The Sporting Life: Football

Columbia University football coach Lou Little, seen from below, holding a football

Note: Click on each image to get an enlarged view, read more information, and begin navigating through the entire image gallery.

After the crowning of the Super Bowl champions and the end of the 2009/2010 football season, the National Football League and American Football League teams will move forward to the draft and next year’s season with new athletic talent and lots of hard work.

Football has its roots in the British game of rugby, but it has certainly become an American phenomenon. Football was one of the first outdoor sports to attract a huge audience – bringing together, for instance, 80,000 men and women, in all kinds of weather, to the New Haven “Bowl” to watch the Yale-Harvard match. The game was first played on a collegiate level, with many of the most popular bowl games, such as the Rose Bowl, crowning the best college teams.

Illustrated cover of a pile of football players wearing leather helmets

Called the “Father of American Football,” Walter Camp was a regular Vanity Fair contributor. In Camp’s 1915 article, “Football and the New Rules,” he discusses the changing offensive rules of football, specifically the advent of the forward pass and its ability to create a more exciting game for the spectators. Many sports fans believe it was Knute Rockne, Notre Dame’s coach from 1918 to 1930, and his star player, George Gipp, (“win one for the Gipper”) who advanced the game of football by incorporating these new rules. And, according to another Vanity Fair sports writer, Paul Gallico, the new game of football drew as many as 130,000 fans into Chicago’s Soldier Field to see the annual Notre Dame-Army game.

Portrait of Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne

In the 1920s, the NFL advanced the game to a professional level, and, according to a November 1934 article, “The Case for Professional Football,” by sports novelist and Vanity Fair contributor John Tunis, professional football was becoming “one of the thriving industries of sport. Every year more and more people desert the college football stadiums in order to see the professional games.” Tunis went on to state his reasons: “Professional football is faster … the players know the rules better … the play is rougher … [and] since the pro players have played together longer, and for money, they have learned a greater variety of plays,” making the game more exciting and interesting to watch. The athletic prowess of football greats like Ken Strong, Red Grange, Harry Newman, and Jim Thorpe also helped to advance the professional sport.

New York Giants Ken Strong, Willis Smith, and Ed Danowski

In the same article, Tunis also cited lower cost as a reason for pro football’s growing popularity. At the time, admission to a pro game cost only $1.50, compared to the $5.00 or $10.00 that a college game  demanded. Imagine that!

Columbia coach Lou Little addressing a group of football players

Columbia coach Lou Little crouched on top of a brick wall, holding a football