THE BIRTH OF FOOTBALL IN THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE CONFERENCE

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1 PAGE 10 THE BIRTH OF FOOTBALL IN THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE CONFERENCE By Robert Dunkelberger The universities that comprise the current membership of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) owe their common origin as state normal schools to the Pennsylvania Normal School Act, passed in May of The act outlined the division of the state into 12 districts, later 13, with the first school established at Millersville in 1859 and the final one East Stroudsburg 34 years later in Cheyney eventually became the 14th state normal school, but their unique story will be discussed later. One would have thought that with their common status as normal schools these institutions would early on have become natural football rivals, yet this was actually not the case. At first they did not compete with each other, and even after an athletic conference was established in 1920 there was still resistance from some to scheduling other schools, especially those located any distance away. This article will trace the development of football and organized competition between the normal schools, and give an idea of the exceedingly slow pace and almost bizarre reluctance to form football rivalries with one another. All of the schools offered some form of physical education for students almost from the beginning and gradually developed team sports as well, the first known one being a baseball team at Millersville in By the 1890s they were developing their athletic facilities and a number of them built athletic fields. Millersville was the first to field a football team beginning in 1889 with other schools following, including Indiana in 1890, Mansfield and Shippensburg in 1891, and Bloomsburg in By the late 1890s several schools were actively promoting the fact they had winning football teams, even though formal athletic competition during the decade was not generally encouraged, but instead grew from below by student interest. During this time the opposition consisted primarily of community athletic clubs and associations, town teams, YMCAs, high schools, and prep schools. Transportation concerns seem to have been the determining factor in the selection of opponents, with most of the normal schools located in rural areas with a limited number of railroad options. Although the vast majority of the competition before 1900 was with teams of similar abilities, there seems to have been the idea among the normal schools in Pennsylvania that in order to prove their worth they had to match up with the larger and more established football programs in the area. The scheduling of larger colleges in football was much less common than with other sports, but even so during the 1890s four of the normal schools played games against five of the toughest teams in the state - the Carlisle Indian School, Lafayette, Penn State College, the University of Pennsylvania, and Western University of Pennsylvania (later Pittsburgh). Indiana won two of three against Pittsburgh, but these were the only victories any of the normal schools would have against these teams during this era. California lost to Pittsburgh, and Mansfield fell in games to Penn State and the University of Pennsylvania. Bloomsburg played the most ambitious schedule of any, especially in 1897 when they faced the Carlisle Indian School, Lafayette, and Penn State, losing the latter two games by scores of 14-0 and After 1900 games with larger schools continued to be scheduled, although less frequently and with final scores that were increasingly noncompetitive. California took the lead here, playing Penn State, Pittsburgh and West Virginia, losing all 10 games, including the final two with Pitt

2 PAGE 11 by a combined score of Indiana tied Pittsburgh in 1901, but otherwise the normal school defeats continued, with East Stroudsburg dropping two to Lafayette and Slippery Rock falling to West Virginia. Bloomsburg lost once more to the Carlisle Indians, and in September 1902 held the University of Pennsylvania to a score of Although scheduled on short notice the normal school considered this their first official game of the season. Penn, probably deciding the final result was embarrassingly close, decided it was a practice game and did not include it as part of their official record. From 1903 to 1911 Bloomsburg lost four times to Lafayette, the last game a 53-0 defeat, marking the final time any of the state schools would play a major college from the region. In fact, during the 1910s and into the 1920s several of the normal schools played high schools and prep schools almost exclusively, with only a few games against each other thrown in. It had become apparent that the two-year normal schools were no match for institutions that were a part of big-time football, who ended up with an overall record from against the normals of In addition to size two other factors that contributed to the inability of the state schools to be truly competitive were the fact they did not employ paid coaches, and most significantly, in 1906 the Board of Principals of the State Normal Schools of Pennsylvania enacted strict player eligibility rules. Only actual students could compete and they could not receive any monetary payments for doing so. By 1903 all of the original normal schools except for Clarion and Edinboro had football teams and the heyday of competing with major colleges had passed. It was not until this year that the first recorded football contest between two of the state normal schools finally occurred, which was a match between Kutztown and Millersville. Why it took so long is not known, but once this happened it was only seven more years before 10 of the 13 normal schools had begun competing with each other, although the process was slow, inhibited primarily by distance. By 1920 the most other teams that any one school had competed against in football was still only five, and three normal schools (Kutztown, Shippensburg, and West Chester) actually dropped the sport for a number of years. There was no organization or structure to the competition, no planned creation of game schedules, and certainly no means of determining a yearly normal school champion. The majority of football games were still with traditional local rivals. In 1913 the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania began purchasing the previously privately owned normal schools, and by 1920 an aggressive plan was instituted to reorganize the schools in order to eventually transform them into degree-granting teachers colleges. One component of the activities of these schools not specifically outlined as being part of this organization process was

