College Football's Grip on the Southern South

By Charlie Barnes, Vice President - Seminole Boosters

The first American college football game took place in 1869 between Rutgers and Princeton. There was even a subsequent convention of those schools plus fellow Ivy League types Columbia, Yale, Harvard - all the usual suspects - to codify the rules. Play was dominated by colleges in New England for much of the late 19th Century.

However, buried within an obscure book written by an unrenowned politician, lies perhaps the most compelling evidence of the Southern origin of our most popular American game.

Elected Mayor of Richmond in 1904, Carlton McCarthy was only 14 years old when he joined Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia as an artilleryman in 1864. He published his book, "Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life," in 1882. Despite the fact that adding the modifier ‘Excruciatingly’ would enhance the accuracy of the title, it is a delightful read.

Soldiers of every army and every era will smile at passages, including one that describes the time that McCarthy’s battery received three days rations and the men were ordered to immediately cook and eat them if possible so as to avoid the labor of carrying them.

McCarthy describes the simple pleasures of a soldier’s camp life. "[He] played football, slept quietly, rose early, had a good appetite and was happy."

He played football. If McCarthy is to be taken at his word, Confederate soldiers played football as early as 1864-65, before the lads from Princeton got hold of it.

Colleges in the war-devastated South could barely survive much less entertain the notion of organized football. And yet, McCarthy reveals what we all know in our hearts: Football is imbedded in the soul of Southerners.

The Civil War was as much a cultural conflict as an economic one. The industrial north was populated by descendents of English settlers and waves of new immigrants. Southerners were descended from the fierce Scots-Irish tribes that spilled down through Virginia and eastern Kentucky, Tennessee and into the Carolinas, Georgia and Mississippi.

Scots-Irish were originally from the lowlands of Scotland, the northern counties of England and Ulster in Northern Ireland. These were the people who imprinted their culture on the southern states and that influence persists today.

Union Army soldiers, far from home in a hostile land engaged in the popular new sport of baseball. It was a pleasant way to pass the idle time in camp. Soldiers in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia were markedly different. In winter quarters they organized themselves into military units of companies and brigades and engaged in massive and violent snowball battles. And after the winter passed and before the next campaign, they played football.

James Webb’s book "Born Fighting" describes the Celts as leader worshippers who were clannish and militaristic. "The two great defining characteristics of the Scots-Irish culture [were] loyalty to strong leaders and an immediate fierceness when invaded from the outside."

It is no stretch to say that southern patriots worshipped Robert E. Lee. They yearned to find hope in rumors sweeping through the South, Webb says, that although Lee’s father was from cavalier aristocracy, his mother was Scottish and that Lee himself was a direct descendant of Robert the Bruce, the victor at Bannockburn in 1314.

Southern football coaches are inheritors of this tradition, the Scots-Irish proclivity toward hero worship. Great victories are expected; failure can sometimes be interpreted as betrayal. Being the object of hero worship in this part of the country can be a harsh business. In 1980 a paper cut-out cartoon figure of Bobby Bowden was popular. It had the cut-out "Saint Bobby" halo, but the card explained that the halo could also be dropped down and used as a noose.

Some historians view the American Civil War as a continuation of the earlier wars of Scottish independence vs. the English. In that sense, Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg was a reprise of the desperate Highland Charge at Culloden 120 years earlier, and with the same disastrous results.

The leadership style of Union officers reflected the cool and deliberate manner of their English heritage. Confederate officers were known for their passionate and combative Scots-Irish roots.

One expression of the cultural difference and it’s a pretty striking example, can be seen in the names of the football stadiums, north and south. Northern universities tend to have chosen conservatively. Michigan plays in Michigan Stadium. Notre Dame plays in Notre Dame Stadium. Nebraska plays in Memorial Stadium. Ohio State plays in Ohio Stadium. Minnesota played at Memorial Stadium until the school sold the name to TCF Bank. Wisconsin plays in Camp Randall Stadium, named after a training camp for Union soldiers.

Now consider that southern football powerhouses play in stadiums named for their warrior heroes. Alabama plays in Bryant-Denny Stadium. Auburn plays in Jordan-Hare. Tennessee plays in (Brigadier General) Robert Neyland Stadium. Neyland served stints as Head Coach at Tennessee both before and after the war.

Ole Miss plays in Vaught-Hemmingway. We play on Bobby Bowden Field and Georgia Tech plays in Bobby Dodd. LSU’s tiger mascot and Tiger Stadium are named in honor of two brigades of Confederate infantry, the Louisiana Tigers.

Another book, less academic but enormously entertaining puts our southern obsession with football more succinctly. Marlyn Schwartz’s delicious work, "A Southern Bell Primer (Or Why Princess Margret will Never be a Kappa Kappa Gamma)" breezily explains, "Ask Southerners what the most popular religions are in the South and they are quick to tell you - Baptist, Methodist and football. Southern women have a ready answer for this obsession with the gridiron. They say Southern men lost The War and they are determined not to lose anything ever again."

