Rise of Gridiron University : Higher Education's Uneasy Alliance With Big-Tim...

by Brian M. Ingrassia

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Rise of Gridiron University : Higher Education's Uneasy Alliance With Big-Time Football, Hardcover by Ingrassia, Brian M., ISBN 0700618309, ISBN-13 9780700618309, Used Good Condition, Free shipping in the US The quarterback sends his wide receiver deep. The crowd gasps as he launches the ball. And when he hits his man, the team's fans roar with approval—especially those with the deep pockets. Make no mistake; college football is big business, played with one eye on the score, the other on the bottom line. But was this always the case? Brian M. Ingrassia here offers the most incisive account to date of the origins of college football, tracing the sport's evolution from a gentlemen's pastime to a multi-million dollar enterprise that made athletics a permanent fixture on our nation's campuses and cemented college football's place in American culture. He takes readers back to the late 1800s to tell how schools embraced the sport as a way to get the public interested in higher learning-and then how football's immediate popularity overwhelmed campuses and helped create the beast we know today. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Ingrassia proves that the academy did not initially resist the inclusion of athletics; rather, progressive reformers and professors embraced football as a way to make the ivory tower less elitist. With its emphasis on disciplined teamwork and spectatorship, football was seen as a "middlebrow" way to make the university more accessible to the general public. Wh

• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Year: 2012
• Binding: Hardcover
• ISBN: 9780700618309
• Condition: Good

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