Business of College Football and the Military′s Influence

MilitaryInfluenceTest1 xVasquez-MilitaryandCollegeFootballArmedForcesSociety MennellJSH1989 MilitaryBowlGamePaper

The ″Military Influence Test″ file shows the writing prompt. There′s 3 readings to pull examples and quotes from. It has specific formatting. It′s 8 questions that require about 300 words each. The tough part for me is the ability to write from a ″business/management perspective″

Military Influence Test

Please answer the following 8 questions and send your answers to (

cseifried@lsu.edu

). Responses should be in 12-pt Font, Times New Roman, double-space, and use no-spacing style (see home tab). Also use APA 7th edition for any and all citations, quotations, etc. Finally, maximum number of pages for the entire document is 8 pages. Remember to provide your answers from a business/management perspective. Also remember to provide examples to demonstrate your answers.

1. Describe how the growth of service programs and academies (i.e., West Point- Army and Annapolis- Navy) impacted the growth and survival of college football? What contextual factors or events impacted the military’s decision to embrace football?

2. Who were the early leaders (i.e., pre-WWI) made responsible for the organization and management of football in the military? How were they connected to college football?

3. What connections were established between the military and football? How did individuals believe or suggest them to be alike?

4. What technological medium boosted the popularity of service teams and Notre Dame? How did this occur?

5. How did the military campaigns provoke the rise of the public institution over private schools? Within, discuss the impact of the G.I. Bill or serviceman’s readjustment act, and the Office of War Information.

6. What playing innovations are associated with the armed services investment into football? How did they improve the quality of the football product?

7. What purposes did bowl games serve the U.S. Armed Forces? How did the development of Armed Service bowl games mimic college football bowl games?

8. Differentiate opinion leaders from boundary spanners with respect to the armed services and the promotion/use of football.

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Armed Forces & Society

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The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/0095327X11426255

2012 38: 353 originally published online 22 November 2011Armed Forces & Society
Joseph Paul Vasquez III

College Football
America and the Garrison Stadium: How the US Armed Forces Shaped

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Articles

America and the
Garrison Stadium:
How the US Armed
Forces Shaped
College Football

Joseph Paul Vasquez III
1

Abstract
American military institutions importantly shaped the popular sport of college
football. From support at its two oldest service academies, interest in football
spread through military units across the country with military actors involved in
the formation of the country’s first collegiate athletic conference and the National
Collegiate Athletic Association. Subsequently, the US military functioned as an
agent of authoritative diffusion, fostering interest in college football after the First
World War. Furthermore, military institutions, including the draft, affected not
only which team would be most successful during the Second World War but also
how civilians would play the game. These effects call to mind Charles Tilly’s work
on state formation and security-driven resource extraction as well as Harold Lass-
well’s garrison state idea

Keywords
conscription, draft, football, military, sport

1 Department of Political Science, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Joseph Paul Vasquez III, Department of Political Science, University of Central Florida, 4000 Central

Florida Blvd, Orlando, FL 32816, USA

Email: paul.vasquez@ucf.edu

Armed Forces & Society
38(3) 353-372

ª The Author(s) 2012
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Introduction

College football is big business in the United States generating $6 billion annually and

collegiate logo licensing, stemming largely from interest in football, netting $3.5 billion

annually.
1

For a few institutions, it is a gold mine. Most visibly, the University of Notre

Dame benefits from having its home games telecast by the National Broadcasting

Company (NBC), but revenue can be generated without such sui generis circumstances.

For example, Ohio State’s football program generated $28 million in profit in 2005.
2

While college football trailed professional baseball’s popularity by 3 percent in a

2009 Harris Interactive survey, combined interest in college football, which benefited

from the support of military institutions, and the professional version it spawned

surpassed the popularity of ‘‘America’s pastime,’’ baseball, by 17 percent.
3

Having evolved from roots on the campuses of several elite Northeastern institu-

tions, college football was not always big business or a broadly appreciated pastime,

nor was its origin accidental. As political scientist Michael Mandelbaum writes,

‘‘The game [of football] began in universities because these institutions provided

the required concentrations of able-bodied young men and because, in the latter

part of the nineteenth century, they were home to the belief, which first appeared

in the British private schools, that competition in games helps instill desirable

traits of character and thus qualifies as a legitimate educational activity.’’
4

How-

ever, unlike other games such as lacrosse that spread more slowly beyond elite

institutions,
5

it will become clear that football’s popularity grew due to the influ-

ence of American military institutions.

Military institutions certainly are not solely responsible for the current popularity

of college football or its economic impact. However, American military institutions

should be recognized as exerting important influence on the development of college

football over the span of sixty years from the final decade of the nineteenth century

to the middle of the twentieth century. Out of this experience—like vegetation from

a greenhouse—college football would ultimately flourish as it does today. Despite

not being recognized widely as such today, this relationship should not be com-

pletely surprising. First, military institutions and their advocates promoted football

around the dawn of the twentieth century by incorporating the game into military life

with the college game—its most prominent manifestation at the time—being the

major beneficiary. Thus, surging, broad-based interest in football resulted from the

effect of militaries as total institutions and authoritative innovators. Second, just as

Charles Tilly argued that raising military forces contributed mightily to state forma-

tion as leaders prepared for war by extracting resources—including people—from

their societies,
6

it will become clear that the game evolved as American military insti-

tutions drew conscripted manpower for fighting both world wars of the last century

from essentially the same pool of physically fit college-aged men who played college

football. With World War II, the game changed when one prominent military institu-

tion, the United States Military Academy at West Point, took advantage of a second

military institution, the draft, to achieve dominance on the football field. To the extent

354 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

that this effort was justified in official circles as a way of demonstrating the American

Army’s strength during wartime, it constitutes an attempt to manipulate amateur

athletics for symbolic advantage in keeping with Harold Lasswell’s work on the

garrison state. Furthermore, military teams beyond the service academies fostered

fierce competition in collegiate football that was passed on by men who coached

and played the game. In the immediate postwar period, how the game would

be played changed due to the tidal wave of veterans who went to college on the

G. I. Bill.

Military Influence on Football before World War I

Americans from social scientists to the late comedian George Carlin have recog-

nized similarities between war and football.
7

Thus, it is not surprising that while

‘‘[football c]oaches often sound like generals when they discuss their strategy,’’
8

military officials sometimes sound like football coaches as when General Norman

Schwarzkopf described troop movements in the Persian Gulf War as analogous to

a football play.
9

Exploring why and how military institutions embraced the game,

however, is far more interesting than merely belaboring rhetorical similarities.

The conventional wisdom arising from the literature on the history of college

football from its inception with what has been acknowledged as the first game in

1869 through the 1950s can be easily summarized. Born at elite Northeastern col-

leges and universities and resembling rugby, football gradually spread across cam-

puses as changes in the rules of the game were pioneered by Yale’s coach and the

game’s foremost early promoter, Walter Camp. The game gradually moved south-

erly and westerly in the American sports world’s equivalent of Manifest Destiny

as young men who had played and coached the game in the Northeast dispersed

across the land. The modern era in the sport became fully realized in 1913 when

a squad from the then largely unknown University of Notre Dame coached by Jesse

Harper capitalized on recent rule changes to pass the ball forward to upset one of the

country’s top programs, the cadets from the US Military Academy at West Point,

New York.
10

Following the First World War, the 1920s were named the ‘‘Golden

Age of Sports,’’ partly because of the rise of radio as a mode of entertainment, and

college football specifically contributed to that era due to media interest in teams

such as those coached by Knute Rockne at Notre Dame and stars such as the Uni-

versity of Illinois’ Harold ‘‘Red’’ Grange.
11

After that decade, no particular team

or institution dominated the sport thoroughly until Army’s teams from the Military

Academy reigned supreme in the 1940s.

Since West Point teams figured prominently twice in the first half of the twentieth

century, several questions arise that should be of interest to scholars of sociology and

military institutions. For example, were military institutions particularly attracted to

the sport of football, which led this kind of recreational activity to receive attention

and resources that allowed it to succeed on the field of play against competitors?

Moreover, what role—if any—did military institutions have on civilian interest in

Vasquez 355

rnasiff
Highlight

the game of football? Curiously, scholars of military institutions and sociology have

paid very little attention to these questions.
12

The US armed forces’ support for football began most prominently at its two

oldest service academies. The Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, first played

intercollegiate football in 1882 and West Point followed suit in 1890 when it

answered a direct challenge from its maritime rivals.
13

‘‘Prior to 1890, stringent

restrictions, dismissive official attitudes, and a fundamental lack of functional

organization prevented the growth of sports programs at the academies,’’ but by

mid-decade ‘‘the Military Academy’s sports program had become competitive with

established Eastern colleges such as Harvard, Yale and Brown.’’
14

Interest in

football grew at the service academies and beyond in the 1890s, as sports became

increasingly a daily activity, an approach promoted by Army Lieutenant C. D.

Parkhurst and West Point alumnus Edmund L. Butts.
15

By 1892, football was played

from coast to coast on at least nineteen Army bases.
16

In the middle of the country and the middle of that decade, a military-affiliated

team, the Indianapolis Light Artillery, unwittingly triggered a revolution in intercol-

legiate sports in 1894. That year, the team’s contest with Butler University violated

the tradition of having only the top two teams of Indiana’s Intercollegiate Athletic

Association from the previous season play on Thanksgiving Day in Indianapolis.

Based on the outcome of the 1893 season, Purdue and DePaul University had

earned the right to play in Indianapolis on that day. As a result, James Smart, Pur-

due’s president, wrote to regional counterparts proposing a meeting that ‘‘restrict[ed]

games to college campuses and forbade players to accept pay or gifts.’’
17

Out of this

meeting came America’s first athletic conference, known today as the Big 10 Con-

ference, which is an athletic and academic association of the largest Midwestern

research universities.
18

Smart’s letters conveyed mixed motives. He expressed con-

cerns ranging from practicalities such as lost game revenue and athletes’ physical

safety to principals of integrity and fairness in intercollegiate sports. Smart’s con-

cern for student safety when playing against the Artillery was probably apt since

newspapers depicted that squad as being bigger and older than their opponents and

with men who had previously played collegiately.
19

When the Spanish–American War occurred four years later, ‘‘a younger, refor-

mist generation of uniformed officers assumed a moral commitment to the soldier’s

welfare and used sport to combat desertion, alcohol, and the lure of prostitution.’’
20

Before the war, troops of the Army’s Seventh Corps passed time in Jacksonville,

Florida, playing football.
21

One German naval officer in the Caribbean during this

period attributed US ‘‘military efficiency’’ partially to sports such as football that

‘‘harden the body and strengthen self-confidence.’’
22

That report would have reso-

nated with Theodore Roosevelt, who once remarked about football, ‘‘I would

rather my boys play it than see them play any other sport.’’ As an avid sportsman

in an era when Social Darwinism thrived, he saw football as helping ‘‘revitalize an

effete population physically and mentally unprepared to defend themselves or take

their place on the world stage.’’
23

Unsurprisingly, the future Commander-in-Chief

356 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

rnasiff
Highlight

looked for former football players when raising his ‘‘Rough Riders’’ to fight the

Spanish in Cuba.
24

Amid the 1905 season that saw three football fatalities and eighty-eight serious

injuries, and after consulting with the Naval Academy’s coach, Paul Dashiell, and

Captain Palmer Pierce of West Point, President Roosevelt met with representatives

from Harvard, Princeton, and Yale to persuade them the game should be reformed or

risk having public backlash end it altogether.
25

Though not immediately successful,

it highlighted the need for change. Before the year’s end, sixty educational institu-

tions met to make the game safer, and the Military Academy’s Pierce, played a lead-

ing role as they ‘‘passed a series of ‘West Point’ resolutions calling for combining

the old [rules committee] with a new committee.’’ That group became known as the

Inter Collegiate Athletic Association with Pierce as its president. Within five years,

this group that he would lead for many years became known as the National Collegi-

ate Athletic Association (N.C.A.A.).
26

Concern with football injuries at West Point had existed since 1894 and by 1913,

its superintendent warned ‘‘football served no useful purpose in the physical devel-

opment of training of the Corps.’’
27

By that time, rule changes of 1912 facilitating

the forward pass and yielding a ‘‘sleek, fast-moving version’’ of the game had not

reduced injuries at the Academy.
28

Nevertheless, within four years, the Army and

the Navy were systematically promoting football on bases nationwide to an unpre-

cedented degree.

World War I and College Football as Innovation Diffusion

The transformative power of military institutions has been acknowledged by scho-

lars. Beyond being powerful mechanisms for socialization as ‘‘total institutions as

argued by Erving Goffman,’’
29

military institutions are often venues in which the

contact hypothesis plays out altering individual outlooks and behaviors. While some

scholars are skeptical of military institutions’ transformative powers concerning

nation-building or racial integration,
30

it would be hasty to reject their influence

completely. In fact, the American military had this effect on football’s popularity

in the last century in keeping with Everett Rogers’ notion of authoritative innova-

tions when changes are adopted most quickly within organizations because of sup-

port from highly placed individuals within the organization.
31

Moreover, men who

had military experience with the game would later act as agents of diffusion as fans,

players, or coaches.

Events precipitating that historic change began in 1916 with US forces mobiliz-

ing at Fort Sam Houston in Texas to help General John J. Pershing apprehend

Pancho Villa, whose incursions from Mexico had become increasingly problematic.

Back in Washington, reports came in from Texas documenting problems reminis-

cent of the Spanish–American War mobilization: drinking, prostitution, and vener-

eal disease (in the era before penicillin).
32

Secretary of War Newton Baker sent

Raymond Fosdick to investigate these accounts, and Fosdick recommended

Vasquez 357

rnasiff
Highlight

emphasizing sports for leisure time recreation.
33

Prior to these events, scholars such

as Harvard’s Dudley Sargent had advocated broad-based athletic training programs

to help prepare for war.
34

With US mobilization becoming more likely for the First World War, Fosdick

went on to lead commissions on camp life and leisure time activities for Baker and

Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels. As the highest ranking civilian leaders of

the armed forces after only President Woodrow Wilson himself, these men were

positioned to make authoritative innovations regarding the institutional use of foot-

ball. Fosdick named Yale’s Walter Camp to be the Navy Department’s Athletic

Director and Joseph Raycroft, a Princeton physical education professor, as his War

Department counterpart. Of the two men, Camp pushed football more enthusiasti-

cally from his desire for competitions to fill ‘‘weekends and holidays.’’ Moreover,

‘‘Camp realized that service football competition . . . might be used to create an
attractive football game (similar to the Army-Navy game) between army camp

teams and naval station teams.’’
35

Though boxing was favored initially as more

affordable than football, these challenges were soon overcome.
36

With conscription pulling young men into the US armed forces, traditional collegi-

ate schedules were slashed.
37

However, the game survived and spread through mili-

tary camps and bases. During some wartime games, spectators heard bands play just

like at collegiate games or learned ‘‘college-type cheering and singing.’’
38

In 1917 and

1918, the ‘‘collegiate’’ champions emerged from Rose Bowl games that paired two

armed forces teams against each other.
39

With the American Expeditionary Forces still

overseas in 1919, 75,000 US troops participated in American football abroad and the

championship game was ‘‘watched by the Army with all the interest ever called forth

by . . . a professional baseball World Series.’’40 As a result, Watterson declares, ‘‘The
model of big-time football emerged live and well in the military camps, bringing tens of

thousands of recruits into contact with a sophisticated game heretofore known chiefly to

students at colleges or better known secondary schools.’’
41

Thus, in keeping with the

idea that conscription is democratic in terms of egalitarianism and breadth,
42

exposure

to military football in this era of conscription had a democratizing effect on the game.

Moreover, as Charles Tilly argues that coercive war-making efforts led to the rise of the

state, interest in college football spread when the coercive war-making institution of

conscription in the US brought young men into contact with football.

During World War I, the war the military offered unprecedented backing for ath-

letics and continued postwar interest in football was predicted. According to Watter-

son, ‘‘the war created an insatiable demand for football in the postwar era which

even colleges could not satisfy’’ in the 1920s.
43

Data clearly supports greater post-

war interest as ‘‘there was a dramatic expansion of college football programs and

attendance at games’’ between 1919 and 1921. During this period, Mennell found

that thirteen colleges began playing varsity football, whereas only three schools had

taken up the game similarly between 1912 and 1918. Moreover, ‘‘while only three

new stadiums were considered in the six years immediately after the rule changes

[made the game more exciting], fourteen were considered in the three-year period

358 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

rnasiff
Highlight

right after the war.’’ While the war itself could have slowed team formation and

stadium building due to the war’s financial burden, America’s late entry into the

war would probably only explain delays occurring between 1916 and 1918. Thus,

Mennell’s argument that ‘‘the service football program had significantly stimulated

interest in collegiate football’’ is persuasive.
44

In the Interwar Period, the service academies pursued policies that effectively

promoted football. First, they boosted interest in their teams and the game through

the media. Both of these institutions and Notre Dame uniquely allowed free radio

broadcasts of their games, albeit for different reasons. ‘‘Notre Dame wanted to reach

as many fans as possible, and the military academies, owned by the American peo-

ple, worried that selling their broadcast rights to private companies would prompt

criticism.’’ This approach helped these teams become ‘‘truly national teams

with huge followings.’’
45

Second, athletics flourished at West Point after Brigadier

General Douglas MacArthur became its superintendent.
46

MacArthur had the fol-

lowing self-authored quote carved near the entrance to a campus gym, ‘‘Upon the

fields of friendly strife/Are sown seeds that/Upon other fields, on other days/Will

bear the fruits of victory.’’
47

Furthermore, he boosted athletics by requiring cadets

to play intramural sports; asking members of Congress ‘‘to look for gifted young ath-

letes to appoint to the Military Academy;’’ and rewarding ‘‘his football stars with

special privileges’’ and ‘‘elite status on campus.’’
48

West Point’s Success during World War II

While scholars have argued that the United States never became a praetorian regime

during the Cold War, the way football was used by the Federal Government during

the Second World War seems to be consistent with at least one aspect of Harold

Lasswell’s garrison state theoretical construct.
49

Writing months before the attack

on Pearl Harbor, Lasswell argued that it was likely that the United States would

become a militarized state, and he predicted that such governments would adroitly

employ symbols in an attempt to boost ‘‘morale’’ and unify diverse sectors in Amer-

ica’s industrial society.
50

Clearly, the military used amateur football to promote mor-

ale within the ranks as well as for training, but the sport was also used to boost

voluntary military recruitment. Such was the case in 1942 when President Franklin

Roosevelt made sure that the annual Army versus Navy game continued despite other

collegiate games being cancelled and prohibitions on ‘‘nonessential travel.’’
51

Further

support for the notion that Army officials were aware of the symbolic value of football

can be found amidst explanations for why West Point decided to take a hiatus from

playing Notre Dame in the late 1940s. Along with concerns about gambling and ticket

scalping that followed a momentous tied game between those two teams in 1946,

Army officials feared that an increasingly bitter rivalry with the popular Catholic

school could undermine American Catholics’ support for the Military Academy.
52

Armed forces football reached its apex in the Second World War in the form of

legendary teams coached by Earl Blaik at West Point in this era when Army Chief of

Vasquez 359

rnasiff
Highlight

Staff General George C. Marshall once declared, ‘‘I want an officer for a secret and

dangerous mission. I want a West Point football player.’’
53

During Blaik’s tenure

from 1941 to 1958, Army football won two undisputed national titles and 77 percent

of its games.
54

Army’s football prominence resulted partly from the attrition afflict-

ing its athletic competitors as ‘‘shortages of cars, tires, fuel, and students’’ and

decreased game attendance led many colleges to suspend football during the war.
55

However, Blaik capitalized on many of the Military Academy’s unique institutional

advantages. Blaik, as a former standout athlete at the Academy during MacArthur’s

tenure, idolized its former superintendent. Like other players there in the early twen-

tieth century, he was allowed to play for the Academy despite having already grad-

uated from Miami University. While White House pressure changed this policy in

the 1930s, West Point began backsliding in the 1940s, and Blaik began recruiting

athletes away from other colleges.
56

Blaik was aided by MacArthur in landing the

Army job first and later helping to ‘‘change weight restrictions at West Point so that

he could recruit larger linemen.’’
57

Army’s success was built on more than the discipline that Blaik instilled in his

players. While the war years were a famine for most college teams with conscription

gobbling up many stellar athletes for military service, they were a feast at West

Point.
58

Sperber writes that Blaik ‘‘used West Point graduates around the country

to scout for him; then, after selecting the best players from the pool, Blaik asked the

appropriate members of Congress to appoint these athletes to the academy.’’ Blaik’s

greatest ally, however, was probably not alumni or congressmen, but the draft itself.

