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A History of College Football in South Carolina: Glory on the Gridiron
A History of College Football in South Carolina: Glory on the Gridiron
A History of College Football in South Carolina: Glory on the Gridiron
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A History of College Football in South Carolina: Glory on the Gridiron

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The Medicos, the Purple Hurricane, the Seceders- all South Carolina football mascots that long ago drifted into history. From as early as 1889, college football began to take hold of South Carolina. The fans of the state's first intercollegiate game could hardly have foreseen how it would steadily grow from a competition between amateurs into tightly organized teams with well-paid coaches and demanding alumni, all with a passionate desire to win. This volume goes beyond Clemson and Carolina to trace the history of college teams from all over the state, including Wofford, Furman, SC State, Presbyterian College, Erskine, Claflin, The Citadel, MUSC, the College of Charleston, Newberry College, Benedict College and Allen University. Join museum curator Fritz Hamer and longtime South Carolina high school football coach John Daye as they celebrate the state's most notable coaches, players and rivalries, as well as the many unsung heroes who have helped to make the sport a statewide obsession.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 9, 2009
ISBN9781614232933
A History of College Football in South Carolina: Glory on the Gridiron
Author

Fritz P. Hamer

Fritz Hamer holds a PhD in history from University of South Carolina and is the chief curator of history at the South Carolina State Museum. He edited Forward Together: South Carolinians in the Great War and authored Charleston Reborn: A Southern City, its Navy Yard and World War II, both titles also from The History Press. He holds a PhD in History from University of South Carolina. He recently curated an exhibit on the history of South Carolina Football at the State Museum. John Daye is a retired high school football coach who has coached championship high school teams in Columbia, Irmo, Hartsville, Orangeburg and Cayce. He is a devoted follower of South Carolina football history and offers a wealth of knowledge of the sport's past.

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    A History of College Football in South Carolina - Fritz P. Hamer

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    CHAPTER 1

    The Origins of Football and Its Early Decades in South Carolina

    The colors of the two institutions were conspicuous. Furman’s banner of purple and white floated in the air and the students wore badges of the same color…the players were dressed in canvas cloth uniforms and wore caps of purple and white. The old gold and black of Wofford was everywhere to be seen.¹

    Such was the splendor surrounding the second year of intercollegiate competition between the two upstate college rivals in January 1891 as the teams formed on the field of Wofford’s home ground in Spartanburg. Although the new game of football had only begun to take root in the Palmetto State less than a decade before, it was gaining a significant following on these two upstate campuses. At this early stage, though, the rules were different from what they have become. In fact, it probably resembled a rugby match more than what we see in college stadiums today. Scrimmage lines were unbalanced, the forward pass was illegal and scoring a touchdown only earned four points, while the extra point, or goal as it was called then, earned two. On the sidelines there were few, if any, bleachers, but the fan support, with perhaps one hundred or more in attendance, was enthusiastic and partisan in cheering for their respective team. But as the fans of this third intercollegiate game in South Carolina cheered, it could hardly have been foreseen how the game would steadily grow from a competition between amateurs into tightly organized teams with well-paid coaches and very demanding alumni, all with a passionate desire to win.

    In the early years of collegiate football, teams in the Palmetto State used faculty advisors with a personal interest in football who aided fledgling teams from the Upstate to the Lowcountry. Such people had usually played the game at a northern school before coming south. Paid coaches came later once the game was more established. Yet even though unpaid, such coaches were not supposed to coach during games. Only the team captain could give instruction during the matches. Even so, the games of this early period could become violent, and injuries followed. But this was only one of the reasons why most college presidents and their faculties discouraged football. As football took root on South Carolina campuses, professors and administrators feared that too much student attention on the game and its players distracted them from their academic pursuits. Yet these concerns had already affected colleges in the Northeast, where football began more than three decades before.

    Even by the 1880s, football drew thousands of fans at some of the nation’s oldest colleges. Harvard, Yale and Princeton drew students, alumni and outside support to every game during their fall seasons. And this drew the scrutiny of presidents and journalist alike as the passionate fans witnessed brutal plays in which numerous players on both sides were injured, sometimes seriously. There were even occasions when such violence led to players’ deaths. By 1894, a New York Times writer described the Yale-Princeton contest as two masses of humanity [coming] together with a sound like a cracking of bones of a tasty hot bird between the teeth of some hungry giant. Legs and arms and heads and feet would be apparently inextricably intermingled. After the referee blew his whistle, most of the pile would separate and become individuals again, but a few would still be lying on the field. Then on rushed the doctors with assistants to patch up a player’s gashed head while another player’s leg would be pulled back into place. Other injured players had sprained ankles bound and wrists bandaged. Once the injuries were mended, the referee started the game again, another human cyclone began and the fans roared on their respective team.²

