1920's Sports | Football: College

Post-World War I.

Football in the 1920s was the quintessential college game. Certain strategies had been developing since before World War I to encourage a more wideopen style of play and to create spectator excitement, although the most important strategies actually had been available before 1910. Yet many coaches and players of the 1910s dismissed the forward pass as unmanly and unsportsmanlike until Gus Dorias threw to Knute Rockne in a 1 November 1913 game with powerhouse Army and helped Notre Dame pull off a 35-13 upset. It took the 1920s to turn such strategies into electrifying plays that became a necessary feature of every game. This new approach to football appealed as much to the general public as it did to students and alumni. In 1927 thirty million spectators paid more than $50 million for tickets to watch the September-to-Thanksgiving season of games. Huge stadiums were built that held seventy thousand and eighty...