During World War II, students attending West Point could delay military service and

graduate as commissioned officers. Thus, at best an Academy graduate might avoid

real combat if the war ended prior to graduation or at worst see combat as an officer

instead of an enlisted man.
59

To recruit the Heisman Trophy winning duo of Glenn Davis and Felix Blanchard,

Blaik was creative. To attract Davis, it appears likely Blaik requested an appoint-

ment for not only Glenn but also his twin brother. Alternatively, Blaik had Blanchard

appointed to the Academy after he was drafted while at the University of North Car-

olina. This method of Blaik’s, often derided as ‘‘draft board recruiting,’’ attracted

elite players from colleges across the country.
60

The pursuit of a high school star, Johnny Lujack, highlights Blaik’s aggressive

recruiting. In 1942, Blaik had Lujack’s congressman appoint him to the Academy even

though Lujack planned to attend Notre Dame. Complaints from West Point led Notre

Dame’s vice president along with Coach Frank Leahy to meet with Blaik and West Point

officials. In that meeting, Army officials argued to no avail that ‘‘when a boy is offered

an appointment to the United States Military Academy, no persuasion should be used to

keep him from accepting such an appointment.’’ Lujack later won the Heisman Trophy

in 1947 at Notre Dame and—ironically—made a game-saving tackle against Army in

1946 helping his team win that year’s national championship instead of Army.
61

With a greater wartime winning percentage (five points higher) than their Naval

Academy rivals (see Table 1), two undisputed national championships (1944 and

360 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

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1945) and the two aforementioned Heisman Trophy winners (1945 and 1946),

Army’s cadets were college football’s supreme wartime juggernaut.
62

During the

war years from 1941 to 1945, Army’s average winning percentage increased by 8

percent over the average for successive five-year periods going back to 1901.

Furthermore, Army’s total winning percentage during WWII increased by 17 points

over its total for the years 1901 through 1940 and 1946 through 1985. Though

Washington did not officially enter the Second World War until the 1941 season was

nearly over, that season is treated as the start of the war here due to the threatening

international climate and the commencement of the military draft late in 1940,
63

which would have aided in recruiting for the service academies. Alternatively, even

though the War ended before the start of the 1945 season, Japan’s surrender in August

would have left prospective academy students with little time to change their educa-

tional plans for that season. While Army dominated the sport during this period, the

Naval Academy’s midshipmen also performed better with their average winning per-

centage during the war increasing by 12 percent over the average for successive five-

year periods going back to 1901. Moreover, Navy’s total winning percentage during

WWII increased by 20 points over the total for the years 1901 through 1940 and 1946

through 1945. Sperber, however, credits West Point’s greater dominance to Blaik’s

‘‘dynamism and ruthlessness’’ and a ‘‘cram school’’ that helped prospective football

players study for and pass entrance exams. Blaik’s wartime success bred success after-

ward as Army’s winning percentage in the five-year postwar period increased seven

points, while Navy’s winning percentage sank by an astonishing fifty-five points.

As can be seen in the chi-square scores reported in Table 1, the probabilities of the

service academies achieving winning percentages as high as they did during World War

II are probably not from random chance, given that Army, Navy, and both services com-

bined had scores surpassing conventional levels of statistical significance. The rela-

tively lower level of statistical significance for the difference between Army’s World

War II and non-World War II period when compared to Navy can be attributed to West

Point’s relatively greater performance outside of the Second World War time frame,

including the immediate postwar five-year span mentioned above.

Military Football beyond the Service Academies during
World War II

The idea that football was beneficial for fighting men went beyond the wartime ser-

vice academies. Thus, football was a required component of the Naval Pre-Flight

Training programs (V-5) that popped up around the country. Beyond ‘‘boosting mor-

ale,’’ Watterson writes, ‘‘Military leaders believed that football built leadership qua-

lities, inculcated discipline, sharpened aggressive instincts, and taught its officers to

react quickly under pressure.’’ As a result ‘‘[e]ach unit of trainees engaged in scrim-

mages and intramurals, and the best players played against other colleges or against

military bases that also had their varsity teams.’’
64

The committee which oversaw

the V-5 program included University of Minnesota Head Football Coach Bernie

362 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

rnasiff
Highlight

Bierman and Captain Arthur Radford, Director of Aeronautic Training, who became

an admiral and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Another source of great influ-

ence on the program was the Naval Academy’s head football coach, Lieutenant

Commander Thomas Hamilton.
65

The V-5’s football component took flight in

1942 and spread to places such as Del Monte (California) Naval Air Station along

with college campuses at the Universities of Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, and

St. Mary’s College (California).
66

In its first year alone, ‘‘over 600 football games

were played in the intramural, varsity, or instructional phase of training.’’
67

Nota-

ble Americans with military-related football experience during World War II were

future presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush, who coached and played,

respectively, in North Carolina’s V-5 football program. Additionally, many bases

such as Great Lakes Naval Training Center fielded teams outside of the V-5 pro-

gram, which also competed against colleges. Army bases had teams as well, but

they only competed against other military teams with the leadership of their

respective units or bases reveling in the bragging rights afforded by victory.
68

Two important V-5 football boosters were Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and

a predecessor, Josephus Daniels, who had embraced football during World War I.
69

Football’s benefits for military training were also extolled in college football movies

such as Appointment in Tokyo (1944) and game programs. Advocates for football’s

military training benefits included: William ‘‘Killer’’ Kane, a well-known naval

aviator; Tom Harmon, Michigan’s 1940 Heisman winner; and Columbia Univer-

sity’s coach, Lou Little.
70

Little declared that football should be played ‘‘hard and

intensively with an even more savage will-to-win than in peacetime.’’
71

Service football’s results may have delighted military brass, but many college

fans disliked the change. With military coaches assembling teams with college and

pro players courtesy of the draft, they predictably beat many college squads.
72

For

example, between 1942 and 1944, Great Lakes and Iowa Pre-Flight won 79 percent

of their sixty-seven games.
73

One of the top teams of this period, the 1943 Great

Lakes squad, was coached by Paul Brown, who had led Ohio State to a national

championship the previous year. About Brown, a collegiate counterpart remarked,

he ‘‘must have stopped every monster of 270 pounds that came into the Naval

Station and put a football suit on him. All-Pro tackles, All-American, All-This and

All-That. We had a kid from our school on that Great Lakes team, an All-American

tackle, and he was playing third team there.’’

Along with Great Lakes and Iowa Pre-Flight, squads from Memphis Naval

Training, the 176th Infantry, Fort Riley and Del-Monte Pre-Flight were ranked

in the top twenty teams for 1943 based on mathematical calculations rather than

sportswriter or coaches votes.
74

Regarding its effect beyond the training ground, Donald Rominger writes that

‘‘V-5 played a redoubtable role in defining’’ the country and influenced high school

physical education curricula through instructional material and coaching clinics.
75

One cannot help but wonder how much of this program rubbed off on society more

broadly. With its martial focus, Rominger writes, ‘‘The aim of these activities was to

Vasquez 363

show every cadet that there was ‘no substitute for winning’ and that ‘gracious defeat

[should] be forgotten.
76

Its sports manual indicated that this approach would develop

rugged ‘‘ruthless determined competitors,’’ and unsurprisingly, he contends that this

creed was embodied ‘‘by a new generation of aggressive coaches, many of whom

carried ideas, if not learned in Preflight, certainly exercised there, to their high

school and college playgrounds.’’
77

After their V-5 days, many coaches embodied rugged, if not ruthless, competition

with some winning multiple championships (see Table 2).
78

While the military experi-

ence with football during World War I served to generate interest broadly across society,

it appears that the military involvement with the sport in World War II may have served

to reaffirm—if not create—the hyper-competitive approach in that cohort of coaches.

After the Second World War, traditional college football rebounded. Between

1945 and 1946, the number of institutions playing intercollegiately skyrocketed

by 66 percent.
79

Since that time, the military has never exerted so great an effect

on the game because its subsequent military conflicts never required a commensu-

rate fraction of the country’s manpower. In the Korean War, US objectives narrowed

once China jumped in and MacArthur was pulled out for insubordinately provoking

an expanded war. Furthermore, during Vietnam, not only were the overall numbers

of troops needed not as great as during the world wars, but the maturing baby boom-

ers offered ample conscriptable manpower. As for the recall of MacArthur, it ironi-

cally came within five months of a major cheating scandal in 1951 that disgraced his

beloved Army football team by involving nearly forty football players and resulting

in the expulsion of ninety cadets. With Blaik’s ‘‘win at all costs’’ approach discre-

dited, one notable alumnus, retired Air Force General Carl Spaatz, called for West

Point to deemphasize intercollegiate sports.
80

Table 2. Prominent Football Coaches with Military Football Experience

Role Service era institution

Postservice
head coaching
tenure

Postservice head
coaching (Only selected
institutions listed)

Head coach
winning

percentage

Coach: V-5 Program
Bernie Bierman Del Monte and Iowa 1945–50 Minnesota .556
Bear Bryanta Georgia and North Carolina 1945–82 Texas A&M, Alabama .760
Don Faurot Iowa 1946–56 Missouri .464
Tex Oliver Saint Mary’s 1945–46 Oregon .389
Jim Tatum Iowa 1946–58 Oklahoma, North Carolina .714
Bud Wilkinson

a
Iowa 1947–63 Oklahoma .815

Bear Wolf Georgia 1946–49, 1952–53 Florida, Tulane .322
Coach: Base program
Paul Brown

a
Great Lakes Naval Training Center 1946–62, 1968–75 Cleveland Browns .609

Player: Base program
George Halas

ab
Great Lakes Naval Training Center 1946–55, 1958–67 Chicago Bears .594

Coach: Service Academy
Vince Lombardia US Military Academy, West Point 1959–67, 1969 Green Bay Packers .740

Note:
a
These individuals coached teams to professional or collegiate championships after their military

football experience.
b
Unlike the others listed here, Halas’ military experience was during World War I.

364 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

rnasiff
Highlight

Encroachment? Military Influence on Civilian Play

While military institutions significantly boosted interest in college football

during the First World War and affected the teams that would be successful during

the Second World War, their influence did not end there. Following Japan’s

attack on the United States, the 1942 New Year’s Day Rose Bowl was moved to

North Carolina from Southern California fearing another attack before returning

to Pasadena the next year. However, the sport would change in more fundamental

ways foreshadowing its future.

One change came with the expanded use of freshmen on varsity teams. Prior to

World War II, colleges restricted freshmen from playing intercollegiately assuming

that higher education’s novices needed to focus on their studies, however, some col-

leges from smaller conferences wavered during the war. By 1943, many colleges

from major conferences successfully pushed the N.C.A.A. to allow freshmen to play

varsity sports since many of the nation’s physically fit young men had been scooped

up by military conscription. Another similarly motivated and significant innovation

was using athletes primarily on either offensive or defensive units rather than expect-

ing them to play on both squads. Since its earliest days, colleges had abided by the rule

that ‘‘players leaving the field could not return until the following quarter’’ in defer-

ence to the ideal of players being well-rounded athletes. However, that rule changed in

1942, allowing players to be substituted freely.’’ As a result, ‘‘imaginative coaches led

by the University of Michigan’s Fritz Crisler began to experiment with two-platoon

football.’’ Teams successfully adopting this new approach tended to be vilified by

football purists.
81

The war and conscription also pushed other aspects of college football beyond the

American South where they first took root. For example, athletic scholarships and

female cheerleaders were first used by institutions in that region. However, with

fewer men to fill out rosters and lead cheers on sidelines, schools nationwide became

increasingly interested in providing athletic scholarships, and women began to join

cheerleading squads.
82

After the war, Washington’s efforts to reward returning troops and help them

adjust to civilian life affected college football, too. With Uncle Sam paying veterans’

college expenses from 1945 to 1948 under the G.I. Bill, coaches gained veteran stu-

dent–athletes who were stronger and a larger talent pool for fielding powerful offen-

sive and defensive units. While government assistance gave veteran student–athletes

greater mobility, more institutions began giving ‘‘athletic scholarships’’ and boosters

increasingly used ‘‘creative’’ means to attract those geographically mobile players.
83

Recruitment of returning veteran athletes became increasingly intense. One former

collegiate star in the Navy was courted by twenty-five schools before going back to

his alma mater, where he was reportedly paid as much as $5,000 a year. Responding

to fears of professionalism in 1946, the N.C.A.A. started regulating financial aid for

student–athletes.
84

Despite the rising costs of fielding superior teams with separate

offenses and defenses such as Crisler’s Michigan Wolverines, which won the 1948

Vasquez 365

rnasiff
Highlight

Rose Bowl 49–0, victories such as these ‘‘persuaded other big-time coaches to install

the two-platoon system.’’
85

The immediate postwar years were a boom for college football, but this bubble

deflated as veterans graduated. This reality, along with the fact that freshmen had

been again ruled ineligible for varsity play, made it hard for some teams to continue

fielding both offensive and defensive squads. As a result, coaches began recruiting

more ‘‘ferociously’’ for high school prospects hoping to stock their lineups for future

years.
86

‘‘Whereas state colleges and universities had more money and jobs to

support athletes, the private colleges in or near urban areas suffered most grievously

from the football revenue and manpower crisis’’ with between thirty and sixty

colleges discontinuing intercollegiate football by 1951.
87

To ease this pressure, the

N.C.A.A. ended the postwar experiment with the wartime innovation of unlimited

substitutions. However, it reemerged in the 1960s to replicate the professional game

being increasingly viewed across the country.
88

Conclusion

The influence of American military institutions in shaping college football into the

cultural institution that it is today is not obvious. However, American military insti-

tutions contributed to its popularity, as well as the way the game has been played.

From its early existence at Annapolis and West Point—two total institutions, mil-

itary support for football spread to bases across the country, with the collegiate game

becoming more broadly appreciated during World War I before becoming domi-

nated by armed forces teams during the Second World War. Wartime conscription

played a critical role in these processes, first by bringing large numbers of people

from many walks of life into uniform and contact with the game during World

War I, before pulling top athletes toward either base teams or pushing them in the

direction of the service academies, especially West Point, in World War II. Thus,

just as conscription built state power in accord with the writings of Charles Tilly, the

association between amateur football and America’s militaries—buttressed by con-

scription—from the last centuries’ world wars helped to perpetuate national interest

in college football. This association, however, not only promoted interest in collegi-

ate football, but it also infused the sport with a martial ethos and spirit would be con-

sistent with Harold Lasswell’s warnings about the militarization of America. While

the United States never developed into a garrison state, it was not for the lack of

an attractive social institution like college football that was poised to transmit and

reinforce many fundamental military values.

Over time military influence on college football has grown generally weaker.

This trend occurred as US military institutions developed more sophisticated

training centers using simulation technology to replicate combat conditions more

faithfully than any sport ever could.
89

Furthermore, because of America’s departure

from conscription, extended military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have not

encroached on the world of collegiate athletics to the degree seen in both world wars.

366 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

rnasiff
Highlight

These wars conform to what Michael Mann refers to as ‘‘spectator-sport militarism’’

in which most citizens are engaged in the conduct of war not as participants who

must bear the burden of sacrifice, but rather as fans with luxury seats on the fifty yard

line.
90

While Pat Tillman notably gave up a professional football career to fight and

die as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan, his experience has not been widely shared

due to America’s volunteer military.

In the future, researchers might consider several lines of inquiry related to

this subject. For example, they might consider the way military institutions have

influenced the development of other sports, such as equestrian competitions or

Nordic-derived contests such as the biathlon? Or as was true of rugby in Britain

during the First World War, has collegiate football ever been used to promote

US military or political goals beyond those explored here?
91

Alternatively, could

America’s service academies ever regain their dominance on the college football

field even with an unlikely return to conscription given their rigorous academic

and weight standards that limit recruitment?

Acknowledgments

The author thanks editor Patricia Shields, three anonymous reviewers, Joshua Brewer,

Charlotte Vasquez, and Joseph Paul Vasquez, Jr. for their helpful comments or contributions

to earlier drafts of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,

and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/

or publication of this article: The author benefitted from a Byron K. Trippet Summer Stipend

and Research Funds while working on this project as a faculty member at Wabash College.

Notes

1. ‘‘The Business of College Football, Part 1-Big Time Ball & Part 3-The Licensing Game,’’

The Nightly Business Report (Transcripts), accessed November 12 & 14, 2007, www.pbs.

org/nbr/site/features/special/college-football_home/. Here, ‘‘football’’ refers to the game

played by that name in the United States and Canada as opposed to the global games of

the same name that Americans would usually call soccer or rugby.

2. ‘‘The Business of College Football. Part 1-Big Time Ball,’’ The Nightly Business Report.

These results are atypical since only 2 percent of Division I-AA ‘‘reported operating sur-

pluses in the 2008 fiscal year.’’ Libby Sander, ‘‘At What Price Football?,’’ The Chronicle

of Higher Education 56 (February 19, 2010), accessed October 21, 2011, Academic

Search Premier.

3. Bryan Curtis, The New York Times 5 (February 1, 2009) accessed July 15, 2010, Lexis

NexisAcademic.

Vasquez 367

4. Michael Mandelbaum, The Meaning of Sports: Why Americans Watch Baseball, Foot-

ball, and Basketball and What They See When They Do (New York: Public Affairs,

2004), 148.

