Hey bruddas n sistas of the SDMB! Help me under"stand" college football, then and now. Actually, I’m working on a story (ficshun) about college football, so help me out: The story is set in 1948.
How are the rules of college football different per 1948 and 2008?
How would it be like to get a full football scholarship back then?
What woudl it be like to go to campus back then, registering for this and that and getting into the groove?
I need your help! Anything you can tell me about the football/campus experience between then and now can help. Stop the love you save may be your own! Thank you.
Wiki has a pretty detailed description of college football from 1930 (right before Knute Rockne died) when the game had become more like modern American football and less like rugby in 1930, to 1958, which is right before the first Super Bowl, and when the game started becoming popular on a national level.
I wish I could help you more, but most of the studying I’ve done of the sport is from about 1900 to 1910, when the distinction between rugby and football hadn’t yet been clearly defined. The most interesting factoid of that time period, IMHO, is that Roosevelt threatened to ban the game if rule changes weren’t enacted to keep people from dying, as the sport was suffering dozens of fatalities a year.
During WWII the game was dominated by the service academies, as one would expect. This was an era before draft exemptions, so they were the ones who could consistently field superior teams - especially Army.
This changed immediately after WWII, when the schools were flooded with guys who had deferred their college career for years - many of them spending that time storming beaches and now attending college on the GI Bill. Many colleges fielded superior teams now, probably some of the best ever seen. And while Army remained very strong, they faced new competition from Michigan and Notre Dame, whose 1947 squads were amazing (indeed, so were their 1948 and 49 squads.) These teams are considered among the best ever to play the college game.
In the College All-Star Game, which was played against the NFL champions, the All-Stars actually won the 1943, 1946, 1947 and 1950 matches. That’s four of the nine victories the college teams were able to achieve in the 43-year history of the game.
Your fictional 1948 player would probably have played both offense and defense on the team. He would have lived in the same dorm – a barracks left over from World War 2 that was too hot in the summer and too cold in winter – as other students (certainly in his freshman year – later he might live in a fraternity house.) If at a state university, he would probably have mandatory ROTC. His scholarship might have included a part-time university job, such as working in the cafeteria or as a janitor.
He would share a single telephone in the hall with everyone else in the dorm/fraternity house. As a freshman, he wouldn’t be allowed to have a car, although he might sometimes borrow one from an older, richer, friend. He would have arrived on campus on a bus or train, write long letters to his parents and his high-school girlfriend, and would see his family only one time during his first semester, at Parent’s Day (when they took the bus or train to campus.)
This page has a very nice rundown on rule changes in college football from the beginnings to now. Specifically mentioned from 1948 is “Unlimited substitution on change of team possession.”
One major difference between football in the 40s and now would be the fact that players played both offense and defense.
Great answers, especially the part about offense and defense! I can make that 1948 rule change part of the story.
About the car, in the story his mother has just died in an auto accident, and his fathers buys him a new Ford so that
He can drive to and from the University, which is drivably close but not very close
As a reward for getting a full ride as a football player
As a kind of mollification for his mother’s death
Any problems with his taking that new car to school, per kunilou? If that would definitely be a rule-breaker at a State school in the Midwest (in the story, the school is simply referred to as “State”), I am thinking he can park the vehicle at his aunt’s house, who lives near campus.
Further questions:
In 1948, owing to the rule change about unlimited substitutions, would college coaches pounce on that to form distinct offense/defense teams? Or would coaches mostly be extolling the virtues of playing both sides and be reluctant to change?
OK, in 1948 what would a senior high school quarterback be doing on the team other than quarterbacking? Would he have played defense too? What position, what roles? What would a center have played on defense?
Here is a quote from Wikipedia regarding the great John Unitas, during his college years:
In 1952 Coach Camp switched the team to one-platoon football. Unitas played safety or linebacker on defense, quarterback on offense, and kick/punt returner on special teams.
I don’t think there are any rule changes preventing someone from playing offense and defense today - it’s just that the game is more specialized now and doing so would not work out.
Quarterbacks were typically defensive backs in the two way days. A center would probably play nose tackle or “middle guard”, thus lining up against his counterpart. A “star” quarterback wouldn’t get any break from playing defense, besides, being likely one of the best athletes on the team it would be expected that he would play in every play for the whole game.
College football would have been segregated then, right? Black players would only be playing for historically black universities (HBUs), and would only be playing against other HBUs?
Depends on the conference. Blacks were on Big Ten rosters (in small numbers) almost from the beginning of the conference. But a “gentlemen’s agreement” existed such that when those teams played Southern schools the black players didn’t play (and certainly didn’t even travel if the games were in the South) to avoid any “unpleasantness”.
. Starting in the 2007 season they switched to free substitutions.