3 PAGE 12 that of athletics, but it was considered and on December 30,1920 the first formal constitution to control athletic relations among the normal schools was presented to the Board of Principals. The new organization was called the Pennsylvania State Normal School Athletic Association, and its stated object was to promote clean sportsmanship and encourage inter-normal school athletic competition. The second part of the objective was important because of the ongoing lack of this type of competition. Even with the new constitution little would change however, because during the first six years the Association was in effect there was still minimal play between its members. Even with 13 schools the most different football teams that one institution competed against during those six years was seven, and three schools played less than four other normal schools. The primary opponents were still high schools, prep schools and college JV teams. The first normal school to play a majority of its games during a season against other normal schools was Bloomsburg in To their credit the others quickly followed suit, and by 1931 all had done so, Mansfield and West Chester being the last. Even when relations between schools were formally established, disagreements could arise to sever them, as happened in 1929 between East Stroudsburg and West Chester. A bench-clearing brawl led to a nine-year suspension in football competition. And now for the story of Cheyney joining the athletic association. In February of 1927 a revised constitution was presented to the Board of Principals by the Athletic Committee. The constitution was approved on March 18, but one member who was not present for that meeting was the principal of the 14th state normal school, Mr Leslie Pinckney Hill of the Cheyney Training School for Teachers. This institution began as a private school for training African- Americans to become teachers, but in 1920 it was authorized as a standard normal school, and in 1921 was transferred under complete state control. At the May 1927 board meeting, Mr Hill asked the members of the Athletic Committee if they were aware when they drafted the revised constitution that they had failed to include Cheyney as a member. The chairman of the committee, T. T. Allen of East Stroudsburg, said that they had not even thought about including Cheyney because it was too small to realistically compete with the other institutions. There was some truth to this assertion, because in the fall of 1928 the full-time enrollment at the other state schools ranged from a high of 1379 for Indiana down to Clarion's 289, with Cheyney having the least with only 127 students. It was also true that Cheyney was disadvantaged in relation to the other schools in terms of equipment and that the physical facilities for athletics were lacking, since home football games were played on the grass at one end of the campus quad and a real athletic field would not be added until But even so Mr Hill felt that the Cheyney school did not need to be ostracized in terms of athletics. Following his complaint, the State Superintendent for Public Instruction decided to reappoint the Athletic Committee to consider the school's request for inclusion. At the September 1927 meeting it was recommended that Cheyney be included in the Athletic Association, but with the understanding that no other member was in any way obligated to ever enter into athletic relations with them This was not a banner day for tolerance or race relations in the history of Pennsylvania. As one would expect, the resolution as written was viewed as greatly embarrassing, so at the November meeting Mr Hill proposed new wording that said the Athletic Association embraced Cheyney, but being in the Association did not obligate any member to enter into athletic relations with any other member school. This had the same result as before but did not single out Cheyney for special treatment, although it did give further impetus for member schools to continue not competing with each other. Even though Cheyney was now recognized as an association member nothing changed here either, since they were not on any school's football schedule in the fall of 1928, nor would they be for 20 years. Not until September 25, 1948 when Cheyney traveled to Clarion did they play