    While such actions alone were alarming to school officials and many journalists, there were many off-field activities that had grown just as disquieting. With growing enthusiasm for the game, the desire to win led most teams to seek top players with illegal monetary incentives and other recruiting tactics. Reports even grew that college teams brought in ringers, players who were not enrolled in the school. When the season ended, such players would suddenly disappear. This kind of activity led President Charles Eliot of Harvard to attack the college game, claiming that it was filled with tricks, surprises and habitual violation of rules in order to have a winning team. Such activity, on and off the field, the Harvard executive maintained, rendered students unfit for intellectual activity. While the Harvard president managed to gain a few reforms, including the outlawing of one of the most vicious newer tactics of the game, the flying wedge, his attempts to reduce violence and injury proved short-lived. Unregulated recruiting continued with cash and other incentives provided to top college recruits.³

    When the first version of football was introduced into the United States, these concerns did not exist. The first official college match occurred in 1869 between Rutgers and Princeton. Within a few short years, it spread to many other northeastern schools, quickly establishing furious rivalries between Harvard and Yale, and Princeton and Rutgers, among many other institutions. However, during these early decades, football resembled a cross section of soccer and rugby—little on the field of play resembled today’s version of American football. In the first decade of football, there were fifteen players on a side, a goal equaled one point, no one wore helmets or padding and masses of players pushed and pulled at one another to move the ball carrier forward. Although rules started to evolve with the reduction of players on a side to eleven in 1880, violent conduct, severe injuries and crazed fans soon marred games.

    By the early 1890s, the journalist Edward Godkin observed with alarm that there was an athletic craze and that leading colleges were becoming huge training grounds for young gladiators where spectators roar as roared in the Flavian amphitheatre. He charged that football had become dangerous because of the pushing, pulling, rolling, kicking or ‘slugging’ that seemed endemic. Perhaps some of the violence and injury could be attributed to meager laws of the game and lack of neutral officials. Game referees did not exist in the early decades; instead, captains of the contending sides were expected to play fair and police their teammates during play to maintain sportsmanship. Then, in 1885, the college rules committee, headed by Walter Camp of Yale, mandated an umpire at every game. Nine years later, a second official was added. In spite of introducing neutral officials at games, the growing criticism of football by journalists was nearly equaled by college presidents and their faculties. As early as 1884, a Harvard athletic committee reported that the games they witnessed had numerous instances of violence coupled with unsportsmanlike conduct.

    Early football’s brutality was demonstrated clearest when the flying wedge was introduced by Harvard’s eleven in 1892. The formation consisted of the biggest players forming a tight V formation, or wedge, with the smaller ball carrier running behind. Once this formation picked up speed, defenders, especially those of small stature, were literally trampled or thrust out of the way, often with serious injuries. Despite this brutality on the field, football’s mass appeal continued to mount in spite of the concerns from most college presidents. Big annual rivalries between such schools as Harvard and Yale, and Princeton and Columbia, drew thousands of fans by the 1890s, with large gate receipts produced by such games. Such spectacles engendered large revenues, and consequently the need to win grew.

    This is what appalled Eliot and many other college presidents. Still, a few demurred and denied any problems. One of these was the future president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. As Princeton’s chief executive at the beginning of the twentieth century, he saw little need for football reforms. Although some effort at reducing injuries led to the banning of the flying wedge by 1895, problems persisted. The next crisis drew President Theodore Roosevelt into the mix at the end of the 1905 season. An enthusiastic sportsman, T.R. believed that football gave young men sound physical and mental training, but media focus on severe injuries and deaths at various levels, from prep school to college, forced his hand. College presidents and football administrators, including Walter Camp, met at the White House to coordinate meaningful reform to reduce injuries and improve sportsmanship. Recent historians have argued that the northern press exaggerated the incidents of injury and death at this time but that public outcry made it imperative that changes be made. A more formal rules committee to regulate college football, entitled the Inter-Collegiate Athletic Association, resulted from the White House meetings (the forerunner of today’s National Collegiate Athletic Association or NCAA).

    The new committee discouraged inducements to players to come to certain colleges and also condemned player recruiting. These attempts to clean up the game would soon be tested and ultimately fail, but a new rule would have lasting impact and change the game forever as time went on. Against Walter Camp’s objections, the rules committee voted to introduce the forward pass for the year 1906. The committee hoped that this new law would open up the game, reduce devastating mass formations and thereby reduce player injuries.

