is concerned than it did a week ago.”

  Still, the Cardinal did all it could to avoid generating overconfidence, reminding Wisconsin rooters of Minnesota’s recent dominance in the series, particularly when playing at home. The paper implored the students to do their part—detailing train schedules, ticket availability, and hotel space for those who were planning on making the journey to Minneapolis. It also helped publicize a pep rally, referred to as a “mass meeting,” scheduled for the Wednesday night prior to the game—an event that would give the students who would not be making the trip one final chance “to show [their] feelings towards the Varsity eleven.”

  In anticipation of the rally, the Cardinal held a contest, encouraging students to submit songs and yells to be performed both at the meeting and in Minneapolis on Saturday. The top entries were published in the paper, which students were instructed to bring along with them that evening so they would have access to the lyrics. Among the winners was a song submitted by Phillip Allen, class of 1899, meant to be sung to the melody of the popular ragtime tune “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” This adaptation proved so popular that it briefly became the school’s fight song and remains a constant at Badgers sporting events to this day, perhaps most prominently at football games, where the band plays it after every Wisconsin touchdown.

  Some of the other winning entries proved to be less enduring, however. For instance, it’s been a while since any Wisconsin fan taunted Minnesota by cheering “Go-pher, Go-pher, Go-pher Go; Can’t play football—No! No!! No!!!” or supported the locals by shouting “WIS-CON-SIN! WIS-CON-SIN! Will we win? Well I should grin; We’ll win the tin; If it is a sin; and blow it in; on WISCONSIN.” It’s hard to believe those didn’t catch on.

  Newspapers in hand, five hundred students, nearly half of the undergraduate population, heeded the call, jamming into Library Hall, a spired stone structure that was one of the largest public buildings on campus. After a few introductory speeches, which were barely audible above the din, the team marched in single file. The ensuing pandemonium was nearly deafening. The students cheered lustily—“Varsity! Varsity! U! Rah! Rah! Wisconsin!” The commotion lasted for several minutes, finally dying down a bit when “Sunny” Pyre, the professor who had eschewed his lecture duties to play against the Gophers two years earlier, took the podium.

  “That’s the kind of cheering we’re going to need on Saturday!” he told the audience. “Good hard cheering is vitally important in the midst of any football contest!” He then introduced the players one by one, culminating with O’Dea. “It will not be necessary for Wisconsin to make any touchdowns on Saturday,” Pyre proclaimed, “for O’Dea alone could kick enough goals from the field to win the game!”

  This elicited even more cheers. Coach King and several of the players, including his Australian star, then addressed the audience, each greeted by roars and wild applause. After everyone took some time to rehearse the new yells in unison, the meeting disbanded.

  The anticipation was growing in Minnesota as well. Thursday’s Journal went into great detail regarding each team’s preparations, assuring its readers that, after the previous week’s embarrassing defeat, the Gophers were “working harder than at any time this season.” They certainly knew they’d be in for a challenge against Wisconsin, and O’Dea was the player who had them most concerned. “He is not highly rated for his other work,” the paper said, “but when his leg swings, Wisconsin rooters are willing to forgive all his shortcomings.”

  The next evening, two horse-drawn omnibuses left Wisconsin’s campus just before 6:30 p.m., packed to the gills with fifteen players apiece. When they arrived at the train depot, another huge crowd was there to greet them. Again, the cheers resonated: “U Rah! Rah! Wisconsin!”

  An interloper had the nerve to yell out Minnesota’s university cheer, one that still endures: “Ski-u-mah, Minnesota!” he shouted.

  “Hang ’em, kill ’em!” the Wisconsin fans responded. Thinking it best to keep a lower profile, the lone Gopher supporter wasn’t heard from again.

  The scene became so chaotic that the players hunched close to one another to avoid getting trampled by their own fans. They were more than a bit relieved when the train rolled into the station “to whirl them away to Minneapo
lis for their great battle.” They were followed by several more trainloads of supporters. As game day dawned, estimates were that as many as 1,000 Badger fans had invaded Minneapolis.

  Hours before kickoff, both teams’ cheering contingents jammed into the stands at the Old Athletic Park, a tiny baseball stadium wedged up against the West Hotel in downtown Minneapolis. The Minnesota crowd filled the south bleachers, with the Badgers fans across from them. The bands arrived an hour before game time, and from that point on, both sides exchanged yells, the “Ski-u-mahs” and “U Rah! Rahs” volleying back and forth in what amounted to an auditory tennis match. At 2:45, fifteen minutes after the scheduled kickoff time, the Badgers finally took the field. They gathered in a circle and passed the ball between one another while the north bleachers exploded in cheers. The Gophers emerged moments later. Fully 6,000 people were on hand by the time the game finally began—with the bleachers, the boxes, and the carriage stands all completely packed.

  The Badgers won the toss and elected to take the ball and the wind. And then, in the words of the Milwaukee Sentinel, “the supreme moment of higher education in the West had come”—a sentence that reinforces the point that the loss of perspective in the world of collegiate sports is not a recent phenomenon.

  On the first possession of the game, the Badgers’ strategy immediately became evident: They wanted to turn it into a kicking game. Captain Jeremiah Riordan “called out,” in the words of the Sentinel, “a conglomerate mass of figures as puzzling as a Chinese rebus and which would make a mathematics professor feel like a deaf and dumb man at a singing school.” While it might have sounded complex, the upshot of the plan was simple—the Badgers snapped the ball to O’Dea, who immediately punted it away.