4 PAGE Bloomsburg State Normal team their first football game against another Pennsylvania state teachers college, and not until November 18,1950, did Kutztown's football team become the first from a state school to visit the Cheyney campus. The rest of the colleges in the conference gradually added Cheyney to their schedules, but it took time. West Chester, located only eight miles away, waited until 1958 for a game, and the final holdout, Indiana University, did not compete with Cheyney in football until years after Cheyney became a member. It would not be until 2006 that the Indiana football team made its first trip ever to the Cheyney campus for a game, and that was only after the conference mandated that every school play every other one on a rotating schedule. Indiana was the final one of the 14 schools to visit every other campus for a football game. Athletic activity stayed fairly stable among the now state teachers colleges throughout the 1930s up until the start of American involvement in World War II, with the majority of games scheduled with each other, although some colleges were better about this than others. During these years rules that needed interpretation were referred to the Athletic Committee, Among the major issues it dealt with was the continuing problem of convincing some of the colleges to schedule each other and not as much outside competition. This situation was of particular concern because for a team sport such as football it was impossible to determine a champion when there was such a wide difference in the number of association games played by each school in a given season. Finally an attempt was made to name at least a "mythical" conference champion each year in football, and so from 1934 to 1950 this was done by a vote of sportswriters. During World War II, in view of the wartime situation, difficulty in travel, and the lack of male students, it was decided to curtail athletics, especially in football, with all of the state teachers colleges dropping the sport for a period of from two to four years. Football and all other sports resumed in full in 1946 once veterans began flooding campuses in Pennsylvania and elsewhere across the country. The most prominent issue of the immediate post-war era with regards to the

5 PAGE 14 state teachers colleges centered on the creation of a more formal conference, and finally in the spring of 1950 a majority of the coaches voted in favor of creating one. A July survey of the 14 state colleges showed that nine of them were in favor of their athletic directors getting together to review the possibility, and so a meeting was scheduled for that December. It was very successful, and a second one was held on March 12,1951. At this meeting the Pennsylvania State Teachers College Athletic Conference was officially organized, and a final constitution drafted for presentation to the Board of Presidents. The major addition to this constitution from previous ones was an article on scheduling and conference rating in an attempt to be able to determine an official champion. A minimum number of inter-conference games in a sport had to be played in order for a school to qualify, which in the case of football was four. Since there was no annual game or tournament to determine a champion it was decided to go with a point system developed by Professor Roger Saylor of Penn State College (a long-time CFHS member) to rank those teams that met the minimum qualifications. This completed the process of 14 institutions of higher education forging themselves into a unified organization for athletic competition nearly 100 years after the establishment of the first Pennsylvania state normal school, although it still didn't mean that every college would finally compete in football with every other one. It would take over 40 years for that to happen. Geography continued to play a key role in deciding who a schools conference competition would be, and so the first two former normal schools to play every other school during the regular season were the most centrally-located ones, Lock Haven and Shippensburg in Mansfield, also located in the central part of Pennsylvania followed in 1976, and Bloomsburg in 1981 The other ten schools would finally complete the circuit of competition from 1986 to Because of the expense of a football team traveling long distances the vast majority of PSAC games traditionally have been played either in Pennsylvania or contiguous states. This has not been followed consistently however, because if the major reason why schools on one side of the state waited so long to compete with those on the other was distance, it did not stop most of them from at times travelling to non-bordering states for games. From the end of World War II through the 1970s all PSAC schools on occasion went far from home. Bloomsburg, Clarion, and East Stroudsburg only made it as far as Connecticut, but other colleges visited such states as Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Slippery Rock was the champion in terms of long road trips, and in 1964 went to California and 1971 to Washington State. They travelled 2400 miles to Southern California 20 years before they took a 300 mile trip across the state to Kutztown! This article has been just a brief look at the history and development of football and competition among the universities comprising the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference, but as with all stories there is much more that can be told in such a tradition-rich area for college football. Author's Addendum - The most dramatic changes to ever occur in the PSAC took place this summer, when on June 27, 2007, it was announced that two private schools in Erie - Gannon University and Mercyhurst College - would become full members in The next day, C. W. Post of Long Island joined as an associate conference member for football and field hockey, also effective as of the fall of These actions mean that for the first time institutions that do not have the same common, unifying history as former PA state normal schools will be conference members, one of them not even physically located within the state. This expansion was done in an attempt to strengthen the conference in terms of number of schools and sports offered, and in football especially to make up for the fact that Mansfield dropped the sport following It remains to be seen how these additions will affect the dynamics of competition within the PSAC, but there is no question the conference will never be the same.