CHAPTER XI
ATHLETICS
Michigan differs in no respect from other American universities in the general and, some would have it, the extravagant interest in outdoor sports which have come to be defined under the general term "athletics." This emphasis on contests and games of strength and skill is universal and is woven into the very fabric of student life in all our universities and colleges. We cannot therefore avoid the conclusion that it is an inevitable and characteristic expression of the American spirit. It is only natural for the sons and grandsons of the men who settled this country to take an interest in wholesome and vigorous sports; in fact it would be a sad commentary on the degeneracy of the modern generation if such an expression of their inheritance were not evident. But a distinctively American attitude towards sport is also manifested in the intense personal and university rivalries developed, the very rock upon which the modern system of inter-collegiate athletics rests, no less than in the genius for organization and systemization which has, within the last twenty-five years, made organized athletics such a tremendous factor in the life of all American universities.
Whatever changes the future is to bring in the development and control of inter-collegiate athletics, our universities cannot very well escape the fundamental fact that they have become an integral part of our university system, and that, rather than attempting a change by radical measures, they can best correct any present abuses by wise regulation, by a constant effort toward a modification of the present overwhelming emphasis on the one game, football, and above all, by a consistent encouragement of universal participation on the part of the students in some form of college sport. This, in fact, is the latest development. It is not so much a reform as a return to older traditions, from which we have departed only in comparatively recent years, as the following review of Michigan's athletic history will show. This survey is offered, however, not so much because of its relation to the general development of the present-day attitude toward sports in American universities as because it may have particular interest for every Michigan graduate, whether he counts himself a radical or a conservative in matters athletic.
It goes without saying that there was almost no thought of organized sport in the early days. Nathaniel West, '46, once told the Washington alumni, that "among our athletics were various forms of activity—the foot race from a quarter to a half mile,—baseball, a few rods from the stile,"—and what will seem certainly a novel event to a modern athlete,—"sawing our own wood and carrying it upstairs." Edmund Andrews, the President of '49, has also left a record of his time.
Athletics were not regularly organized, nor had we any gymnasium. We played base-ball, wicket ball, two-old-cat, etc., but there was no foot-ball nor any trained "teams." There was mere ex tempore volunteering. We had jumping wickets in the same way. Fencing and boxing were totally neglected. The Huron River furnished little opportunity for boating.
This we may take as a fair picture of athletic activities for many years. Cricket was undoubtedly the first sport to be organized in the University, as the Palladium for 1860-61 gives the names of the eight officers and twenty-five members of the "Pioneer Cricket Club," while the Regents' Report for June, 1865, shows an appropriation of $50 for a cricket ground on the Campus,—the first official recognition of athletics in the University. The game of wicket, which was a modification of cricket, was played with a soft ball five to seven inches in diameter, and with two wickets (mere laths or light boards) laid upon posts about four inches high and some forty feet apart. The "outs" tried to bowl these down, and the "ins" to defend them with curved broad-ended bats. It was necessary to run between the wickets at each strike.
The need for a gymnasium was speedily recognized, but the agitation for it among the students continued for thirty years before the present building was finally completed in 1894. The first gymnasium was an old military barracks which was transformed into a gymnasium of a sort about the year 1858. It stood near the site of the old heating plant at the side of the present Engineering Building, and as it was very open to the weather, resting only on poles sunken in the ground and with a tan bark floor, it was used only in warm weather. The apparatus consisted of a few bare poles, ropes, and rings. Even this make-shift was short-lived, for in 1868 the class of '70 erected a "gymnasium in embryo" described by a graduate of '75 as "two uprights with a cross-beam and ropes dangling from eye-bolts—the remains of some prehistoric effort towards muscular development," which was to be found "back of the Museum";—otherwise the old North Wing. Mark Norris, '79, thus pictures the comparatively primitive state of athletics in the University of his day:
The athletic side of the University was almost wholly undeveloped in 1875. There was no organization and no chance for systematic work. The absence of a gymnasium and practice ground will account for this. Football was a contest between classes, and a mob of 100 to 150 men on a side chasing the pig-skin over the Campus was a sight to make the football expert of today go into convulsions. We had a little base-ball of the "butter fingers" type. At one time we had a boat-club, which navigated the raging Huron above the dam in a six-oared barge.
But with the opening of the year 1885 the old rink, later to become the armory, was fitted up as a gymnasium and a great impetus was given to all athletic interests, which by this time were beginning to be organized. As a natural result the student demand for a real gymnasium was becoming more and more vociferous. As far back as 1868 the University Chronicle had voiced the sentiment in a two-column editorial, in which the writer thus describes the awful state of the University, when the only form of exercise was the opportunity to,—