5. Lisa Schulte, ‘‘Review of Our Game. The Character and Culture of Lacrosse by John M.

Yeager,’’ Journal of Sports History 35 (2008): 188-89, accessed July 18, 2011, http://

www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH2008/JSH3501/jsh3501zh .

6. Charles Tilly, ‘‘War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,’’ in Bringing the

State Back In, eds. Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschmeyer, and Theda Skocpol (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 169-91. Over the past 150 years, American

military activities led to not only government activities such as home mail delivery and the

creation of social welfare programs, but societal phenomena such as racial integration and

collegiate grade inflation. Rene Sanchez, ‘‘Real Men Deliver Mail; Smithsonian Honors

Letter Carriers,’’ The Washington Post, July 13, 1987, accessed May 27, 2011, Lexis Nexis

Academic; Alan Wolfe, ‘‘The Mothers of Invention,’’ New Republic 208 (January 4– 11,

1993): 28-35; Henry Rosovsky and Matthew Hartley, Evaluation and the Academy: Are

We Doing the Right Thing? (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences,

2002), 7, 11, accessed July 10, 2010, http://www.amacad.org/publications/evaluation.aspx.

7. Mandelbaum, The Meaning of Sports; George Carlin, Braindroppings (New York:

Hyperion, 1997), 52-3; Carlin’s hilarious routine can be viewed online at http://www.you

tube.com/watch? v¼om_yq4L3M_I.
8. Murray Ross, ‘‘Football Red & Baseball Green,’’ Chicago Review 22 (1971): 36.

9. See http://www.youtube.com/watch? v¼7BaSwaBPg6 M.
10. Frank P. Maggio, Notre Dame and the Game that Changed Football: How Jesse Harper

Made the Forward Pass a Weapon and Knute Rockne a Legend (New York, NY: Carroll

& Graf, 2007), 86-7, 101-22.

11. Seasons of Change,’’ From the DVD Series nar. Burt Reynolds, Rites of Autumn (Lions

Gate Home Entertainment, 2002).

12. Despite the interesting linkages between football and military institutions, they have

never before been examined in great detail in the pages of Armed Forces & Society

(AF&S). For example, a search of the journal’s online archive shows no articles published

between October 1974 and May 2011 in which the words ‘‘sports’’ or ‘‘football’’ were

contained in the abstract or offered as a keyword. At best the word ‘‘sport’’ shows up

in a total of thirty-one articles. ‘‘Football’’ specifically shows up in a total of fifteen arti-

cles or book reviews published in AF&S during that period. In those articles, ‘‘football’’ is

referred to variously and does not reflect any two or three particular aspects of scholarly

interest in the subject. A search of much more comprehensive databases reveals a similar

oversight. For example, searches on May 11, 2011, of the JSTOR and Academic Search

Premier databases for articles including both the words ‘‘sociology’’ and ‘‘football’’ in

their abstracts along with the words ‘‘military’’ or ‘‘armed forces’’ in their full texts

returned only one article. In that one article, the role of military institutions was only men-

tioned in passing.

13. Michael MacCambridge, ‘‘Army,’’ and Seth Wickersham, ‘‘Navy,’’ in ESPN College

Football Encyclopedia, ed. Michael MacCambridge (New York, NY: ESPN Books,

368 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

2005), 122, 561. President Grover Cleveland prohibited Army–Navy games between

1893 and 1899 after an argument over the game nearly led to a duel between a general

and an admiral. Mandelbaum. The Meaning of Sports, 156.

14. Steven W. Pope, ‘‘An Army of Athletes: Playing Fields, Battlefields, and the American

Military Sporting Experience, 1890–1920,’’ The Journal of Military History 59 (1995): 439.

15. Pope, ‘‘An Army of Athletes,’’ 438, 440.

16. Report of the Secretary of War. House of Representatives. 52d Congress, 1st Session. Ex.

Doc. 1, Part 2. Volume V (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1892), 484-91.

17. Purdue Archives, Letter of James Smart to Andrew S. Draper (University of Illinois

President), Papers of James Smart, (University Letter Book, November 19, 1894), 881;

‘‘Foot-ball Extra! Butler the Victor,’’ The Indianapolis News, Extra Edition (November

29, 1894): 1.

18. John Sayle Watterson, College Football (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,

2000), 50.

19. Purdue Archives, Letter of James Smart to Andrew S. Draper, 881; Purdue Archives, Let-

ter of James Smart to Charles Kendall Adams (University of Wisconsin President),

Papers of James Smart, University Letter Book, 1894 (November 22, 1894): 887; ‘‘The

Artillery Veterans,’’ The Indianapolis News (November 29, 1894): 1; ‘‘Foot-ball Extra!

Butler the Victor,’’ 1.

20. Pope, ‘‘An Army of Athletes,’’ 436.

21. Report of the Commission Appointed by the President to Investigate the Conduct of the

War Department in the War with Spain. Senate. 56th Congress, 1st Session. Document

No. 221. Vol. 3. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1900), 476-7.

22. Office of Naval Intelligence, Notes on the Spanish-American War. 1900. Senate. 56th

Congress, 1st Session. Document No. 388. (Washington, DC: Government Printing

Office, 1900), 8.

23. Watterson, College Football, 64-5.

24. Mandelbaum, The Meaning of Sports, 143.

25. Watterson, College Football, 64-6, 69 and Sal Paolantonio, How Football Explains

America (Chicago, IL: Triumph Books, 2008), 22; Jack Clary, Army vs. Navy: Seventy

Years of Football Rivalry (New York: Ronald Press Co, 1965), 42; Barry Wilner and Ken

Rappoport, Gridiron Glory: The Story of the Army-Navy Football Rivalry (Lanham, MD:

Taylor Trade, 2005), 32; John S. Watterson, ‘‘The Gridiron Crisis of 1905: Was it Really

a Crisis?’’ Journal of Sports History 27 (2000): 294.

26. Watterson, College Football 74: 77-8.

27. Report of the Secretary of War, House of Representatives. 53rd Congress, 3d Session. Ex.

Doc. 1, Part 2. Vol. I. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1994), 624-6.

28. Watterson, College Football 131, 136, 140.

29. Giuseppe Caforio. ‘‘Some Historical Notes,’’ in Handbook of the Sociology of the Military,

ed. Giuseppe Caforio (New York: Kluwer Academic, 2003), 19-20.

30. Ronald R. Krebs, ‘‘A School for the Nation?: How Military Service Does Not Build

Nations, and How it Might,’’ International Security 28 (2004): 85-124.

31. Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 3rd ed. (New York: The Free Press, 1983), 30.

Vasquez 369

32. James Mennell, ‘‘The Service Football Program of World War I: Its Impact on the

Popularity of the Game,’’ Journal of Sports History 16 (1989): 251; Pope, ‘‘An Army

of Athletes,’’ 442; Raymond Blaine Fosdick, Chronicle of a Generation: An Autobiogra-

phy (New York: Harper, 1958), 147. Army ‘‘combat football’’ evolved similarly in the mid-

1970s using up to sixty players. Described as a hybrid of ‘‘American football, basketball,

soccer, rugby and the Civil War draft riots,’’ it was brought to Hawaii from the US Second

Infantry Division in South Korea where it had been ‘‘an outlet for troops frustrated by gar-

rison duty and denied access to the fleshy delights of Seoul.’’ Richard W. Johnston, ‘‘New

Army Game,’’ Sports Illustrated (Vault), July 21, 1975, accessed June 14, 2010, http://

sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ article/ magazine/ MAG1090072 /index.htm.

33. Mennell, ‘‘The Service Football Program of World War I,’’ 251.

34. Donald W. Rominger, Jr., ‘‘From Playing Field to Battleground: The United States Navy

V-5 Preflight Program in World War II,’’ Journal of Sports History 12 (1985): 253;

Edward Marshall, ‘‘Athletic, Not Military, Training,’’ The New York Times (March 28,

1915). Magazine Section, SM6.

35. As the foremost early promoter of amateur football, one can only wonder whether Camp

saw the armed services as a vehicle for expanding the public appetite for college football.

Mennell, ‘‘The Service Football Program of World War I,’’ 251-2, 254.

36. Mennell, ‘‘The Service Football Program of World War I,’’ 252-3.

37. Watterson, College Football, 139.

38. Mennell, ‘‘The Service Football Program of World War I,’’ 256-7.

39. MacCambridge, ESPN College Football Encyclopedia, 1152; Leland ‘‘Trig’’ Watson,

‘‘The Amazing Great Lakes football team of 1918.’’ http://www.nsgreatlakes.navy.mil/

history/1943football.html; Mandelbaum, The Meaning of Sports, 141.

40. Pope, ‘‘An Army of Athletes,’’ 452.

41. Watterson, College Football, 140; Mennell, ‘‘The Service Football Program of World

War I,’’ 248, 259-60.

42. Friedrich Engels, quoted by Sigmund Neumann and Mark von Hagen in Engels and Marx

on Revolution, War and the Army in Society, Makers of Modern Strategy, ed. Peter Paret

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 277.

43. Watterson, College Football, 140.

44. Mennell, ‘‘The Service Football Program of World War I,’’ 249-50, 259-60.

45. Murray Sperber, Onward to Victory: The Crises that Shaped College Sports (New York,

NY: Henry Holt, 1998), 82-3.

46. Paolantonio, How Football Explains America, 76.

47. Mandelbaum, The Meaning of Sports, 167-8.

48. Paolantonio, How Football Explains America, 77; Sperber, Onward to Victory, 138-9.

49. For detailed analysis of this concept, the following are recommended: Aaron Friedberg,

‘‘Why Didn’t the United States Become a Garrison State?,’’ International Security 16

(1992): 109-42; Raymond Aron, ‘‘Remarks on Lasswell’s ‘The Garrison State,’’’ Armed

Forces & Society 5 (1979): 347-59; and Jay Stanley, Essays on the Garrison State (New

Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1997). Thanks to a reviewer for recommending application

of this concept.

370 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

50. Harold D. Lasswell, ‘‘The Garrison State,’’ The American Journal of Sociology 46

(1941): 458-9.

51. Jack Clary, Army vs. Navy: Seventy Years of Football Rivalry (New York: Ronald Press,

1965), 141.

52. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 157-62, 165-6.

53. Joe Lapointe, ‘‘The Army-Navy Rivalry Reaches Symbolic Proportions,’’ The New York

Times (December 6, 2002), accessed June 9, 2010, LexisNexisAcademic.

54. MacCambridge, ESPN College Football Encyclopedia, 118, 123-4.

55. Murray Sperber, Onward to Victory, 87, 93, 97; Watterson, College Football, 201.

56. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 138-9.

57. Paolantonio, How Football Explains America, 80.

58. Ibid.

59. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 140; Watterson, College Football, 206-7. Draft eligibility

also led many college coaches to enlist to possibly coach military teams. Sperber,

Onward to Victory 96: 116-7.

60. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 140.

61. Ibid., 95-6.

62. Kevin Gleason. 2005. ‘‘Army.’’ In ESPN College Football Encyclopedia, ed. Michael

MacCambridge (New York, NY: ESPN Books), 118-20.

63. George Q. Flynn, The Draft, 1940–1973 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas), 22, 31.

64. Watterson, College Football, 202.

65. Rominger calls Hamilton’s Advocacy of Violent Games to Foster Resilience and Aggres-

siveness in Trainees ‘‘Social Engineering at its Zenith.’’ Rominger, Jr., ‘‘From Playing

Field to Battleground,’’ 252, 254, 257.

66. Rominger, Jr. ‘‘From Playing Field to Battleground,’’ 256 and Benjamin Hare, ‘‘Here

comes the Navy: Football at Military Training Centers during World War II,’’ North Cen-

tral College Undergraduate Archives Publication, 2006.

67. Rominger, Jr. ‘‘From Playing Field to Battleground,’’ 257.

68. Wilbur D. Jones, Football! Navy! War!: How Military ‘Lend-Lease’ Players Saved the

College Game and Helped Win World War II (Jefferson, NC: MacFarland, 2009), 16,

131. A contest such as this appears in Robert Altman’s cinematic farce M*A*S*H

(20th Century Fox, 1970).

69. Hare, ‘‘Here comes the Navy,’’ 7; Rominger, Jr. ‘‘From Playing Field to Battleground,’’

255, 260; Sperber, Onward to Victory, 110.

70. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 97-8, 127, 133-4 and Hare, ‘‘Here Comes the Navy,’’ 14.

71. Jones, Football! Navy! War!, 44.

72. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 110-1.

73. Statistics based on data gleaned from Hare, ‘‘Here comes the Navy,’’ 5; MacCambridge,

ESPN College Football Encyclopedia, 1191, 1195.

74. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 110, 113, 116. Attempting to Replicate life at Home Some-

what, ‘‘Bowl Games’’ were played after the 1944 season in Locales such as Algeria, Ber-

muda, Dutch Guinea, England, France, Hawaii, Ireland, Italy, and Iran. Jones, Football!

Navy! War!, 204-5.

Vasquez 371

75. Rominger, ‘‘From Playing Field to Battleground,’’ 262.

76. Ibid., 256.

77. Ibid., 263.

78. Rominger, ‘‘From Playing Field to Battleground,’’ 261, 263-4; MacCambridge, ESPN

College Football Encyclopedia, 77, 82, 91, 113, 121, 124, 278, 367, 412-3, 469-70,

493, 527, 554-5, 593, 602, 655, 657, 671, 689, 768-9, 866, 893-4, 993; Gerry Brown and

Michael Morrison, eds., ESPN Sports Almanac 2009 (New York, NY: Ballantine Books,

2008), 256, 277; Pro Sports Halls of Fame: Football, 1963–1978. Vol. 5 (Danbury, CT:

Grolier Educational, 1997), 76-7, 110-1; Jones, Football! Navy! War!, 64, 66, 68; Man-

delbaum, The Meaning of Sports, 156, 171-2; http://static.nfl.com/static/content/public/

image/history/pdfs/TeamCapsules /Chicago .

79. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 170.

80. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 344-9. For more on the cheating scandal of 1951, which was

the subject of the movie Code Breakers, for America’s ESPN television network, see Bill

McWilliams, A Return to Glory: The Untold Story of Honor, Dishonor & Triumph at the

United States Military Academy, 1950–53 (Lynchburg, VA: Warwick House, 2000).

81. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 92-4, 112-3, 248-9.

82. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 93-4 and Watterson, College Football, 201.

83. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 168 and Watterson, College Football, 202-3, 208-9.

84. These rules ‘‘Precluded Support from Athletic Boosters.’’ Watterson, College Football,

205, 209.

85. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 249.

86. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 112-3, 248-9.

87. Sperber contends that thirty colleges stopped playing intercollegiate football, but Water-

son puts the number at higher than fifty. Watterson, College Football, 242 and Sperber,

Onward to Victory, 438.

88. Sperber, Onward to Victory, 437, 443.

89. Nevertheless, it should be noted, as a reviewer points out, that newly commissioned offi-

cers often lead military football teams bringing them into close contact with enlisted

troops to build unit cohesion.

90. Michael Mann, States, War and Capitalism: Studies in Political Sociology (Oxford, UK:

Blackwell, 1988), 184-5.

91. Tony Collins, ‘‘English Rugby Union and the First World War,’’ The Historical Journal

45 (2002): 797-817.

Bio

Joseph Paul Vasquez III, is a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at the

University of Central Florida. He is a veteran of the US Army and holds a PhD from the Uni-

versity of Notre Dame. He is currently working on a book manuscript examining the political

constraints imposed by conscript militaries on democracies at war.

372 Armed Forces & Society 38(3)

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The Service Football Program of World War I: Its Impact on the Popularity of the
Game

Author(s): James Mennell

Source: Journal of Sport History , Winter, 1989, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Winter, 1989), pp. 248-
260

Published by: University of Illinois Press

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Journal of Sport History, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Winter, 1989)

The Service Football Program of
World War I: Its Impact on the

Popularity of the Game

by James Mennell

Historians are aware of the great increase in sports activity during the 1920s;
in fact it is so well-known that it has come to be called the Golden Age of Sport. 1

It is likely that the football rule changes from 1906 to 1912, which made football
a faster-paced and more exciting game, were at least partly responsible for this
increased interest in the sport. Another factor which may have contributed just
as much as the rule changes to the popularity of football in the 1920s has been
largely ignored. This was the sports program introduced into military training
and leisure time activities for draftees during World War I. Even a historian
specializing in the social aspects of the war was unaware of the impact service
sports had had on American life.2 Right up to the present time historians of
World War I continue to miss this development.3

In 1973, however, Guy Lewis revived awareness of the World War I sports
training program by asserting that it was more important than any other factor in

the appearance of widespread interest in sports during the 1920s.4 Nine years
later Timothy O’Hanlon developed Lewis’ thesis a step further. He showed that
the wartime emphasis on sports in military training stimulated post-war high
school sports programs.5

Lewis’ thesis is pivotal to better understanding the great expansion of sports
activties during the 1920s and needs further exploration. We need to examine
the service sports program thoroughly to learn the extent of its impact on
Americans, civilians as well as draftees. Although the service sports program
had a great impact on boxing,6 it also influenced American interest, civilian as

1 . Typical of the heightened interest in sport during the Golden Age was the fact that football attendance
doubled during the 1920s. Deobold B. Van Dalen, et al., A World History of Physical Education, (Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1953), pp. 439-440.

2. Mark Sullivan, Our Times: The United States, 1900-1925, Vol. V: Over Here 1914-1918 (New York:
Charles Scriber’s Sons, 1933), pp. 320-336. Frederick Palmer, a biographer of one of the indirect creators of the
military sports program, was also unaware of its importance thirteen years after the war: Frederick Palmer,
Newton D . Baker, 2 vols. (New York: Dodd, Meade, 1931) 1: 297-310.

3. Edward M. Coffman, The War To End All Wars: The American Military Experience In World War I,
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967); David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War And
American Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); and Daniel R. Beaver, Newton D . Baker And The
American War Effort: 1917-1919 (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1966).

4. Guy Lewis, “World War I and the Emergence of Sports for the Masses,” Maryland Historian 4 (Fall,
1973): 109-22.

5. Timothy P. O’Hanlon, “School Sports as Social Training: The Case of Athletics and the Crisis of World
War I,” Journal of Sport History 9 (Spring, 1982): 5-29.

6. Lewis was able to show that as a result of the service boxing program a group was formed after the war to

248

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The Service Football Program of World War I

well as military, in football. Consequently, a study of the World War I sports
training program as it applied to football could help to explain the background
of the Golden Age of Sport.

That project is made difficult, however, by the problem of verification, since
the rule changes occurred very close in time to service football. By 1912, only
five years before service football began, all the rule changes had been made
which transformed football into basically the game we know today. Therefore
the evidence to show that service football popularized the game must be
clearly delineated from evidence proving that the rule changes popularized the
game.