There may actually be something to that.

One answer is offered by Malcom Gladwell, the brilliant researcher whose No.1 Best Seller book "Outliers" presents, indirectly, an explanation of why college football is loved so passionately throughout the south. What appears at first to be a series of disjointed chapters eventually reveals the theme that Gladwell weaves into his master thesis. And that thesis is: It matters a great deal where you are from.

Gladwell says, "It makes a difference where and when we grew up. The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forbearers shape the patterns of our achievement in ways we cannot begin to imagine."

Twenty years ago, two researchers at the University of Michigan did extensive research on the so-called "culture of honor," a mainstay of Southern psychology. "The ‘culture of honor’ hypothesis says it matters where you’re from," Gladwell explains. "Not just in terms of where you grew up or where your parents grew up, but in terms of where your great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents grew up."

"That is a strange and powerful fact," Gladwell says. "It’s just the beginning though, because upon closer examination, cultural legacies turn out to be even stranger and more powerful than that."

It doesn’t seem to matter if you’re black or white, male or female, of Irish descent or Hispanic ancestry. According to the research, if you were raised Southern then you are Southern. You’re imbued with those cultural qualities regardless of your gender or race.

Whether the median students in their study were from the hills of Appalachia or were the children of wealthy executives in Atlanta, researcher says the economics didn't matter much either.

What mattered was that they were from the South. "Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives, [persisting] generation after generation, virtually intact even after the social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished."

What evidence can we see that underscores the marriage of football and the Southern "culture of honor"? It turns out that there is some impressive evidence, but it is hidden in plain sight and so it is overlooked.

Much is being heard these days from the anti-football types who never fail to press for the elimination of college football altogether. It’s too politically incorrect. People enjoy it too much. It is of no benefit to the educational mission.

But those of us who make our living by raising money for Southern universities are keenly aware of the value of football. The emotional infrastructure surrounding the culture and tradition of college football links undergraduates with recent alumni as well as emeritus.

Administrators and Trustees desiring to raise money for their academic institutions realize that a great deal of support enters the halls of academe through the locker room door. You can remember not so long ago when the Universities of Central Florida and South Florida both initiated football programs.

There was no equivocating about the reasons. Though both the Knights and the Bulls already had intercollegiate sports teams they did not have the one sport that attracts more traditional students and is more likely to establish relationships with numbers of wealthy donors.

These are hard economic times. State Legislatures are unable to support higher education as comprehensively as before. Universities are increasingly expected to fund their own operations through private donations. Costs associated with intercollegiate athletics keep rising, and any school wishing to start a football program will also have to add women’s sports to satisfy NCAA gender equity requirements.

With money so tight, why do you think that colleges and universities are so eager to establish expensive varsity football programs? You might be surprised at how many are racing to do just that.

We took note of the Central Florida Knights and the South Florida Bulls. Then, the FIU Golden Panthers and the Florida Atlantic Owls football programs emerged. As the need to raise money and create networks of caring and generous alumni increases, so does the demand for football.

Were you aware that Stetson is starting football again after an absence of more than fifty years? Florida Tech in Melbourne wants to begin play possibly in 2013. And Florida’s newest state university, Florida Gulf Coast in Ft Myers planned to take a football proposal to their Board of Trustees, although the issue appears uncertain at this time.

The University of West Florida’s President Judy Bense held a press conference complete with a facsimile Fighting Argos football helmet to announce her commitment to bring a team to the Pensacola campus by 2015. Press coverage of the event reported this comment from UWF senior Melanie Bryant, "In the south, football is like a religion. Right now, UWF is not part of that religion. We need to be."

Have you ever heard of Ave Maria University? It’s one of our own, located in Naples. They are the Gyrenes, and they began playing a full intercollegiate football schedule this year.

Remember Bill Curry, SEC Coach of the Year at Alabama as well as ACC Coach of the Year at Georgia Tech? He is now the first Head Coach of the Georgia State University Panthers. They began a full schedule of intercollegiate football last season.

Here is the hidden-in-plain-sight evidence of college football’s grip on the southern soul. Beginning in 2010, 32 four-year colleges or universities either began playing football or have announced plans to add varsity football in 2011 or soon thereafter.

Twenty of the 32 are in the south. If you are inclined to count West Virginia and Maryland as Southern states, the total is 22. The remaining 10 are scattered across the far reaches of the land, from George Fox University in Oregon to Presentation College in South Dakota to Misericordia University in Pennsylvania to Robert Morris University in Chicago.

Recall Carlton McCarthy’s description of his fellow soldiers in 1864. "He played football...had a good appetite and was happy."

It is the fall, and we Seminoles are deep into football. We are Southerners. And so at this time of year, true to our character and culture we watch football, have good appetites and we are happy.

Go ‘Noles. Get ‘em Jimbo.