The Century in Sports, continued

Sports During The Wars

While other Eastern colleges suspended their athletic programs when the United States entered World War I, Penn took the lead by maintaining its teams during the conflict, and what developed was an early version of intramurals. Anyone who came out for football was able to play—there certainly were slots available, as the Gazette noted in December 1917, that “every regular and substitute” from the 1916 team was “either in actual war service or was rejected for physical defects.” The NCAA endorsed Penn’s decision, and other schools followed, spurring the New York Journal to call Penn “the guiding star of present-day athletics.” The Gazette remarked that “it is gratifying to know now that virtually the entire college world has accepted the stand originally taken by Pennsylvania.”

The drill was repeated during World War II, and in March 1942 the Gazette noted that more than 300 undergraduates were actively representing the University in the winter sports of basketball, wrestling, swimming, fencing, squash, and indoor track, while hundreds more participated in intramurals. “The success of our basketball team and the achievements of the football team during the war years are indicative of the wisdom in keeping athletics going during the times of stress and strain,” a March 1945 article noted, adding that “to have closed Franklin Field ‘for the duration’ would have been a calamity to the community.”

One of the Gazette’s most important functions during the war years was as a welcome source of news for alumni engaged in battle in remote corners of the world. “Your card has chased me halfway around Africa, Tripolitania, Tunis, and Italy, but it has finally caught up with me,” Major Alfred J. Wilde C’22 wrote in the October, 1944 edition. “My job has been intensely interesting throughout, but there are many of us who are hoping to settle down to a normal football season at home next year.”

Few sentiments were stated so poignantly as these from rower Richard M. Marshall C’39 to his former coach, Russell “Rusty” Callow, which were printed with Callow’s permission in the May 1942 edition of the Gazette:

There are so few people to whom I could even write like this. I like fighting mankind—men that can row the last mile at the 44-stroke, who can make a touchdown in the last minute of play to come from behind. Men like you, Rusty, and my father who get a kick out of their fellowmen and who can take life in stride … I do not know what the next months will bring me. I am engaged to be married in a few weeks. We both know what it means, what the odds are and know that we want what few days we can have together. Having those days, before going over, the enemy will find me in a snarling hurry to smash them down and come back.

This is one of those “last quarter-miles.” We’ll take them, Rusty, and I’d like you flying on my wing.

Please give my best to all you see that I might know. And the next time you have a meeting with the University board, tell them at least one alumnus greatly loves the Red and Blue and all it stands for …

Am taking a three-mile run every other day to keep the old waist-line down.

The Gazette reprinted the letter in its entirety in June 1943, a month after Major Marshall was killed in action.

The Ivy League: From Concept to Reality

By the late 1940s the idea of an “Ivy League” consisting of several of the oldest football-playing universities in the East had been kicked around for decades. Meanwhile, Penn’s football schedule continued to reflect its national profile (Notre Dame, California, Wisconsin, Penn State, Michigan) as well as its traditional Eastern rivalries (Cornell, Army, Navy, Princeton). A Gazette poll in the winter of 1948 found that alumni favored a schedule that included six Ivy schools (excluding Brown) plus Army, Navy, Penn State, and Michigan. This apparent schizophrenia was reinforced by University President Harold Stassen Hon’48 in an address reprinted in the Gazette in April 1950, in which he advocated re-establishing relations with Harvard and Yale while also scheduling some of the strongest teams in the country. This philosophy, combined with the radical changes brought on by the official formation of the Ivy League two years later, would eventually bring Penn’s once-proud football program to its knees. Between the signing of the Ivy Agreement in 1952 and the initiation of a full round-robin schedule in 1956, the Quakers—whose big-time football opponents had been scheduled
before the signing—went 3-5-1 in 1953 and lost 18 straight in 1954 and 1955 [“Harold Stassen and the Ivy League,” November/December 2001].

Many alumni were predictably outraged by the turn of events, though not all yearned for a return to the glory days. “It is up to each of us to stand solidly behind the coaches, the players and the student body as long as they represent the ideals of true Pennsylvania sportsmanship,” one reader wrote, in sharp contrast to another who suggested that the Gazette “poll [alumni] as to their ideas on the new high-school level of athletics being introduced at Penn.” Another fumed, “Let’s get out of the champagne-appetite-with-the-beer-pocket-book class or else play second grade colleges.”

Football has gotten most of the ink, but the Gazette has covered other sports, too: men's crew, wrestling, women's crew, and fencing—even cricket. The pole vaulter is competing in the Penn Relays, Franklin Field's biggest draw these days.

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Copyright 2002 The Pennsylvania Gazette Last modified 5/02/02