There is evidence which seems to point to service football as a greater
popularizer of football than were the rule changes. For example, although
criticism of the game dramatically declined after the 1912 rule changes,7 reports
of attendance do not indicate a dramatic rise in the period 1912-1918 (except for
Yale which had built a large stadium in 1914). Although attendance reports are
scarce,8 those that exist indicate comparatively low attendance figures for
college games during World War I, especially for games not involving service
teams. For example, a crowd of 25,000 watched Harvard play a service team in
October, 1917. 9 By contrast Penn drew only 18,000 for its last game of the
season when a victory over powerful Michigan would have enabled Penn to
claim the “national championship.”10 One may gain some perspective on these
figures by comparing them to the 110,802 English soccer fans who attended the

promote boxing. Guy Lewis, “World War I and the Emergence of Sports for the Masses,” p. 120. And boxing was
thought to be more important than football by those in charge of the military sports program because it supposedly
was an effective means of preparing for bayonet fighting. Memo, Fosdick to camp commanders, August 17, 1917,
War Department Files, Record Group 165, file 7, National Archives (hereafter cited as N.A.).

7. The following data from the New York Times give some idea of the impact the rule changes had on the
image of football in the New York area. The terms “negative report” used here means an article that states or
implies that there was something fundamentally wrong with collegiate football:

1905 – Negative reports (23 players killed that year) 20
1906 – Negative reports before the rule changes 10

Negative reports after the rule changes 4
1907 – Negative reports 6
1908 – Negative reports 3
1909 – Negative reports (26 players killed that year) 19
1910 – Negative reports 16
1911 – Negative reports 6
1912 – Negative reports 1
1913 – negative reports 1
8. Unfortunately, newspapers reported attendance figures only when they were unusual. Robin Lester, “The
Rise, Decline, and Fall of Intercollegiate Football at the University of Chicago, 1890-1940” (Ph.D. diss.
University of Chicago, 1974), noted a few attendance figures for the University of Chicago in the 1920s but not
before that. Guy Lewis, “The American Intercollegiate Football Spectacle, 1869-1917” (Ph.D. diss. University of
Maryland, 1964), made eight references to attendance figures before World War I. They are as follows:
p. 207: 20,000 Michigan-Minnesota, 1903
p. 217: 8,000 Washington-California, 1904
p. 230: 25,791 Chicago-Michigan, 1905 (championship game)
p. 233: 43,000 Yale-Harvard, 1905
p. 264: 15,000 Kansas-Missouri, 1908
p. 272: 16,000 Texas-Texas A and M, 191 1
p. 286: 80,000 Harvard- Yale, 1915.

In 1915 the Southwest Conference’s biggest games attracted 1 1 ,000, 8,000, and two games drew 7,000 spectators
(p. 281).

9. New York Times, October 28, 1917.
10. Philadelphia Inquirer, November 30, 1917.

249

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Journal of Sport History, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Winter, 1989)

cup final in 1906, only eighteen years after the founding of the professional
Football League. In addition, only two schools, Penn and Brown, were repor-
tedly considering new stadiums between 1914 and 1918. 11 Nor did any college
football program make profits large enough to attract the attention of the New
York Times during those same years (although it must be admitted that no sport
did well during the war).

After the war the situation seemed to change dramatically. The New York
Times reported several schools making comparatively big profits since the
war. 12 This suggests that attendance did not rise quickly and dramatically after
the rule changes, while in the period 1919-1921 there was a dramatic expansion
of college football programs and attendance at games. Thirteen colleges took up
varsity football in these first three years after the war. This was a noteworthy
increase over the period 1912-1918 just after the rule changes when only three
schools adopted varsity football. And while only three new stadiums were
considered in the six years immediately after the rule changes, fourteen were
considered in the three year period right after the war.13 Thus, the sudden
dramatic expansion of college football programs immediately after the war
seems to suggest that the service football program had significantly stimulated
interest in collegiate football.

Unfortunately, the evidence just cited does not conclusively prove beyond a
reasonable doubt that it was only service football which made football popular
during the 1920s. The great increase in attendance after the war may have been
partly due to the time lag (from 1912 to 1919) necessary for the public to realize
how exciting the “New Football” had become. The great increase in stadium
building after the war may have resulted at least partly from the great difficulties

of successful fund raising for stadiums during the war in competition with
Liberty Bond drives. Finally, the war drained colleges of young men, making it
much less likely that colleges would take up varsity football until the young men
returned from the war. One is therefore forced to conclude that it is impossible
to distinguish clearly the cause or causes of the increased popularity of football
just after World War I. The two developments, rule changes and service
football, occurred too close together in time to be able to distinguish evidence
for one from evidence for the other. Even attendance figures for football games
played during or after World War I, and they are few and far between, are not
useful evidence since there is no way of separating increased attendance
because of service football from increased attendance due to the time lag in
appreciating the rule changes. In fact, it is difficult to imagine any evidence
which would be sufficient proof short of an opinion poll asking every spectator
who attended a college game after the war if he came because of service football
or the rule changes.

1 1 . New York Times, February 24, 1916 and January 28, 1917.
12. Ibid., October 28, November 24, December 10, 18, and 25, 1920.
13. New York Times; and Christy Walsh ed., College Football and All America Review, (Hollywood,

California: House Warven, 1951), pp. 19-29. This book records the score of every collegiate football game played
up to 1950.

250

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The Service Football Program of World War I

Nevertheless, it seems unreasonable to conclude that until definitive evi-
dence of its precise role in the history of football is found, service football is a
subject of study which can shed no light on the process by which college
football became very popular during the Golden Age of Sport. Service football
deserves to be acknowledged as a contributing force of some degree in popu-
larizing football. Therefore the rest of this paper will be a description of the
World War I service football program and the response to it by some sports-
writers.

The immediate origins of sports competition in military training which
would lead to the creation of the service football program can be traced to a
military sex scandal during 1916. In that year Pancho Villa invaded American
territory and General Pershing was ordered to protect American territory and
capture Villa. Consequently, young National Guardsmen were concentrated at
Fort Sam Houston, Texas, to help police the border. Reports filtered into
Washington, D.C. that these young Guardsmen, with nothing to occupy their
free time, swarmed into the nearby camp towns to look for fun, but found
venereal disease and cheap alcohol instead.

Secretary of War Newton D. Baker appointed a well-known young lawyer
and urban reformer, Raymond Fosdick, to tour the towns associated with army
camps and report on what he found. Fosdick confirmed that the Guardsmen,
starved for amusement, were fast learning all the vices available in the camp
towns. Almost as an afterthought Fosdick suggested the germ of a revolutionary

approach to managing soldiers in their leisure time activities. He noted that in
one instance the soldiers’ problem of having nothing to do had been easily
solved with sports equipment donated by a local YMCA.14

As American involvement in the World War grew increasingly likely, the
possibility of millions of young American males being drafted into the military
also grew. If those young men found the camp town to be their only recreational
outlet, the war effort might be hindered, and the resulting scandal would
seriously hurt President Woodrow Wilson’s administration. Aware of this,
Secretary Baker attempted to thrash out with Fosdick a solution to the problem
of vice around military installations. As a result of their talks Baker was able to
summarize their conclusions to President Wilson on April 2, 1917: the answer to
the problem was for the military to provide organized recreation in the camps.
Wilson apparently approved because soon afterwards Baker created the Com-
mission on Training Camp Activities to supervise leisure time activities,
including sports, for the National Army about to be created. He then appointed
Fosdick as chairman of the organization. Soon after, Josephus Daniels, Secre-

14. C . M . Cramer, Newton D . Baker: A Biography (New York: World Publishing Co. , 1 96 1 ), p. 1 0 1 ; Palmer,
Newton D . Baker, pp. 297-299. In a letter to Wilson, Baker claimed the credit for the idea of using team sports in
army training. He expressed his concern “whether a part of the discipline of the Army ought not to be the regular
provision of wholesome recreation so as pleasantly and, if possible, profitably to occupy the leisure hours of
soldiers in camp.” Baker to Wilson, April 2, 1917, Arthur S. Link ed., The Wilson Papers, Vol. 40, (Princeton,
New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 153-154. Baker indirectly admitted that it was Fosdick’s idea
to establish a board to deal with leisure time in military camps in a letter to Major General Frederick Funston on
August 12, 1916: “Mr. Fosdick’s suggestion that the subject should be studied by a competent board deals of
course rather with future conditions. …” Quoted in Palmer, Newton D . Baker, p. 302.

251

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Journal of Sport History, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Winter, 1989)

tary of the Navy, appointed a similar commission with Fosdick again as its
chairman.

Fosdick then appointed Walter Camp, the highly respected football author-
ity, to be Athletic Director for the Navy. The comparable position for the
Army went to Joseph Raycroft, a professor of physical education at Princeton.
These two men in turn appointed athletic directors for each camp, one of
whose assignments was to find coaches for whatever athletic teams they
deemed proper. Fortunately, so many athletes joined the military or were
drafted that each camp usually had well-known coaches or players to lead its
teams.15

A service football program, i.e. football leagues at all military levels plus
camp- wide teams playing colleges and other camp teams, was never a major
goal of the Army Athletic Divisions of the C.T.C. A. 16 In a 24-page history of
the Army Athletic Division which Joseph Raycroft wrote in 1919, the author
clearly does not regard the service football program as an important achieve-
ment of his organization. Indeed, he does not even mention it.17

Raycroft did not openly oppose service football, but he strongly believed that
boxing was the sport to emphasize, based on the training program that the
British had developed, and he stressed boxing with enthusiasm.18 War Depart-
ment Bulletin No. 5019 informed the athletic directors of basic policy: “Experi-
ence at the front has shown that knowledge of boxing is an important factor in
the development of skillful aggression in bayonet fighting.” Other sports were to
be utilized in army camps only as morale builders. No effort was made by the
Athletic Division to hire football coaches or to form football leagues. The only
sports specialist designated by both the Athletic Division to assist the athletic
directors in each camp was to be a “skilled boxer.”20

Since boxing was not a sport that had been previously taught to large numbers
at one time, the Athletic Division had to devote a great deal of attention to
training professional boxers to teach boxing. Bulletin No. 50 also detailed the
procedure to begin teaching the various boxing maneuvers. Other teaching
material on boxing followed including a three reel film designed to help boxing
instructors to teach soldiers the sport.21

There was also a practical reason for the Athletic Division not encouraging a

15. A good general description of what happened is found in Coffman, The War To End All Wars, p. 77.
Because Daniels gave Fosdick authority to form a similar committee for the Navy, technically Fosdick was
chairman of two commissions (Navy and Army), but for simplicity’s sake they will be referred to as one
commission. The organization established to create a nationwide military sports program was an impressive
undertaking and a memo from Fosdick to the camp commanders reveals that it was a product of the Commission
on Training Camp Activities. War Department Files, Record Group 165, file 7, N. A.

16. To avoid confusion reference will be made to the Army Athletic Division. The Navy Athletic Division
generally followed the same policy, unless otherwise indicated.

17. Joseph E. Raycroft, “A History of Athletic Division, War Department Commission on Training Camp
Activities, April 1917-January 1919,” unpublished typescript, Raycroft Papers, Princeton

University.

18. Ibid., p. 1.
19. The Athletic Division circulated among the camp athletic directors occasional informational bulletins

which are today housed in the War Department Files, RG 165, file 35, N. A. All Bulletins cited henceforth in this
paper are from this source.

20. War Department Bulletin No. 50, no date.
21. Raycroft, “History of Athletic Division,” p. 11.

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The Service Football Program of World War I

major emphasis on an organized service football program. It was expensive to
provide football pads for all the soldiers who would play and the C.T.C. A. was
entirely dependent upon voluntary donations at first. Of all the sports listed in
an early plan to assist the camp athletic directors to organize sports activities,
only football was prefaced with the comment: “If a company can afford to outfit
[the] men.”22 It is also well to remember that athletic training and recreation on
the scale that the Athletic Division was attempting was quite new. It had a great
deal of organizing and overseeing to do and was pressed to accomplish its goals
as quickly as possible.23 As a result, except for passing on the experiences of the
camp athletic directors through the Bulletins, the Athletic Division established
their commitment to boxing and left the development of recreational sports to
the athletic directors themselves. Thus, there was no official policy guideline
from the Athletic Division to create a football program.

If a service football program were to emerge, therefore, it had to develop in
the camps themselves, and that is just what happened. The service football
program began because football showed itself to be an already well-established
sport with a body of skilled coaches and officials readily available and willing to
help. It also began because of an impressive degree of enthusiasm among
soldiers and sailors to play the game (perhaps as a result of the rule changes).
And finally, it began because of favorable opportunities to schedule games with
colleges and other camps in major stadiums. It is remarkable how quickly camp
teams became organized, equipped and scheduled to play a full season of
football. The lack of enough football pads did not turn out to be a problem after
all. From the beginning every camp seemed able to field at least a camp- wide
team and even a few regimental teams. And, by contrast to boxing, there was no
shortage of men capable of organizing football programs without further
training. Despite the failure of the Athletic Division to recruit college football
coaches, a ready cadre of such men were already in the camps among the
draftees themselves, as the Athletic Division quickly realized: “… a great
deal of very valuable assistance can be obtained by discovering the men in the
camp who have had previous experience as competitors or coaches in athlet-
ics.”24 Newspapers helped by raising funds and calling for donations of new and
used equipment to local camps. The Central Board of Football Officials
volunteered to provide officials for camp games.25

The result was that while other programs may or may not have gotten started,
football usually had. This can be seen in the reports of athletic directors. For
example, Frank Bergin, athletic director at Pelham, New York Naval Training
Camp commented:

Last October there was a football team representing Pelham. A squad of about

22. Bulletin No. 2, October 18, 1917.
23. There were problems of reimbursing, housing, clothing and feeding the athletic directors, ironing out

lines of authority with the Y.M.C. A. camp representatives, and obtaining funding, for example. Raycroft,
“History of Athletic Division,” pp. 3-10.

24. Bulletin No. 2, October 18, 1917.
25. Bulletin No. 1, September 27, 1917 and Raycroft to Camp, October 4, 1917, Camp Papers, Yale

University.

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Journal of Sport History, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Winter, 1989)

thirty men playing football represented the total of athletic activity in camp. A
schedule of games was played with camps in this vicinity with fair success.

And A. Trautman of Camp Sheridan reported that “Football teams have formed
all over the camp.”26

Walter Camp, the Athletic Director of the Navy, was under the same con-
straints as Ray croft and his program for the Navy Athletic Division was not
essentially different from Raycrofťs Army Athletic Division. But it would
appear that Camp more actively encouraged the service football program than
did Raycroft. It will be remembered that Raycroft did not mention football in his
history of the Athletic Division. By contrast Camp, also writing just after the
war, claimed in his book, Athletes All , that he had been interested in “outside

competition” for naval station teams very early in the war:

… we needed play and recreation. With this must come the interest and
excitement of competition. We needed regimental teams to foster this. We needed
[naval] station teams to increase it, because then outside competition at weekends
and holidays would be possible.27

This claim by Camp to have developed outside competition is supported by a
particular action he took during the 1917 season. Military teams had begun to
play “outside” games with colleges and other camps. But each service played
only teams from the same service. Camp realized that service football competi-
tion could be taken one step further: the natural rivalry between soldiers and
sailors might be used to create an attractive football game (similar to the Army-
Navy game) between army camp teams and naval station teams.

Camp’s attempt to arrange such a game (in this case between the Newport
Naval Station and the Maine Heavy Field Artillery) illustrates the perseverance
camp athletic directors around the country had to possess in scheduling games.
First, he began on October 25, 1917 by writing to obtain Raycrofťs approval for
the Army team to play. Then he selected the teams and arrange for disposal of
the profits. Then it was necessary to find a suitable football stadium with an
open date (the Yale Bowl had openings on November 3 and 10, 1917); and
finally, he had to publicize the game within only days of its being played.
Having reserved the Yale Bowl, Camp had the tickets printed and urged
sportswriters to publicize the game, only to have a dispute between the team
representatives break out over which charity was to receive the gate receipts.28

The hectic pace Camp forced upon himself to make the game a success can be
felt in this letter to Raycroft only days before the game was to be played:

26. The Bergin report is an undated, handwritten letter, presumably an end of year summation of activities.
The Trautman report is from Bulletin No. 1, September 27 , 1917. Several other reports of spontaneous enthusiasm
at Armny camps for organizing football teams were also included in this Bulletin.

27. Walter Camp, Athletes All (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1919), p. 9.
28. Camp to Raycroft, October 25 and October 30 (first letter of that date in the file), 1917, Raycroft Papers.

Scheduling games with other service teams was difficult enough, but scheduling games with colleges could have
been impossible in 1917 since the college schedule for that year had already been arranged by the time the camp
teams were organized. Fortunately, colleges at that time customarily left an open date in their football schedules
which, in 1917, permitted inserting games with service teams. Had there been no such open dates it would have
been nearly impossible for service teams to have scheduled any college games.

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The Service Football Program of World War I

We are making every effort here [at Yale University] for publicity and I would
ask you to see that it is posted in the Princeton Club [Raycroft was a professor at
Princeton] with plenty of urging to the men to come up, and will you also use
every other source of notice for it possible. Meanwhile, I will take it up with all the
New York reporters and also with the Yale Club. The time is very short and we will
have to make every effort to get the crowd to turn out, but as it is the first really big
Army-Navy game and as the teams have several All America players on them it
ought to be a football feast.29

When the camp teams began to compete successfully with established
college football programs, service football made a major contribution to the
game. Service teams demonstrated that all-star teams playing together over a
full season could provide superb entertainment. This quality of play had not
been expected when the season began. It was assumed that the collections of all-
star players on the service teams would not become as smooth-working as
college teams for a year or more, and few believed in mid-1917 that the war
would last until the 1918 season. Therefore service football’s entertainment

value was expected to be limited largely to seeing many individual stars on the
field at one time. This apparently had limited spectator appeal because at first
crowds were small at service games.30

It was not long, however, before the service teams began to work well
together. When that happened sportswriters began to see these teams as the best
ever assembled. The public became so enthralled by the best service teams that
the highest attendance figure in America for the 1917 season involved a service
eleven against Harvard.

Not only was service football winning new civilian fans for football, but it
also had a significant impact on thousands of soldiers and sailors. During the
1917 season some sportswriters noticed this impact which they felt fell into two
catagories: soldier participation in football play (and all other sports for that
matter, but especially football), and participation in the activities surrounding
the game, like cheering, singing and half-time activities.

Sportswriters’ appreciation of the significance of soldier participation in
football grew rapidly during the 1917 season. Early in the season a writer for the
Butler (Pennsylvania) Eagle had a more limited idea of the impact service
football would have on America than did other sportswriters later in the season.
He took it for granted that every American boy knew how to play football or
baseball and that he played them regularly. Thus the service football program
was seen as an Americanizing process for the many new immigrants in
America.31 But Jack Velock, a syndicated writer in New York City, saw
something more significant in service football. He believed that in spite of the
prevailing myth that all Americans knew the quintessentially American games
of baseball and football, many young Americans had not actually had the
opportunity to play football until they reached the army training camps. He saw
the impact that this would have: “By the time the season ends football will have

29. Camp to Raycroft, October 30 (second letter of that date in the file), 1917, Raycroft Papers.
30. Harrisburg (Pa.) Patriot, October 10 and 11, 1917.
31 . Butler (Pa.) Eagle, October 24, 1917.