    Back in South Carolina, where football was just starting to gain notice, neither administration at Wofford or Furman seemed as concerned about their students playing the new game as they would be a decade later. They also did not support it financially or attend the first games. The first years of college football in the Palmetto State were organized and supported by the players with at least moral support from the rest of the student bodies. As already indicated, a faculty member often helped to train players, but everything else—from uniforms and transportation to games to arranging games—was the responsibility of the players and their student managers. A faculty member served as liaison to ensure that college interests and integrity were upheld. In South Carolina, the early years of intercollegiate football were truly amateur contests little more than a step above class football competitions staged on most campuses.

    This rare early action shot (circa 1910) shows a runner, possibly from the College of Charleston, going around the line of scrimmage versus an opponent, possibly Porter Military Academy, also from Charleston. Note the nose and shin guards that he and others on the field are wearing, a more common form of protection than a helmet at this time. Courtesy of the Charleston Museum, Charleston, South Carolina.

    Baseball was the main sport on South Carolina college campuses through the 1890s, yet recreational levels of football began at some institutions by the 1880s. At what was then South Carolina College, football was already a popular sport between groups of students who seemed interested in its recreational value. In October 1888, a student wrote, in a half-joking manner, that football was good for health because after playing a game, players bloodied themselves to the point that they never need to be bled by a physician.

    Wofford and Furman seemed to have gained knowledge of football prior to their first game in December 1889 through recreational contests held on their campuses. Even after the first game between the two schools, intramural contests between classes at many campuses became an annual tradition in the late fall. In 1911, after the intercollegiate season, South Carolina had a competition between the four classes for the Football Trophy. Similarly, class competitions were held on campuses from Greenville to Newberry even when intercollegiate competition was suspended at most upstate schools during the first decade of the twentieth century.

    Most, if not all, college football programs had the game introduced by students or faculty who had played or watched football at northern schools before coming to the Palmetto State. The most noted of these early pioneers was the future innovator and coaching legend John Heisman. An 1892 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and a football star, in 1899 Clemson College lured him from Auburn in Alabama to lead the upstate school to its earliest football success in a brief four-year tenure. The second-highest-paid coach in South Carolina, Heisman is the most famous early college football coach in the state. Less heralded northern transplants brought the game to other state campuses, including Yale graduate Elwin Kerrison, who trained the Wofford team for the first Furman contest in 1889. It was unclear if this northern transplant had played at Yale, but he certainly must have known about the game since the Connecticut school was one of the pioneers in football with a tradition of winning championships. When South Carolina College began a varsity program in 1894, it enlisted a faculty advisor with northern roots and continued to do so until it hired its own paid coach two years later.¹⁰

    While these northerners introduced the game, they could not coach in the modern sense of the word, at least not until Heisman took over at Clemson. Until then, only team captains could give coaching tips and direction during games. The first years of football followed this practice. No coach or trainer is mentioned in the reports for the 1891 Wofford-Furman game. Except for Clemson and South Carolina, the games between other South Carolina schools seemed genteel affairs where both sides respected the competitive spirit of the other. The Furman writer who accompanied the 1891 team to Spartanburg for the third contest described friendly and spirited cheering between the rival fans as the teams prepared for the muddy match in rain and cold wind. Although a low-scoring affair, the visitors prevailed 10–0, the opposing sides having a hotly contested game in which Wofford’s tackling and blocking for its running backs was its best feature. It was mainly Furman’s better teamwork that seemed to overcome its host in the end. The Wofford writer concurred, although he excused the loss to insufficient practice time coupled with injuries to key players preparing for the contest.¹¹

    The 1898 Clemson College team picture. Courtesy of Special Collections, Clemson University Libraries, Clemson, South Caroli

    South Carolina and Clemson began varsity programs in 1894 and 1896, respectively, but none of the other state’s colleges began an intercollegiate program until the new century. North of South Carolina, the University of North Carolina had begun playing a small schedule of intercollegiate games in the late 1880s, and to the west, the University of Georgia began intercollegiate playing in 1891, followed by Georgia Tech. During this first decade, South Carolina colleges occasionally scheduled these out-of-state schools.¹²

    There were a few schools within the Palmetto State that began to play football that by law could not compete with South Carolina, Clemson or the small upstate schools. When South Carolina passed its new state constitution in 1895, one of the most severe clauses legalized racial segregation in all public institutions. This meant that football between black and white

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