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Journal of Sport History, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Winter, 1989)

won thousands of devotees who never knew its thrills before.”32 A writer for the

Philadelphia Inquirer also felt that service football was an opportunity for native
Americans to play the game.33

Two weeks after the regular football season ended on Thanksgiving Day, an
article by H.C. Hamilton summarized the importance of service sports. Al-
though he did not mention football in particular, Hamilton wrote so soon after
the football season ended that presumably he was influenced in what he said by
the impact service football had made on him. He acknowledged that because of
the service teams the number of participants in sports activities was the greatest
in American history. This led Hamilton to gauge the phenomenon’s impact:
“After the war ends sports should have such a firm grip on the youth of the land
that it should enjoy the greatest patronage it ever saw.” Hamilton went on to
suggest reasons why service sports had made such an impact. So many sports
stars, both college and professional, played on service teams that soldiers had
been able to see sports competition at its finest and would want to see more after
the war. Second, the soldier athletes were receiving the finest coaching avail-
able and would be better athletes for it. Finally, the military sports activity was
healthy as well as fun. Hamilton concluded by reasserting his optimistic
forecast: “Sports is being elevated to a place in the national life it never enjoyed.
And when it comes back from war it will-literally-be all over the place. Get set
for it.”34

Perhaps the strongest, most characteristic element of the service football
phenomenon in World War I was the attempt of its participants and supporters to
copy the activities associated with college footbalkthe cheering and singing, the
marching bands, and the colorful clothing. Perhaps this emphasis on college-
type football activities resulted from the fact that service football had a strong
connection to college football in that many of the teams, even down to the
regimental and battalion level, included ex-college players.35 Or perhaps there
was no real competition from professional football since the professional game
was still almost a “sandlot” game played without an established league.36

Sportswriters cooperated with and encouraged bringing the glamor of col-
lege football into service games. Newspaper references to “college glamor” in
describing service football activities occurred too often to escape this connec-
tion of service football to college football. As early in the season as October 27,
1917, the Philadelphia Inquirer described the football scene at Camp Dix, New
Jersey. Plans had been made to mass the regimental bands into a camp marching
band of 250 pieces to play at half-time during regimental games at Camp Dix.
Thousands of visitors, “equal to the crowds which flock to intercollegiate

32. Oil City (Pa.) Derrick, October 25, 1917.
33. Philadelphia Inquirer, October 27, 1917.
34. Butler Eagle, December 13, 1917.
35. Even the line-up of the 305th Ammunition Train, a battalion-level team which played Allegheny College

during 1917, included a former all- America player from Brown. Allegheny College Campus, December 10,
1917.

36. Detroit Free Press, November 7, 1917. Camp Custer played a game with the Detroit Heralds, “the best
‘pro’ football team Detroit has ever sponsored.” The writer’s description of the Heralds seems to imply that
professional football was more like what would be termed “semi-pro” today.

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The Service Football Program of World War I

games,” were expected to attend. Lt. Bob Crawford, an old Princeton track
athlete now stationed at Camp Dix, was to give instruction in college-type
cheering and singing. The soldiers and their visitors were clearly being taught to
enjoy the college football experience. This seems confirmed when the Bal-
timore American commented on the scene at a Camp Meade, Maryland football
game: “Each Company had a band, and so did the regiments thus making it
especially easy to duplicate academic football.”37

A writer for the Great Lakes Recruit in 1918 felt that the Regimental Football
League was the biggest educating factor created at Great Lakes:

Thousands of youths who had never before known the thrills of the gridiron game
are now enthusiasts. They march to the games behind their band, and they yell
themselves hoarse in encouraging their campmates to win. All that one needs to
become a rabid football fan is to be innoculated with the initial interest. The rest is
a mere matter of time.38

By November 9, 1917 the New Castle, Pennsylvania News went so far as to
publish, presumably for the many new football fans, an article on how to show
good football manners. Because the make-up of football crowds was different
from baseball, better manners were to be expected from football fans: “Football
is a college and school game, mostly amateur. Baseball is the general public’s
game, mostly professional. And therein lies the difference.”39

The writer of “Old Sport’s Musings,” a regular but unsigned column in the
Philadelphia Inquirer , seems to have thought a good deal about the future
implications of service football. He not only saw the impact of service football
on the future popularity of sports, but he also believed that the service teams
were taking football in a new direction:

Surely the war-time is doing something for football and football is returning that
with interest. No longer does the game have to depend upon the college glamour,
by which it is surrounded, for its popularity. The soldier boys have given it new
impetus, and it is pleasing to note that big miltary games are being arranged for
various parts of the country as a grand finale of the football season.40

The writer moved on to explain why football was growing in popularity across
the country. The rule changes had opened the game up to such an extent that it
was now entertaining. This in turn had led the spectators to learn more about the
game and their interest had increased accordingly. But he acknowledged the
contribution of service football, since the post-season games played by service
teams were extending the length of the season. “That shows that the game is
well liked and that the army teams have added a touch this year that was not
enjoyed in the past.” He did not feel that the glamor of college football was
responsible for the growing popularity of football:

There was a time when the game, if robbed of its college glamour, would have

37. Baltimore, Maryland American, November 4, 1917.
38. Great Lakes Recruit, December, 1918. This magazine is available at the Great Lakes Naval Training

Station near Waukegan, Illinois. The issues for 1917 have been lost.
39. New Castle (Pa.) News, November 9, 1917.
40. Philadelphia Inquirer, November 12, 1917.

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Journal of Sport History, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Winter, 1989)

been forgotten entirely [i.e. , before the rule changes]. New interest is such that it
no longer requires a college setting to be interesting and enjoyable to the sport
lovers.

In spite of this hostility to college glamor, on December 3, 1917 the same
writer inadvertently reinforced the argument that college-like glamor was a
factor in the rise in popularity of service football. He described the half-time
activities at a big end-of-season service game he had witnessed at Franklin
Field, Philadelphia on Thanksgiving Day:

To some it may have seemed that the spectacular stunt of forming the [soldiers] up
in a hollow square and cheering and singing, seemed absurd, with the cheer leader
soldiers jumping around and performing all the antics of the college boy.

Nevertheless, he called the exhibition good military training. The writer seems
to have been a football purist who felt that “college boy antics” detracted from
the game. But it is obvious that his dismay reflects what a strong emphasis on
college glamor there had been at the game he had witnessed.41

As the 1917 football season came to a close it was becoming evident that the
war was not likely to end before the 1918 football season began.42 It was also
evident that interest in camp games had grown so much that service teams
clearly rivalled collegiate teams in sharing the interest of sports writers. Given
this new situation it was unclear how football would be organized in 1918. An
unsigned syndicated article datelined Chicago suggested collegiate football in
1918 would be “an unimportant part of the game.” The writer suggested that
service football was so exciting that it would be “a professional attraction next
season.”43 It is possible that service football provided the impetus to form a
professional football league after the war based on the same entertaining
foundation of service football: i.e. , a team of all-stars who play together for the
entire season. This idea was not mentioned again so it is dangerous to place too
much weight upon it. But certainly the writer’s views were an endorsement of
service football for 1918 and attest to the impact it had had in 1917.

The 1918 service football season no doubt continued to develop popular
interest in football in the same way the 1917 season had: by involving even more
draftees in organized play with all the glamor that attached to it. Presumably
family and friends supported the teams representing the draftees.

The relationship between the colleges and the service teams was not cordial
in 1918 apparently because many of the service teams were so powerful they
threatened to damage college reputations. This seems evident from the 1918
schedule of games. Six leading service teams (Camps Grant, Taylor and Dodge,
Great Lakes, Cleveland Naval Station, and the U.S. Army Balloon School)
were able to schedule only six of their total of twenty-seven games with

41. Ibid., December 3, 1917.
42. Harrisburg Patriot, November 24, 1917. By this time Russia was divided by revolution and was unable to

continue the war and the British and French offensives of 1917 had all failed.

43. Philadelphia Inquirer, November 24, 1917.

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The Service Football Program of World War I

colleges; and four of them were the first game of the season when the all-star
type service teams would not yet be working well together.44

Nevertheless, the most dramatic game of the 1918 season occurred when
“national champion” Pitt agreed to play a powerful service team, the Cleveland
Naval Reserve, in a post-season showdown between service and college teams.
In 1917 Pitt had been regarded by many observers as the “national champion,”
but had refused to play a post-season game with a strong service team. In 1918
the situation was different with Pitt stronger than ever, having defeated un-
beaten and highly touted Georgia Tech. Yet service football had such a strong
reputation that Pitt agreed to play the Cleveland Naval Reserve in a special game
on November 30, 1918. Cleveland won the game 10 to 9 amid charges by Pitt
that the referee had called the game over after only ten minutes of the final
quarter (there were no scoreboard clocks) after Pitt had reached the Cleveland
one-yard line.45

Apart from this triumph in the final service team game of World War I, the
season was anticlimatic for service football. Its rise during 1917 had been one of
the most dramatic developments ever in American football. But that could not
be repeated in 1918 because the service teams were known to be powerful before
the season began. Nor was there the inherent romance of the cream of the
nation’s youth learning football so that they could test themselves in a more
serious contest with the Germans. By the 1918 football season the new draftees
were not surrounded by such romance because the Germans were already
showing signs of defeat when the 1918 football season began and they agreed to
an armistice just as the season was reaching its peak. In addition the Spanish
influenza epidemic swept the country at the beginning of the football season. So
many Americans died that public gatherings were sometimes cancelled to avoid
contagion. People walked around in gauze masks to avoid breathing con-
taminated air.46 This had an effect on football attendance until the end of the

season and even caused the cancellation of a number of games.47 Even the final
victory over Pitt was not quite a triumph.

Nevertheless, service football quickened the popularization of collegiate
football significantly. It did so in three ways: first, service football opened up the
number of participants in organized football, thus familiarizing them with a
game most had not played in an organized manner before. Second, it gave non-
playing soldiers a chance to experience the music, color and spirit of the game,
formerly limited largely to college people. Third, service football gave friends
and neighbors of the draftees new exposure to the game when they supported
service teams representing their soldiers, thus feeling a sense of belonging at

44. New York Times, October 13, 1918.
45. Ibid., December 2, 1918. Symbolic of the separation, amounting almost to hostility, of college and

service football was Walter Camp’s decision to name both collegiate and service team all-America squads for
1918. New York Times, December 31, 1918.

46. Allen Churchill, Over Here! (New York: Dodd, Meade, 1968), p. 305.
47. New York Times, October 20, 1918.

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Journal of Sport History, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Winter, 1989)

the games. We can therefore conclude that although the exact impact on the
popularity of football in the 1920s cannot be accurately measured in comparison
to the rule changes, it seems evident from the foregoing description that service
football did have a significant impact on the growing popularity of collegiate
football.

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Contents

p. 248
p. 249
p. 250
p. 251
p. 252
p. 253
p. 254
p. 255
p. 256
p. 257
p. 258
p. 259
p. 260

Issue Table of Contents

Journal of Sport History, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Winter, 1989) pp. 227-321
Front Matter
CLARIFICATION NOTICE
The Patronage of Organised Sport in Central Scotland, 1820-1900 [pp. 227-247]
The Service Football Program of World War I: Its Impact on the Popularity of the Game [pp. 248-260]
The Emergence of Consumer Culture and the Transformation of Physical Culture: American Sport in the 1920s [pp. 261-281]
Book Reviews
Review: untitled [pp. 282-283]
Review: untitled [pp. 283-285]
Review: untitled [pp. 285-286]
Review: untitled [pp. 286-289]
Review: untitled [pp. 289-290]
Review: untitled [pp. 290-292]
Review: untitled [pp. 292-294]
Review: untitled [pp. 294-296]
Review: untitled [pp. 296-297]
Review: untitled [pp. 297-298]
Review: untitled [pp. 299-300]
Review: untitled [pp. 300-302]
Review: untitled [pp. 302-303]
Review: untitled [pp. 303-305]
Review: untitled [pp. 305-306]
Review: untitled [pp. 307-308]
Review: untitled [pp. 308-310]
Journal Surveys [pp. 311-316]
Communications [pp. 317-319]
Announcements [pp. 320-321]
Back Matter

153

Chad S. Seifried is with Department of Sport Management, and Matthew Katz is with the Department
of History, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA.

The Creation of Domestic
and International Bowl Games

from 1942 to 1964: The United States
Military and Football as Conjoined Twins

Chad S. Seifried and Matthew Katz
Louisiana State University

In the foreword to Wilbur D. Jones’s book Football! Navy! War!: How Military
Lend-Lease Players Saved the College Game and Helped Win World War II, the
noted football columnist, commentator, and historian Beano Cook suggested
America produced a strong relationship between its various military forces (i.e.,
Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard) and the game of football out
of “both necessity and natural design” (Jones, 2009, 2).1 To highlight this point,
Blue Network sportscaster Harry Wismer recognized the Department of the Navy
as providing “inestimable value” in preserving the game of football during World
War II because the Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard allowed students to play var-
sity football while preparing for service in their college officer-training programs.2
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) formally acknowledged this
contribution by the military. Specifically, the NCAA thanked the Department of
the Navy for supporting football as a tool to help the war effort and to keep both
college football and some institutions from disappearing.3

Donald Rominger, Jr. also acknowledged this conjointment between war
preparation and football in his paper “From playing field to Battleground: The
United States Navy V-5 Preflight Program in World War II” in the Journal of Sport
History through the use of imagery.4 John A. Gunn, author of The Old Core, further
recognized the training received on football fields extended to other parts of the
world and to improving military performance.5 British military analyst Thomas
Wintringham also supported this notion by suggesting the various British military
units should look into embracing the American style of football in their military
training practices because it provided important “points of resemblance to war”
and more so “than any other sport” (1940, 43, 66).6 As an example, college football
coaching legends Clark Shaughnessy and Harry Stuhldreher argued football was a
game well suited to wartime because it best incorporated and simulated important
strategy and tactics embraced by the military.7 Stuhldreher also specifically advo-
cated that the “stamina, teamwork, and coordination of football men are getting
on the gridiron will help make them better soldiers” (Gridiron Training, 1942, 5).8

rnasiff
Highlight

154 Seifried and Katz

Not surprisingly, there is a great deal of literature that connects the United
States military to American football through description, imagery, and metaphor.9
However, many of these beautifully mastered and researched descriptions of
military football teams, players, and contests of the World War II era lack detailed
information related to one unique outcome of this conjoined relationship: the
military-staged bowl game. This is interesting because the various postseason
contests created by the U.S. military involved units and bases all over the world,
incredible extravagance, highly accomplished professional and collegiate stars,
and on some occasions, competitors from other countries. The official records of
the NCAA importantly identify 88 service bowl games that took place between
1943 and 1967.10 However, significant work has not been collected on this topic
despite the fact that “competitive football enhanced troop and civilian morale on
the home front and overseas by providing an uplifting, entertaining, and exciting
diversion from the horrors, sacrifices, and boredom of war” (Jones, 2009, 23).11

In 1945, George L. Shiebler mentioned in the NCAA Football Guide that, “The
American fighting man was not satisfied to listen to shortwave broadcasts from
bowl games played in the States. He wanted to play in a game or else be an actual
spectator. Thousands of soldiers, sailors, and Marines in Europe and the Pacific
war areas put on their own football bowls with uniformed teams, cheering sections,
regulation officials, bands, and parades modeled after real American college football
games” (Jones, 2009, 65).12

This work aimed to explore the military’s use of the bowl game phenomenon
created on domestic and foreign soil and investigated the impact those events
produced on the military and the health or popularity of college football to further
highlight the conjoined status of football and the U.S. military.

Background

During World War I, the “American people were shocked to learn of the high per-
centage of young men who failed to qualify physically as good soldiers” (Portal,
1941, 3) or about those that “flunked early-war enlistment and draft physicals
because of [ill] health or mental conditions” (Jones, 1992, 43).13 This national
epidemic resulted in the perception that the United States lacked “hard, physically
fit, aggressive, courageous, and determined soldiers (Portal, 1941, 4). In order to
build and/or improve the protection of the nation’s increasing global interests,
the United States identified and used educational institutions to implement rigid
physical education requirements to build up the physical capability of America’s
soft youth.14 Interestingly, this occurred despite claims that physical combat has
been “born and bred in the human animal for generations” and that “present-day
conventions” relegated that asset “dormant” in the average American.15

Princeton University’s Professor of Hygiene and U.S. War Department Army
Training Activities Director Joseph E. Raycroft served as important advocate for
change and convinced many university and college academic administrators to
incorporate more combat-related sports (e.g., boxing, wrestling, football) into uni-
versity curriculums to improve the conditioning, determination, and sportsmanship
of college men following World War I.16 Similarly, General Douglas MacArthur,
as superintendent of West Point after World War I, reorganized the educational

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curriculum to include instruction in a variety of teams sports such as football,
basketball, soccer, lacrosse, and hockey. MacArthur established this new athletic
training initiative at West Point for cadets because he accepted that competitive sport
brought “out the qualities of leadership, quickness of decision, promptness of action,
mental and muscular coordination, aggressiveness, and courage” (1922, 21–22).17

Raycroft and MacArthur were likely influenced by the popularity of competi-
tive sport in the military and the positive outcomes associated with participation in
those activities during World War I. For example, Raymond Fosdick, chairman on
Training Camp Activities of the Army and Navy Department in 1918, recognized
that competitive sport helped to maintain military efficiency and the morale of
participating and nonparticipating troops at home and abroad. Fosdick also pro-
moted the idea that competitive sport served to increase qualities like courage and
aggressiveness in World War I soldiers.18 Edward Frank Allen similarly advocated
that rough and ferocious competitive sporting activities served to improve cohe-
sion, communication, and the acceptance of personal accountability among those
individuals.19

Football operated as one example of a ferocious and rough sport that was pre-
sented for mass consumption in the United States military during and after World
War I.20 Soldiers expressed a great interest in keeping up with sports like football on
the home front and that the continuation of those activities was important for their
morale so far away from home even during post–World War I occupation years.
The Stars and Stripes communicated they supported the continuation of college
sport and particularly football in light of the war effort because it was good for the
soldiers. Specifically, soldiers commented that the outcome of the Harvard–Yale
game was important to them because they enjoyed the “old time, blood-and-iron
variety of football, played by regulars, not by informal teams” (Editorial, 1918,
4).21 Early issues of the Stars and Stripes, under the direction of General John J.
Pershing, strategically included sport sections and stories on football to help keep
up the morale of the troops and/or use sport metaphors to better describe or com-
municate the progress of World War I to soldiers.22

Following the conclusion of World War I, in 1919, the 4th Marine Brigade
along with the 3rd Army Brigade utilized football as a recreational tool to help them
during their occupation of Germany. Together they formed the Army of Occupation
but separately they created a rivalry that prompted a series of football games to
see which unit had the best team. The Coblenz game, for instance, evoked roughly
$50,000 in bets and produced a memorable melee for attendees following the 10-7
comeback win by the Marine Brigade in which five Marines and an undisclosed
number of Army soldiers left the field in stretchers.23 In this example, it is plainly
revealed that competitive sport acted as a vehicle to entertain the troops and as a
device to keep them out of trouble on foreign soil with locals if possible.

Apart from this emphasis on toughening the average American, the 1929 Carn-
egie Foundation Report offered concrete opposition to combat sports like football in
college because little support was provided for claims that it produced individuals
with improved morals and character benefits. Situational factors provoked by the
Great Depression (i.e., poverty, unemployment, and crime) also placed support
for competitive sports on the defensive.24 Thus, college football faced “attacks by
critics who assailed its very legitimacy and place in institutions of higher learning”
(Noverr & Ziewacz, 1983, 137–138).25 As an example, the University of Chicago

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famously argued that football served to handicap the educational mission of the
institution. Other schools similarly agreed and acknowledged that the public focus
on football in higher education also seemed unbecoming in light of the possible
breakout of World War II.26 Mike Vaccaro, author of 1941: The Greatest Year in
Sports, further suggested most Americans without degrees in higher education
also viewed football as a “pastime that thrived detached from most of the nation’s
urban centers.”27 Therefore, the elimination or suspension of football on a college
campus was likely not a personal loss to them prior to World War II.

Still, college football and benefit bowl games emerging during the 1920s and
1930s in New York, California, Florida, and Texas communities changed some
perspectives about the legitimacy and contribution of American college football
toward the common good. Furthermore, they maintained and improved the game
for consumption. For instance, benefit games were created to help provide relief
to the homeless, poor, and unemployed. In December of 1930, cadets from Army
and the Naval Academy met in such a benefit game to help this cause by donating
over $600,000 in gate receipts.28 Bowl games originally began in 1902 when the
Tournament of Roses staged a contest between the University of Michigan and
Stanford University. However, the bowl game phenomenon gained increasing
popular support during the 1930s because it emerged a resource for morale and
economic growth in various communities. As an example, the annual success of
the Tournament of Roses and its various activities (e.g., Rose Bowl, parade, and
festival) allowed Pasadena, California, to provide “newspapermen from coast to
coast something exciting to write about” (Ours, 2004, 5). Furthermore, the 1930
Tournament of Roses generated a crowd of roughly 750,000 with colorful pag-
eantry resulting from the bowl game, parade, beauty queen coronation, and other
festival activities.29

Similarly recognizing the benefits that the hosting of bowl games could pro-
vide to a community, other locations established their own bowl traditions and
embraced the pageantry of the total bowl experience. For instance, prior to 1930,
the City of Miami was nationally perceived as a fishing village and a victim of a
major real-estate crash during the 1920s.30 A hurricane devastated the City of Miami
and south Florida during 1926, and the U.S. Weather Bureau in Miami described
that hurricane as possibly the most destructive ever to strike the United States.31
Resultantly, morale was low for the area and a great need developed to improve the
local economy. To help, the Greater Miami Athletic Association was established
in 1929, and they utilized football and the extravagant festival formula provided
by Pasadena’s Tournament of Roses as a resource to boost morale and the local
economy. As an example, the 1933 and 1935 contests were described as possessing
incredible pageantry and even included a coronation of the Orange Bowl Queen.32
The 1939 Orange Bowl Parade—built around a Peter Pan theme—received cover-
age from regional radio stations such as WIOD in Miami. Over 60 floats, 30 bands,
3,000 musicians, and 600 people in costume were organized to create the bowl
festival and new halftime spectacular. A parade committee was even established
to strictly censor the parade and “prevent entry of floats that fail to meet the high
artistic standards of the parade as a whole.” The total 1939 contest required a staff
of people and volunteers over four months to organize the total bowl experience.33
Overall, including the 27 Rose Bowls played before 1942, college football teams
participated in roughly 68 bowl games from 1902 to 1941.34

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The United States officially entered World War II on December 7, 1941, fol-
lowing the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by the nation of Japan. The United
States military and the nation’s universities/colleges joined forces to help organize
and support the massive mobilization of men and morale for the war effort. John
L. Griffith, commissioner of the Big Ten Conference and member of the Joint
Army–Navy Committee on Welfare and Recreation (JANC), recommended in a
letter to the JANC executive director that the United States Armed Services use
American interests in sport at colleges as a method to promote and improve their
development as an effective fighting force to defend American interests in October
1941.35 A few months later (January 1942), a nine-man advisory group for the Navy
Aeronautic V-5 Preflight Schools was charged with the responsibility to meet this
mission. John L. Griffith was a member of that committee along with eight other
notable figures in college athletics.36 It was at this moment that football emerged
as a vital component to the war effort.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt promoted military training that focused on
maximizing rigorous sport participation to build “toughness, leadership, teamwork,
and camaraderie” (Jones, 2009, 15).37 Donald W. Rominger, Jr. offered the notion
that football had reemerged as an example of “controlled conflict” that presented
soldiers with unique opportunities to experience the virtues Roosevelt required
(1985, 253). Navy Secretary Frank Knox ballyhooed the use of football to train
military officers, sailors, and cadets by suggesting there was a solid connection
between the “spirit” of the two (Rominger, 1992, 261).38 A picture from the Athletic
Journal demonstrated the respect football generated from public officials and mili-
tary leaders by showing Japanese soldiers fleeing from American football players
with the caption, “Why not battalions of football players? They are the fightingest
men we have” (Athletic Journal, 1942, 3).39

Appropriately, the NCAA embraced football as a major contributor to the col-
lective war effort in training young men/soldiers for battle, and cooperatively they
worked with the American armed forces to help showcase and feature the activity
whenever possible. The NCAA also recognized the armed forces as the savior
of the “collegiate game’s very existence” and as “the plasma for the lifeblood of
football” (Da Grosa, 1944, 26).40 Briefly there was a deterioration of the collegiate
game that resulted from the loss of current and potential college football players
and coaches entering into military service after December 7th, 1941.41 However,
working with the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, many recruits moved
to officer training schools (e.g., NROTC, V-5, V-7, and V-12) located at college
campuses to help prevent institutions and football programs from shutting down
owing to a lack of enrollment and resources. Thus, as Atlanta sportswriter Furman
Bisher wrote, “while football went into various degrees of retrenchment on college
campuses it broke out like the measles in some of the most unlikely places” because
it was great for combat conditioning and provided an entertainment to keep “the
more fractious out of trouble.”42

The United States Navy and its various cousins (i.e., Marines and Coast Guard)
quickly adopted football as a sport to cultivate the ideal qualities of its sailors and
officers primarily through the prompts of Captain Thomas J. Hamilton. Eventually
securing a rank as a rear admiral, Hamilton was a nine-time letter winner at
Annapolis and considered football as a “training must” for all naval servicemen.43
Team sports were selected because they used physical training to engender specific

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psychological traits and a respect for authority and loyalty important for the war
effort. Centering on those activities that were explosive and that incorporated
violent aggressive collisions, Hamilton’s V-5 Training method produced courage,
power, and the ability to concentrate under pressure-filled situations. In essence,
each and every soldier was socially engineered to value determination and winning
over sportsmanship.44 Furthermore, they were rewarded when they used innovation
and unique thought to achieve victory. To meet these objectives, the Navy and
other military services recruited highly accomplished and qualified varsity coaches
who were experts in group tactics and strategy using cooperation because varsity
sport participation was “ideal in developing reflexive thinking within the group”
(Rominger, 1992, 259).45 A sample of football coaching legends recruited into
military service include Paul “Bear” Bryant, Charles “Bud” Wilkinson, George
Halas, and Woodrow “Woody” Hayes.

The Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard fielded football teams all across the
United States and globe. The Naval Academy also developed several powerful
teams during this era and several preflight schools, along with 131 colleges utilizing
officer-training programs to similarly capitalize on strong football competition. Sta-
tion/base teams were established domestically and abroad. They played aggressive
schedules and/or created ad hoc meetings with other bases and American colleges.
These teams were also generally well coached, trained, and schematically superior
to many college and pro teams of this era, even achieving high rankings in the vari-
ous Associated Press polls of the 1940s. The Bainbridge Commodores (Maryland),
for instance, dismantled many teams from 1943 to 1944, which included rival
base teams and college programs. Writer Ned Cronin described how few college
teams could compete on the field against service-base teams and “escape with a
whole hide.”46 This notion is supported by the utter annihilation the University of
Maryland (46-0) and professional football’s Philadelphia Yellow Jackets (72-6)
endured in 1943 by Bainbridge. So bad was this beating that one unknown scribe
suggested, “There may be easier methods of murdering a group of youngsters
such as inserting them into a gas chamber or lining them up against the wall and
spraying them with machine-gun slugs” (Jones, 2009, 31).47 Following their 10-0
record in 1944, Bainbridge finished the season ranked #5 by the Associated Press
on November 21st.

Results

To investigate the military’s use of the bowl games on domestic and foreign soil
and the impact those events produced on the military and the health/popularity of
college football, the researchers explored several different databases and primary
sources using a comprehensive content analysis. Gathering relevant data through a
systematic examination of written, visual or pictorial evidence, and military releases,
this work involved the counting and quantification of specific information, themes,
words, contexts, characters, interactions, biases, and/or ideas. Conducting a content
analysis in this manner provided the researchers with the opportunity to extract
themes based on the most frequently seen, identified, or mentioned with special
attention to intensity or depth of feeling. Appropriately, this product combined both

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a qualitative and a quantitative component. To organize and triangulate the various
pieces of information, the researchers constructed a detailed outline and spreadsheet.
Together these tools assisted in the preparation of the manuscript because they
helped identify, organize, and criticize the various themes emerging from sources.

The various database searches conducted by this inquiry produced numerous
articles (n = 185) related to different military bowl games. The various articles
identified 57 unique bowl games involving either one or two teams that comprised
military personnel (Table 1). From these 57 bowl locations, roughly 58% (n = 33)
were played only once. The other 42% (n = 24) of games were played multiple
times. In total, at least 111 different games were played from 1942 through 1964.
Chronologically, the 111 games can be sorted as follows: (a) 1941 to 1945 – 32,
(b) 1946 to 1950 – 30, (c) 1951 to 1955 – 28, (d) 1956 to 1960 – 17, and (e) 1961
to 1964 – 4.

As noted above, the NCAA listed 88 official service bowl games that took place
between 1943 and 1967. However, beyond those, the NCAA records left out notable
bowls such as the Airborne (1957 and 1959), Aztec (1952), Brooklyn Bond (1944
and 1945), Grape (1944), Legion (1945), London (1943), Mango (1944), Manila
(1945), Mosquito (1944), Navy (1948), Torii (1945, 1955, and 1956), Tokyo (1946
and 1946), Sukiyaki (1954 and 1955), Silver (1947 and 1948), and Satellite (1957).48

From a geographic perspective, the 111 games were played on six continents
and in eighteen countries. According to continent location, game locations were
as follows: (a) North America—49, (b) South America—2, (c) Africa—7, (d)
Europe—15, (e) Asia—34, and (f) Australia—2. The countries with the greatest
number of individual games were the United States, with roughly 40% (n = 44),
and Japan, with approximately 25% (n = 28). Games held within the United States
were found all across the nation, ranging from Brooklyn, NY, and Key West, FL,
to San Diego, CA, Hawaii, and Alaska. Within 17 different countries, bowl games
were played in 46 different host cities. Tokyo (n = 21) hosted the most bowl games
internationally (Table 1).

The participants of the games involved teams from all branches of the military,
local university teams, and other local organizations (i.e., town/community teams
and clubs). Of the branches of the military, the Army participated in the most games,
playing in roughly 66% (n = 73) of the games. The Air Force participated in just
over 52% (n = 58). Teams from the Marines participated in approximately 24% (n
= 27), and teams from the Navy participated in nearly 23% (n = 26). Teams that
used combined players from different branches of the military also secured play in
about 11% (n = 12) of all contests. Other types of teams, such as local universities
and foreign military units, were also involved in approximately 23% (n = 26) of
the total games played. The individual teams with the most games played were the
11th Airborne Division, Boling Air Force Base, and the Quantico Marines (n = 5).
The most successful branch of the military in terms of winning percentage was
the Army. Teams from the Army won 58.9% of their games, whereas teams from
the Air Force enjoyed the second-highest winning percentage at 58.6%. “Other”
teams had a 46% victory rate, while Navy teams won 38% of their games. Teams
from the Marines won about 33%, and combination teams had the lowest winning
percentage with 25%. Of the 111 games, there were only four ties, which were not
included in any of the winning percentage calculations.

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Table 1 Bowl Names, Locations, and Years Played

Bowl Name Location Years Played
Airborne Bowl Fort Campbell, Kentucky 1957;1959

Arab Bowl Oran, Algeria 1944 (2)

Army Pacific Olympics Osaka/Tokyo, Japan 1946 (3)

Atomic Bowl Nagasaki, Japan 1946

Aztec Bowl Mexico City 1952

Bambino Bowl Bari, Italy 1944

Bamboo Bowl Manila, Philippines 1946;1947 (2);1950

Bluebonnet Bowl Houston, Texas 1946

Brooklyn Bond Bowl Brooklyn, New York 1944;1945

Cherry Bowl Yokohama, Japan 1952

Chigger Bowl Dutch Guiana 1945

China Bowl Shanghai, China 1946;1947;1948

Cigar Bowl Tampa Bay, Florida 1951

Coconut Bowl New Guinea 1945

Coffee Bowl London, England 1944

Conch Bowl Key West, Florida 1957

Cosmopolitan Bowl Key West, Florida 1950;1952

Electronics Bowl Biloxi, Mississippi 1951;1953;1954

European “Orange Bowl” Heidelberg, Germany 1946

European “Rose Bowl” Augsburg, Germany 1946

European “Sugar Bowl” Nuremberg, Germany 1946

G.I. Bowl London, England 1944

Grape Bowl Algiers, Algeria 1944

Ice Bowl Fairbanks, Alaska 1949;1950;1952 (2)

Iranian Bowl Tehran, Iran 1944

Jungle Bowl “Southwest Pacific” 1945

Legion Bowl Memphis, Tennessee 1945

Lily Bowl Hamilton, Bermuda 1943;1944;1945;1947;1948

London Bowl London, England 1943

Mango Bowl Panama 1944

Manila Bowl Manila, Philippines 1945

Marine Division Championship Melbourne, Australia 1943
Missile Bowl Orlando, Florida 1960;1961;1962;1963;1964

Mosquito Bowl Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands 1944

National Service Championship Los Angeles, California 1945
Navy Bowl Chicago, Illinois 1948

Palmetto Bowl Charleston, South Carolina 1955

Pare Des Princes Paris, France 1944

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Military Bowl Games 161

Bowl Name Location Years Played
Poi Bowl Honolulu, Hawaii 1945

Poinsettia Bowl San Diego, California 1952;1953;1954;1955

Potato Bowl Belfast, Northern Ireland 1942;1944

Rice Bowl Tsingtao, China 1945

Rice Bowl Tokyo, Japan 1946 (2);48;49;50;53;54;55 (2);
56;57;58

Riviera Bowl Marseille, France 1945

Salad Bowl Phoenix, Arizona 1953;1954

Satellite Bowl Cocoa, Florida 1957

Shrimp Bowl Galveston, Texas 1955 (2);1956;1957;1958;1959

Shuri Bowl Okinawa, Japan 1958

Silver Bowl Mexico City 1947;1948

Spaghetti Bowl Florence/Leghorn, Italy 1945;1953

Sukiyaki Bowl Tokyo, Japan 1954;1955;1956

Tea Bowl London, England 1944 (2)

Tokyo Bowl Tokyo, Japan 1946 (2)

Torii Bowl Tokyo, Japan 1954;1955;1956

Treasury Bowl New York City 1944

Typhoon Bowl Okinawa, Japan 1956

Valor Bowl Chattanooga, Tennessee 1957

Table 1 (continued)

From the known players who participated in the 111 games, at least 72 were
from what we would label as Division I (Football Bowl Subdivision) football
programs, at the following institutions:

Alabama

Amherst

Arizona

Arkansas State

Baylor

Brown

California

Cincinnati

Clemson

Cornell

Duke

Duquesne

Florida

Florida A&M

George

Washington

Georgetown

Georgia Tech

Hawaii

Holy Cross

Illinois

Iowa

Kansas

Lehigh

Louisiana Tech

Loyola

Marquette

Maryland

Miami

Michigan

Michigan State

Minnesota

Mississippi

Montana

162 Seifried and Katz

Montana State

Morris Brown

North Carolina State

North Carolina

Notre Dane

Ohio

Ohio State

Oklahoma

Oregon

Oregon State

Pennsylvania

Penn State

Pittsburgh

Sam Houston State

San Francisco

Southern Methodist

South Carolina

Stanford

Syracuse

Texas Christian

Temple

Tennessee

Texas

Texas A&M

Texas Tech

Toledo

Tulsa

UCLA

USC

Vanderbilt

Virginia

Wake Forest

Washington

Washington College

Washington State

West Point

West Virginia

William & Mary

Wisconsin

Regularly top-notch football programs of the World War II era such as Notre
Dame, Army, Minnesota, and Texas, among many others, had many former players
in the military-supported bowl games. Furthermore, their contribution produced
significant contests that attracted enough attention to generate important interest
from the military personnel and the college football fan nation back home. As an
example, according to Associated Press final rankings, 57 college football teams
were ranked in the top 10 to end a season between 1942 and 1964. Of these 57
teams, players from at least 66% (n = 38) of them played in a service bowl game.
Moreover, three Heisman Trophy winners (i.e., Angelo Bertelli, Doc Blanchard,
and Billy Vessels) plus numerous All-Americans and All-Conference performers
participated as well in front of thousands and thousands of service personnel and
local spectators to elevate the spectacle and prestige of the military bowl game.

Professional players were also well recognized in the various military bowl
games. Specifically, this investigation found players representing at least 10 differ-
ent National Football League (NFL) teams in service bowl games. The 10 teams
included players from the Pittsburgh Steelers, Chicago Bears, Washington Redskins,
Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers, Chicago Cardinals, Los Angeles Rams,
Green Bay Packers, Cleveland Browns, and Dallas Cowboys. Two players from
the Canadian Football League (i.e., Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Ottawa Rough
Riders) also played in service bowl games, and other professional sports leagues
also had players participate. For instance, this work discovered members of the
Detroit Tigers, Boston Braves, and Philadelphia Phillies partaking in a service bowl
game during this period.49

Military-Created Bowl Games

In the paragraphs that follow, we offer some highlights of a select sample of military-
created bowl games. The various themes emerging from this collective information
suggested these bowl games hosted (a) significant pageantry, players, and other

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associated events similar to traditional American college football bowl games; (b)
attracted great attention from service personnel, local spectators, and the U.S. home
front; (c) greatly boosted the morale of U.S. troops; and (d) provided opportunities
for football to continue during wartime. Each of these themes is organized and
underscored through the framed discourse presented by the selected samples of
information—first, foreign bowl games, and second, those offered on U.S. soil.

Arab Bowl of Oran, Algeria

The origins of the Arab Bowl cannot be highlighted without first recognizing the
contribution of Master Sgt. Zeke Bonura, who was a major league baseball player
for the Chicago White Sox, Washington Senators, New York Giants, and Chicago
Cubs during the 1930s and 40s.50 Following a somewhat notable career as a slug-
ger, which included an appearance on the cover of Wheaties box in 1937, Bonura
entered the United States Army for a second time shortly after the attack on Pearl
Harbor.51 Upon his baseball retirement, Bonura told the press, “I might as well
kiss baseball goodbye now; it will be bullet for the Japanese instead of big league
baseball for me.” Despite his preference to land in the Pacific, Bonura was ordered
to Oran, Algeria, under instructions to organize baseball, basketball, and football
games for the troops in the African desert. In October of 1943, as a Special Service
Officer (SSO), Bonura was awarded with a Legion of Merit Award by President
Dwight Eisenhower for his “resourcefulness, enthusiasm, and leadership” following
his organization of the Arab Bowl.52

Following the America tradition of New Year’s Day football games established
in Pasadena, Miami, and other places, Bonura began organization of the first football
game in the North African region. Acting as the promoter and organizer of the event,
Bonura similarly ensured that football would only be part of an American “show”
on New Year’s Day. Specifically, Bonura told a United Press reporter, “There will
be plenty of color” (Harrigan 1943, S1). Referring to the off-field entertainment,
the pregame festivities included a camel and a donkey race on the local town’s
main street. To further inspire excitement, Bonura ensured that the riders in both
races were “attractive” members of the Women’s Army Corp (WAC). And, on their
behalf, each participating football team was required to have a “feminine spon-
sor” competing in the camel and burro races in order to, of course, better support
troop morale.53

After the pregame races, the entertainment continued. Following American
bowl game traditions, the halftime included an Arab troop parade, which brought
cheers from the crowd of both servicemen and locals. A team of former Texas cow-
boys also gave an exciting exhibition using real Arabian horses. A group of “crack
army paratroopers” landed on the field to finish the halftime activities. Overseeing
all the entertainment, however, was the honorary queen of the Arab Bowl: movie
star Rosalind Russell, who “kindled interest even in the eyes of the stoic” fans.54
All the excitement off the field combined with a talented competition on the field
to produce a memorable afternoon for all, similar to the American college football
bowl game experience.

Interestingly, the crowd was treated to a doubleheader football event that day.
The first game was the “local” championship game among Arab citizens to generate

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164 Seifried and Katz

local support for the bowl event. The second game involved a contest between
an Army team and a Navy team. A number of former collegiate football players
participated on both teams, with former players from West Virginia to Washington
roaming the field at San Phillipe Stadium. The talented players impressed the
diverse crowd so much so that Illustrated Football Annual (1944, 52) wrote,
“Here in San Phillipe Stadium beside the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean,
some 15,000 grid-hungry generals, admirals, nurses, WACs, soldiers, and sailors,
and a fair-sized sprinkling of high French and Arab dignitaries witnessed the first
doubleheader football bowl game ever played.” Even those unable to attend, such as
nearby wounded soldiers, were able to experience the game as a play-by-play was
broadcasted to local hospitals. In the end, the Arab Bowl proved to be an exciting
and important contest for the troops and the local population because football
helped many (e.g., civilians and soldiers) cope with the difficulties associated with
wartime occupation. Even the generals enjoyed shouting “just as loud as the lowest
G.I.” to escape for a change.55

The European Bowls: London’s Tea and Coffee Games

Northwest, in the Atlantic, American servicemen also kept their “American Foot-
ball” traditions alive and separate from English football (i.e., soccer) by staging
a number of football games throughout the year. American and Canadian teams
played in a competitive league that included several games through an organized
season. At season’s end in 1943, the top two teams, since there were standings kept
among the competitors, were selected to play in the first Tea Bowl. The staging and
organization of this sporting event was important for the SSOs to create because
it was their job to keep American morale up and prevent soldiers from finding
trouble in war-torn London.

Set in London’s famous White City Stadium, the first Tea Bowl occurred on
February 13, 1944, between the American Army Pirates and the Canadian Army
Mustangs in front of roughly 30,000 fans. The game used American football rules
in the first half and Canadian rules during the second half of play. Winning 16-6,
the Canadian Mustangs were awarded the first place Silver Tea Pot Trophy. Inter-
estingly, the Canadian victory over the United States prompted the Americans to
promote another team for an additional bowl event in London. Known as the Coffee
Bowl, the Americans sent the Infantry Blue Division football squad to battle the
Canadian Mustangs. Again playing the contest under split rules, the U.S. Infantry
Blue Division defeated the Canadian Mustangs 18-0 in front of approximately
50,000 spectators to win the Coffee Pot Trophy. Spitfires “circled over the area in
case the Germans tried a sneak raid” during the contest, however, the only assassins
that day were the hired guns from the Blue Division.56

The second Tea Bowl was staged with the two-year undefeated Air Force
Command Warriors and the Air Force Raiders, winners of 10 consecutive games
in December of 1944. Both teams featured incredibly talented rosters, with former
college players from Texas A&M, Michigan, Purdue, Wisconsin, Duke, and several
other institutions. Following a pregame parade by 500 WAC soldiers, the two teams
competed fiercely in front of 40,000 screaming fans.57 Attending fans were treated
to an elaborate halftime show that included five different bands (i.e., military bands
and a kilted Scot-Irish band) to provide music for the entertainment of the crowd.

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The music was complemented by a horsemanship exhibition conducted by Cossack
troupes, a traditional Indian war dance with tom-toms, a group of acrobatic tum-
blers, and, of course, the highlight of the show—a “Varga girl.”58 However, when
the Varga girl decided it was too cold for her to appear as “the GI’s had expected
to see her,” much of the excited audience booed and expressed their disappoint-
ment.59 Following halftime, the fans were treated to an exceptionally well played
game of football. The Warriors won by a 13-0 score and improved their winning
streak to 11 games.

Pacific Base Military Bowl Contests

The Pacific regions of the world lacked suitable locations for military bowl games
outside of Hawaii and Australia because American football was obviously not a
native product of those locales and their land was frequently war torn. As an exam-
ple, the “bizarre” Atom Bowl in Nagasaki, Japan, rose “amid rubble and radiation
on site where the second atomic bomb was dropped” (Jones, 2009, 4).60 To make
a football game happen there and in other regions of the Pacific and to generate
some interest from locals, soldiers sometimes took on the native population and
embraced elements of their traditional games. For instance, in Australia, soldiers
created a split game (i.e., football and rugby) to the delight of many spectators,
who witnessed an amazing “donnybrook and melee” at the Richmond Athletic Club
in Melbourne until it “got dark” between stationed soldiers and local competitors
(Gunn, 1992, 130).61

The Mosquito Bowl, in contrast, was originally set to be a pickup football
game. Created on the island of Guadalcanal on December 24, 1944, between the
4th Marines and 29th Marines of the Sixth Marine Division, the Mosquito Bowl
emerged as the result of a few soldiers who enjoyed too many beers at the local
watering hole. Tom Daly, former player for Loyola (Los Angeles) said he started
the idea with his friend Bill Lazetich (Cleveland Rams), and they began to argue
with the 29th about who had a better team. “Pretty soon we each had bet $100 on
the game. By game time, I’d bet $200” (Gunn, 1992, 110). After agreeing to play,
the various representatives of each unit sought out players to help them win the
contest and consequently their bets. This action was similar to the activity practiced
after the first Tea Bowl because Americans recruited players and the Blue Division
to defeat the Canadians in the proceeding Coffee Bowl. Ultimately, the Mosquito
Bowl grew into a highly organized contest with rules. Armed Forces Radio and
multiple other media units also covered the event to report on the action for the
huge bets and proclamations being placed on each team and its ability.

They played the Mosquito Bowl on a “coral-base, dirt and gravel field, with
temperature in the eighties and horrible humidity, and without helmets or shoulder
pads” (Jones, 2009, 207). Appropriately, tackling was prohibited “to preserve the
men for more important things ahead” (Gunn, 1992, 110).62 The game ultimately
played in front of 10,000 spectators, which included many island natives, and
remained scoreless mercifully for those soldiers betting on either the green jersey
4th or white jersey 29th. Interestingly, they might have experienced great difficulty
at times even witnessing the action because so much coral dust was generated from
their play. Armed Forces Radio carried the game for a South Pacific audience, and
the broadcast also included performances by the Marine band. A makeshift public

166 Seifried and Katz

address system was established to recite the game action to the sizeable crowd.
Little stands or chairs existed for the attendees except for those higher ranking com-
manders. Major General Lemuel Shepard, Jr., for instance, received a set of folding
chairs for him and his guests during the contest. Game officials were recruited from
the respective units and recognized as doing a “credible job” despite all the money
wagered on the game (Gunn, 1992, 114).

Americans stationed elsewhere in the Pacific after the war also produced their
own organized football leagues with a championship format similar to that of the Tea
and Coffee Bowls. For example, Rice Bowl participants were determined through
a small playoff across thousands of geographic miles. Specifically, in 1958, the
winners of the Shuri Bowl and the Kimchi Bowl met in the Rice Bowl of Tokyo,
Japan, on December 20th to determine the Far East Championship. The Shuri bowl
was played in Okinawa on December 6th, with the winning team earning a ticket
to the Rice Bowl later that month. A strong Air Force All-Star team set a Far East
service postseason game scoring record after defeating a Marine team at Kadena
Air Force Base in Okinawa for the Shuri Bowl championship 60-0. The Air Force
All-Star opponent for the 1958 Rice Bowl was an Army team that had won the
Kimchi Bowl (Seoul, Korea).63 The two winning teams met in Tokyo’s National
Stadium in front of a capacity crowd of 78,000 spectators. The Air Force team
won the game by a 20-0 score and was paced by quarterback Bob Schneidenbach,
a former star at the University of Miami and draft pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Rice Bowl should be noted as offering more to its spectators than merely a
championship football game. For instance, the 1958 game also served as “combined
football and Christmas ceremonies” for the attending American personnel and the
local Japanese population. Lieutenant General Robert W. Burns, the commander of
the United States forces in Japan, conducted the Christmas celebration ceremonies,
which involved both American and Japanese spectators and participants.64 Again,
American traditions in foreign lands were emphasized and possibly introduced
through the use of the military bowl game opportunity.

Military Bowl Games on U.S. Soil

Prior to its becoming a state in 1959, the Territory of Hawaii hosted a variety of
military all-star games, as a major home base for troops training and shipping in
the Pacific. For example, in 1944, crowds of 45,000 service personnel crammed
into ad hoc football venues to take in such events.65 In Hawaii, the sheer number
of troops stationed, likely due to preparations for the invasion of Japan, provided
an opportunity for the creation of Central Pacific Armed Forces Football League.
Ad hoc all-star teams emerged in Hawaii from available military personnel, who
played games in front of troops and local civilians. In 1945, each fall weekend
featured a game at Furlong Field (Pearl Harbor) between sailors, marines, and
soldiers. Semipro and professional teams (i.e., Hawaii Bears) also formed in Hawaii
during this time to play military teams that were featured in these contests. The
1945 Poi Bowl served as one specific contest held in the American island chain
that illustrates the importance of football to both soldiers and fans of football in
general. Specifically, in front of roughly 29,000, “King Football graciously bows

Military Bowl Games 167

his head today amid pageantry and color. . . . Even while the war rages . . . the
leaders of our fighting forces also realize this fact because they have cooperated to
their utmost in seeing that all the color and splendor of a bowl gridiron contests are
made available” (Game Program, 1945).66 Loaded with all-Americans and former
professional players volunteering and drafted into the military, the Navy All-Stars
defeated the Army Air Force All-Stars 14-0.67

Elsewhere, in the frozen tundra of Alaska, American military groups also
organized their bowl games regardless of weather or climate. As an example,
during consecutive years (1949–1952) a team from the Ladd Air Force Base in
Alaska and team from the University of Alaska–Fairbanks (i.e., the Polar Bears)
would square off in what could be described as “the Weirdest Bowl Game” for the
Ice Bowl Trophy. Dubbed by Alaskan Governor Ernest Gruening as the “farthest
north gridiron championship in the world,” both teams and their fans survived brutal
elements to continue their New Year’s football tradition.68

For the week preceding the first game, local snowplows typically worked on
the frozen field of Griffin Stadium to keep the field playable. With temperatures
as low as –45 degrees Fahrenheit the weekend before the game, maintaining the
playing surface was no easy task. The first Ice Bowl began with a temperature
of –25 degrees Fahrenheit and ended with a frozen scoreboard (0-0 tie). The Air
Force Times described the gridders as playing on a snow-covered field with coal
dust used as yard and sideline markers. The participants played with woolen under-
wear underneath their uniforms and thick gloves covering their hands. On their
feet they wore heavy felt shoes and shoepacks called mukluks to achieve traction
on the difficult field. The only notable thrill for the 1,000 spectators occurred just
before the end of the second quarter, when a 34-yard pass play was completed by
the Ladd Air Force Base team. Originally thought to be a touchdown by the crowd,
the sideline official noticed the footprint of Sgt. Ray Keelin on the coal dust at the
10-yard line to prevent the score.

In order to deal with the harsh conditions of the game, both coaches understood
they would need to modify normal football strategy to account for the weather and
field conditions. These conditions, along with the scoreless tie of 1949, prompted
each team to create and implement several unique strategies, such as the “arctic V
formation” and the “atomic attack formation,” to give their team the best chance to
score for 1950 and beyond. The Ladd Air Force Base squad practiced consistently
throughout their season and played a number of exhibition games, against other
local schools, to prepare for their New Year’s Day showdown with the University
of Alaska–Fairbanks in 1950. Interestingly, the throwing of snowballs had to be
banned as a method to trick defenses that the quarterback was passing the ball.

The start of the 1950 game arrived with a relatively warm 10-degree Fahren-
heit temperature. Still, in order to accommodate 1,200 fans, organizers utilized
airplane heaters to keep locals and attending military servicemen as comfortable
as possible throughout the game. Promoters created a 38-page program to sell
to spectators, and a local radio station (i.e., KFAR) broadcasted the game across
the region. The Associated Press also sent a film crew to capture highlights of
the event, which featured snow drifts on the field capable of obscuring the ball.
Similar to 1949 and the various other domestic and foreign bowl games offered

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168 Seifried and Katz

by the military and colleges, the 1950 contest supported an honorary Ice Bowl
Queen (i.e., Susie Williams), who circled the field on a dogsled to the delight of
the shivering crowd.69

Back in the continental United States, more than just a trophy was at stake
when the top-two service football teams met in San Diego for the “mythical national
championship.” For example, in 1953, the top-two teams in the country were the
Fort Ord Warriors of Monterey, California, and the Quantico Marines of Virginia.
These two teams were invited to play in the prestigious Poinsettia Bowl based on
their #1 and #2 rankings at the conclusion of the regular season. The game was
well hyped by the media and even their pregame drills the day before the game
were covered by newspapers across the country.70

The Fort Ord team proved too talented for the Quantico opponents, as they
quickly pulled away from the Marines and claimed a dominating 55-19 victory.
Though overmatched by the Warriors, the Quantico team, led by former Baylor
star quarterback Jack Fry, finished their season as the East Coast Champions and
a #2 national ranking. Quantico consistently fielded one of the best teams on the
East coast throughout the World War II era and was a consistent participant in the
Missile Bowl, along with appearances in the Valor Bowl and Shrimp Bowl.

The Fort Ord team, which finished the year undefeated, possessed a roster so
talented that many professional teams must have been jealous. The Warriors were
led by Chicago Cardinal star and former San Francisco University standout Ollie
Matson, who ran for two touchdowns on the day. Joining Matson in the backfield
was former Oregon State running back Dave Mann, who also recorded two rushing
touchdowns. Former Washington State running back Bill Roffler accounted for the
teams’ other rushing touchdown. University of Washington alumni Don Heinrich
threw for a touchdown as well, connecting with former USC player and then San
Francisco 49er wide receiver Ed Henke for a touchdown. Following a disappointing
1954 season in which a regular season finale loss cost the Warriors an invitation
to the championship game, the Warriors won their second armed service national
championship in 1955.71

Conclusion
As noted in the article, this research discovered several contests that the military
created to promote football. Again, the military and football initially forged a
relationship because they believed football was a useful war preparation activ-
ity. As an example, well-known Navy pilot William R. Kane argued the “timing
and coordination” required in the football field helped the establishment of tight
formation flying for battle preparation.72 Next, this work offered the notion that
football and the military are conjoined because the sport of football provided men
and women of the military and of the local host community with quality entertain-
ment as either live or remote (i.e., radio) spectators. Football served as a tool in
this capacity to not only help improve the morale of soldiers in foreign lands, but
also to integrate and introduce American traditions and entertainment products into
remote lands and their peoples. In many instances, local inhabitants helped stage
the creation of military bowl games and frequently emerged as a large contingent

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Military Bowl Games 169

in the stands despite not knowing the game that well. This notion is supported by
the incredible attendance figures and organization displayed at many bowl events
described herein. In addition to those contests, the 1958 Rice Bowl at Tokyo’s
National Stadium generated the largest attendance of any service bowl game, with
an estimated 78,000 spectators. The G.I. Bowl in London and the National Service
Championship Game in Los Angeles also had amazing crowds of 60,000. Many
other games, such as the Marine Division Championship (Melbourne), Poi Bowl
(Honolulu), Riviera Bowl (Marseille, France), or Spaghetti Bowl (Florence, Italy),
among others, all produced crowds of 15,000 or more, which included the native
population and servicemen. These contests also demonstrated that a high level of
management was required to attract visitors and produce an event capable of attract-
ing spectators and safely accommodating all participant and spectator demands.

Much of the success these contests likely generated also resulted from support
demonstrated by the United States Office of War Information (OWI). The OWI
was assigned the responsibility of supplying news to troops located in overseas
locations. Frequently, the OWI received requests for football-related stories and
statistics from those individuals who would likely spend their weekend consuming
the collegiate or professional versions, if they were back home. The OWI responded
to these requests by sending out roughly 7,500 words daily on football-related stories
along with scores and photographs through hand-to-hand messaging, newspaper
publications, headquarter or base exchanges, and radio broadcasts.73 There is
little doubt that the OWI was also attracted to these events because they included
newsworthy participants who were frequently recruited and persuaded to appear at
the various bowl games to enhance the performance or spectacle. Again, the number
of highly accomplished star athletes from both the professional and college ranks
generated great appeal at these events. Heisman trophy winners, all-Americans,
and professional athletes were frequently highlighted in the promotions and stories
following the events to elevate the prestige of the contest. Celebrities of all sorts
(i.e., established celebrities like Rosalind Russell or homemade ones like the various
queens) also appeared at these events to attract crowds and to showcase the event
as a marquee activity. Bragging rights to one group and interested spectators (i.e.,
military and local bettors) also led many to attend and consume (i.e., remotely
through media) the bowl activity too.

In the end, soldiers stationed overseas used football as a means for coping
with the difficulties of foreign occupation duties. Military leaders have, throughout
history, searched for methods to keep their stationed troops focused, in shape, and in
high spirits. The descriptions above suggest that military service officers—known as
athletic officers (AOs) or SSOs, such as Zeke Bonura—were specifically created by
the United States military to organize competitions for soldiers in order to occupy
their attention and entertain them on domestic and foreign soils.74 Typically, SSOs
were assigned the responsibility to coach, act as an athletic director or administrator,
and promote or develop sport leagues for military participation in both domestic
and foreign lands. The SSOs or AOs on many military bases tried to duplicate the
college bowl experience (i.e., tradition and atmosphere) to demonstrate to the troops
that they were engaged in “an important and necessary demonstration of American
life” (Wakefield, 1997, 89). The present work suggests they were successful in

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170 Seifried and Katz

that endeavor because American military leaders in all branches utilized the bowl
game phenomenon to achieve these measures and as a tool for escape from the
hard realities of war.

Military bowl games also greatly impacted the play of football after the war
years, and to help grow the sport in the United States. For example, following the
conclusion of World War II, Douglas A. Noverr and Lawrence E. Ziewacz, authors
of The Game They Played: Sports in American History, 1865-1980, argued that
“pent-up consumer demands” helped college sports explode following the conclu-
sion of World War II (1983, 138).75 The conclusion of the war flooded America
with a huge number of individuals eager to return and compete as a result of their
focused training.76 Coming back in all shapes and sizes, these young and veteran
American soldiers, sailors, and marines drastically improved the college game
through innovation and interest, which now did not lack for equipment, participants,
spectators, or other media attention.

Beano Cook suggested that the manpower shortages universities suffered during
World War II can be juxtaposed against the manpower surpluses military-based
teams supported to show an evolutionary step in the management of football offenses
and defenses.77 Specifically, the surpluses at military bases created the conditions
necessary to establish multiple platoons for offensive and defensive play. This not
only presented physical advantages to teams, but also schematic rewards because
players could specialize in specific jobs over multitasking. Coaches could create
more complicated and complex defensive and offensive playing systems to utilize
the special skills of their players. Appropriately, “improvements in pass protection,
the use of motion and multiple offensive sets to spread defenses, as well as free
substitution and fluid defensive schemes developed during World War II would
all fuse into the modern incarnation we watch on television today” (Jones, 2009,
5).78 As an example, Colonel Elmer Hall, former player for Oregon and the Mare
Island Marines, coached the San Diego Marine Corps to incredible success by
implementing and introducing mass and situational substitution to football oppo-
nents to showcase the innovation and evolution of the American game.79 Coaches
and players from these systems took these new innovations and styles of play to
bowl contests they would create all over the world and domestically after World
War II. Overall, from 1945 (i.e., end of World War II) to 1964, approximately 20
new bowl games were created, which produced a total of 87 games for college
institutions and fans to enjoy.80

There is little doubt the frequency, promotion, and overall success of the
various military-created bowl games helped the sport of football develop all over
the United States and give rise to the college football bowl game as an important
piece of Americana, today supporting 35 bowl games during the holiday season.
Ultimately achieving its position as the most popular spectator sport in America
following World War II, football owes some of its success to the conjoined status
of football and the military, which was evident through the reproduction of the
American college football experience through the very unique military bowl games.

Notes

1. Wilbur D. Jones, Football! Navy! War!: How military lend-lease players saved the college
game and helped win World War II. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2009): 2.

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Military Bowl Games 171

2. Harry Wismer, “Football Pictorial Yearbook 1944,” 5.

3. Jones, “Football! Navy! War!,” 7.

4. Donald W. Rominger, Jr. “From playing field to battleground: The United States Navy V-5
Preflight Program in World War II,” Journal of Sport History, 3 (1985): 252.

5. John A. Gunn, The old core. (Costa Mesa, CA, J&J Publishing, 1992): Foreword.

6. Thomas Wintringham, New ways of war (Hammondworth, England: Penguin Books, 1940):
43, 66.

7. John Carl Warnecke, “How a Nazi general changed Stanford football and revolutionized the
American game,” Sandstone & Tile the Stanford Historical Society, 26, (2002): 21. Shaughnessy
established a 151-116-7 career college coaching record with the likes of Tulane, Loyola (LA),
Chicago, Stanford, Maryland, and Pittsburgh along with a 14-7-3 career coaching record as leader
of the Los Angeles Rams. See also “Gridiron Training is Preparing Men to Battle Enemy,” The
Real McCoy, October, 30, 1942, p. 5. In Papers of the 601st Ordnance Battalion, Military History
Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.

8. Harry Stuhldreher also achieved success as a three-time all-American quarterback of the
fabled Four Horsemen at Notre Dame in addition to coaching both Villanova and Wisconsin to a
career record of 110-87-15.

9. For further support of this point see Wanda Ellen Wakefield, Playing to win: Sports and the
American military 1898-1945. (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997).

10. National Collegiate Athletic Association 2010, Bowl/All-Star Game Records: Special
Regular- and Postseason Games. Indianapolis, IN: http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/football_records/
DI/2010/FullBook (accessed November 24, 2010): 107–110.

11. Douglas A. Noverr and Lawrence E. Ziewacz, The game they played: Sports in American
history, 1865-1980. (Chicago, Nelson-Hall, 1983): 171. Noverr and Ziewacz also suggested foot-
ball was formally acknowledged as valuable to the war effort by organizers because it provided
an additional escape through participation or war theatres for servicemen.

12. Jones, “Football! Navy! War!” 65.

13. DeWitt A. Portal “The United States needs a program of mass boxing,” In The Official
National Collegiate Athletic Association Boxing Guide, edited by C.P. Schott & H.R. Riley, Jr.
3–4, New York: A.S. Barnes and Company Publishers 1941. See also Jones, “Football! Navy!
War!” 43.

14. To better understand and view the lost manliness of America and desire to improve that qual-
ity in males, see Wakefield, “Playing to win,” 195 and Peter G. Filene, Him/Her/Self: Sex Roles
in Modern America, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). Donald J.
Mrozek, “The Habit of Victory: The American Military and the Cult of Manliness,” in Manliness
and Morality: Middle-class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800-1940, eds. J. A. Mangan
and James Walvin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987).

15. Portal “The United States needs a program of mass boxing.” 3. See also Guy Lewis, “World
War I and Sport for the Masses,” The Maryland Historian, 4 (1973): 111 for a seminal work on
sport for the masses that supports this position.

16. See also E.C. Wallenfeldt, The six-minute fraternity: The rise and fall of NCAA tournament
boxing 1932-1960. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994): 2. United States War Department, Raymond
Fosdick, Chairman, Report of Chairman on Training Camp Activities, 1918 (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1918): 3–4, 7.

17. MacArthur quoted from his June 22, 1922 Annual Report, included in A Soldier Speaks:
Public Papers and Speeches of General of the Army Douglas A. MacArthur, Major Vorin E. Whan,
Jr., ed. (New York and Washington, D.C.: Frederick A. Preager Publishers, 1965): 21–22.

18. United States War Department, Raymond Fosdick, Chairman, Report of Chairman on Train-
ing Camp Activities, 1918 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1918): 3–4, 7.

172 Seifried and Katz

19. Edward Frank Allen, Keeping Our Fighters Fit: For War and After (New York: The Century
Co., 1918): 48.

20. “Football Honors Go to Doughboys,” Trench and Camp, October 29, 1918, p. 1. The U.S.
32nd infantry played the 64th field artillery in October 1918.

21. “Editorial,” Stars and Stripes, April 12, 1918, p. 4.

22. John J. Pershing, Commander-in-Chief, American Expeditionary Forces, My Experience in
the World War, vol. i (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1931): 317–318. See also Wakefield,
“Playing to win,” 17.

23. Gunn, “The old core,” 30.

24. Rominger, “From playing field to battleground,” 254. This information is also evident in
Wakefield, “Playing to win,” Chapter 4.

25. Noverr and Ziewacz, “The game they played,” 137–138.

26. Noverr and Ziewacz, “The game they played,” 137–142.

27. Mike Vaccaro, 1941: The greatest year in sports. (New York: Doubleday, 2007): 4.

28. “Many Benefit Games suggested: Colleges respond to charity pleas,” Border Cities Star,
November 5, 1930, p. 12. “Relief game by Army, Navy is decided on,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,
November 8, 1930, p. 20. “Army beats Navy 6-0,” Chicago Tribune, December 14, 1930, p. A1.

29. “Floats’ beauties surpass: Crowd of 750,000 sees most colorful pageant in history of Tour-
nament of Roses,” Los Angeles Times, January 2, 1930; p. B1. See also Robert M. Ours, Bowl
games: College football’s greatest tradition. (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2004): 5.

30. Paul S. George. “Brokers, binders, and builders: Greater Miami’s boom of the mid-1920s,”
The Florida Historical Quarterly, 65 (1986): 27–51.

31. Roger A. Pielke, Jr. and Christopher W. Landsea, “Normalized Hurricane Damages in the
United States: 1925-95.” Weather and Forecasting, American Meteorological Society, 13 (1998):
621–631.

32. “Manhattan ready to play in South: Setting of Pageantry will surround benefit game,” The
New York Times, January 2, 1933, p. 31. “New Year’s parade will be colorful,” Miami Daily News,
December 30, 1935, p. 1. “She’s Orange Bowl queen,” The Milwaukee Journal, December 30,
1935, p. 13.

33. “3000 musicians, 30 bands will take part in colorful Orange Bowl Parade,” Miami Daily
News, December 29, 1939, p. 17.

34. Those contests occurred in Miami (7—Orange Bowls), New Orleans (7—Sugar Bowls),
Dallas/Ft. Worth (5—Cotton Bowls, 3—Dixie Classics, and 1—Ft. Worth Bowl), El Paso (5—Sun
Bowls), Los Angeles (1—LA Christmas Classic), San Diego, (1—East-West Game), Hawaii
(7— Poi/Pineapple Bowls), and Havana (2—Bacardi Bowls).

35. John Griffith. “Letter to Francis Keppel,” 16 October 1941. Joint Army-Navy Committee
for Welfare and Recreation, Record Group 225, File 171, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

36. Navy Department Press Release, 19 April 1942, Physical Fitness Correspondence, Record
Group 24, Command File, BuAero Folder, NA. Other members of the committee include athletic
directors William Bingham (Harvard), Ray Eckmann (Washington), Jack Meagher (Auburn), and
L. W. St. John (Ohio State), and faculty members Joseph Raycroft (Princeton), Elmer Mitchell
(Michigan), and Dean Carl Schott (Penn State), along with Minnesota coach Bernie Bierman.

37. Jones, “Football! Navy! War!” 15.

38. Rominger, “From Playing Field to Battleground,” 253, 261.

39. Athletic Journal, 13 (February 1942): 3.

Military Bowl Games 173

40. John Da Grosa. NCAA Guide 1944, 26.

41. Jones, “Football! Navy! War!,” 16-19. Jones pointed out that great coaches included Paul
Brown, Joe Maniaci, Bud Wilkinson, and Bear Bryant, to name a few. Some great college players
included Otto Graham, Elroy Hirsh, Charley Trippi, Les Horvath, and Wee Willie Wilkin. Many
schools used World War II as an opportunity to eliminate or suspend football on campus. Overall,
in 1942, more than 60 colleges dumped football for this reason and the lack of quality players and
roughly 350 colleges suspended football for a season or during all of World War II.

42. Furman Bisher “You’re in the Army, Mr. Trippi,” Southern Living, 1984.

43. John Da Grosa and Bob Hall. The Official NCAA Guide 1946 (New York, A.S. Barnes,
1946): 20.

44. United States Navy Bureau of Aeronautics. The Aviation Sports Program in U.S. Navy
Pre-flight Training Schools (Washington, D.C.: Navy Department, 1944): 3–6; See also Thomas
Hamilton, “Football in the Navy” in The Official NCAA 1942 Football Guide, ed. Walter R.
Okeson (New York, A.S. Barnes, 1942): 21. Prior to coaching the Midshipmen in 1934, Hamilton
coached the West Coast Navy in 1931 until 1933 to a 20-4-2 record. In 1942, the Football Writers
Association awarded Hamilton with its annual award due to his work establishing naval training
programs, which included football at colleges and duty stations throughout the country.

45. Jones, “Football! Navy! War!” 259.

46. Ned Cronin, December 10, 1944 Fourth Air Force v. Randolph Field in Los Angeles Coli-
seum. Game Program.

47. Jones, “Football! Navy! War!” 31.

48. NCAA, “Bowl/All-Star Game Records,” 107–110.

49. The Pro Football Hall of Fame shows approximately 995 NFL and former NFL players
and personnel enlisted in the various military services during World War II. Roughly 500 major
league baseball players also served.

50. Bonura played 917 games; batted .307, belted 119 home runs, and knocked in 704 runs
during his eight-year baseball career.

51. Gary Bedingfield, Baseball’s Dead of World War II: A roster of professional players who
died in service. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010): 5–6.

52. Gary Bedingfield, Baseball in Wartime. “Zeke Bonura.” Assessed November 24, 2010 http://
www.baseballinwartime.com/player_biographies/bonura_zeke.htm. See also “Czar of North
African Baseball.” “Bonura Gets Award,” Stars and Stripes, October 27, 1943, p. 3.

53. Harrigan, Sergeant James. “Army Eleven Conquers Navy 10-7, Before Colorful Crowd in
Africa.” New York Times; Jan 2, 1944, S1. “Rabchasers Win North Africa’s Grid Crown,” Stars
and Stripes, January 3, 1944, p. 3.

54. New York Times, Jan 2, 1944, S1.

55. New York Times, Jan 2, 1944, S1.

56. Canadian Press, “U.S. Soldiers top Canadian Eleven,” New York Times, Mar 20, 1944, 21.
Canadian Press, “London Bow Game Set,” New York Times, Mar 4, 1944, 19.

57. Associated Press, “Piper, Chicago, Star of London Tea Bowl Game.” Chicago Daily Tribune;
Jan 1, 1945, 31.

58. A Varga girl is better known as a pin-up girl. The term Varga girl is based on the work of
Peruvian painter Alberto Vargas, who created the first pin-up girl posters using his airbrush paint-
ing techniques.

59. United Press, “Tea Bowl Game Won by Service Command.” New York Times; Jan 1, 1945, 26.

174 Seifried and Katz

60. For more information on the Atom Bowl see, W.W. Watt, “A Bowl Game Amid the Ruins
of War,” New York Times, Jan. 1, 1984, S2. John D. Lukacs, “Nagasaki 1946: Football Amid the
Ruins,” New York Times, Dec. 25, 2005, G9. Associated Press, “Atom Bowl Game Listed,” New
York Times, Dec. 29, 1945, p. 19. Associated Press, “Osmanski’s Team Wins,” New York Times,
Jan. 3, 1946, p. 27. In the southwest Pacific, Marines invented a game in 1944 called ocean foot-
ball, in which play occurred on a 40-yard field underwater; plays stopped when the ball carrier
had to surface for water. John Da Grosa and Edward H. Nichterlein, The Official NCAA Guide
1945, 30.

61. Gunn, “The old core,” 130.

62. It was not unusual for football games organized by the military to prohibit tackling. For
example, the lack of players and the uniqueness of war prompted many two-hand touch games to
save the soldiers from bodily harm. See also “817th Teams Battle to 6-6 Tie in Camp’s Football
Opener,” Armodier, November 5, 1942, p. 5.

63. Associated Press, “Fort Ord Routs Marines, 55-19.” Chicago Daily Tribune; Dec 21, 1953,C1.

64. Associated Press, “Airmen Beat Army Stars in Tokyo.” Chicago Daily Tribune; Dec 21,
1958, A2.

65. Jones, “Football! Navy! War!” 54.

66. Game program, Navy All-Stars v. Army Air Forces Pacific Ocean Areas, Pearl Harbor, Janu-
ary 7, 1945. See also Pearl Harbor Banner, “Attendance Records Smashed by Mob Who Attended
Poi Bowl” Jan 12, 1945, 1. “Down the Runway,” Brief, December 26, 1944, p. 16. “Navy Beats
AAF, Dobbs in Poi Bowl Game, 14-0,” Brief, January 16, 1945, p. 17.

67. Navy team included ten players with professional experience and nine former all-Americans,
while the Army team possessed five former professional players and seven former all-Americans.

68. The Ice Bowl Trophy was donated by Fairbanks industrialist Captain A.E. Lanthrop. Dermot
Cole, Fairbanks: A gold rush town that beat the odds. (Fairbanks, AL: University of Alaska Press,
2008): 169–172. See also www.mmbolding.com

69. Associated Press, “Alaska Mushes to 3-0 Victory in Ice Bowl.” Assessed November 24, 2010
from: www.mmbolding.com

70. Associated Press, “Service Teams Clash Today in Poinsettia.” Chicago Daily Tribune; Dec
20, 1953, A2.

71. Associated Press, “Fort Ord Routs Marines, 55-19.” Chicago Daily Tribune; Dec 21, 1953,
C1.

72. William R. Kane, “Football Pays Off,” in NCAA Official 1945 Guide, ed. W. Bingham (New
York: A.S. Barnes, 1945): 41–43.

73. Jones, “Football! Navy! War!” 199-200. See also Wakefield, “Playing to Win,” where she
documents throughout the war years the desire of U.S. soldiers in foreign lands to see and hear
information about sporting events as a way to stay connected to home.

74. Wakefield, “Playing to win,” 79-82. See also U.S. War Department, The Special Services
Officer (Athletic and Recreation), TM 21-205, September, 1944, p. 24–25. The SSOs or AOs
were required to appreciate in their technical manual that without their assistance in organizing
competitions, soldiers could experience severe “boredom,” which could lead to poor morale and
performance or execution of their job duties on the battlefield.

75. Noverr and Lawrence, “The game they played,” 138.

76. Michael Oriard, King football: Sport and spectacle in the golden age of radio and newsreels,
movies and magazines, the weekly and the daily press. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2001): 116. Specifically, Oriard discovered that about 2.2 million veterans went to college
on the G.I. Bill between 1945 and 1950 and returning veterans made up over 50% of the players
in college football and up to 90% on some teams.

Military Bowl Games 175

77. Jones, “Football! Navy! War!” 4–5.

78. Jones, “Football! Navy! War!” 5. See also Gunn, “The old core,” 58.

79. Gunn, “The old core,” 58.

80. New Bowl Games: Gator, Glass, Pineapple, and Raisin (1946); Harbor, Great Lakes, and
Lodi Grape (1947); Tangerine, Delta, Dixie, and Salad (1948); Presidential and Cigar (1950);
Bluegrass (1958); Bluebonnet and Liberty (1959); Aviation, Gotham, and Mercy (1961).

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