With the success of the Merriwell literature, juvenile sport fiction became abundant. In all subsequent stories, the model for traditional juvenile sport fiction, even continuing today, is the illustrious Frank Merriwell (Oriard, 1982). As the Merriwell series dwindled to a halt in the 1910’s, books began to dominate the world of children’s sport fiction. Oriard (1982) suggested the popularity of these books rose because “the juvenile sports novel combined the action of the dime novels with the middle-class morality of the Alger (rags-to-riches) novel” (p. 47). In 1912, the year Gilbert Patten retired as the author of the Merriwell stories, Owen Johnson published his children’s novel, Stover at Yale. Dink Stover looms as the hero of Johnson’s novel, which follows young Dink from his freshman year to the beginning of his senior year at the illustrious Yale University. Johnson’s novel while similar to the Merriwell series, establishes a new era in juvenile sport literature that starts the maturation process of the collegiate athlete-hero.

Many of Frank Merriwell’s challenges did occur on the playing field at Yale in a multitude of sports that included football, baseball, crew, and track. During most of these events, however, the precocious hero and his comrades usually solved a mystery or righted some wrong. In addition, Merriwell left college for a few years, and this respite from college life enabled the multifaceted young man to write a play, purchase a champion thoroughbred horse, and travel the world in his pursuit to stamp out all wrongdoing, all activities contrary to the ideals of amateurism. Stover receives the hero worship typical of all college football standouts, but faces moral adversity rather than physical (Oriard, 1982). At Yale, Stover challenges the “elitism” at the school, which may appear contradictory to his character considering that as a star football player Stover was one of the elite. By the end of the novel, Stover resolves all the conflicts with the university and its social structure, and returns for his senior year “as a genuine leader and champion of democratic value” (p. 40). In the context of a fictitious football novel, Stover at Yale, reveals the same inconsistencies between the portrayal of college football compared to the realities of the sport at the time.

By the time that, Stover at Yale, was published, football had purged itself of all mass formation plays and the restrictions on the forward pass were removed, but only after several deaths on the gridiron. President Roosevelt met with the presidents of the Big Three - Yale, Harvard, and Princeton - at the start of the 1905 during which he discussed the importance of playing the game “within the spirit of the rules” (Lewis, 1969, p. 720). However, the public concern over football soared as a rash of casualties left twenty-three young men dead as a result of injuries acquired on the gridiron (Watterson, 1988). After NYU Chancellor MacCracken witnessed the death of a Union College player during a game against NYU, the impetus was provided to call another meeting for football leaders, but this one was not limited to the presidents and coaches from Yale, Princeton, and Harvard. Out of this meeting rose the Intercollegiate Athletic Association, but without the support of the Big Three no reform would be possible. On January 12, 1906, the old Rules Committee met and decided to join with the Intercollegiate Athletic Association, which became the National Collegiate Athletic Association in 1910.

Unlike the clean play and excellent students seen in Johnson’s novel, violence as well as eligibility issues continued to trouble football despite the newly founded governing organization. In 1909, several well-publicized deaths resulted in the cry, once again, for the abolition of football. In addition, “tramp players” were employed by many teams as in a case involving the University of Pennsylvania in which a player, not even enrolled in classes, performed so well at a game that he stayed to practice with the team the following week (Watterson, 1988). Although eligibility issues were noted, most remained ignored while the violence problems were promptly addresses. After the deaths in 1909, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association met to reinstate the forward pass along with several other rules, including seven men on the scrimmage line, no pushing or pulling, no interlocking interference (i.e., the flying wedge), and four fifteen-minute quarters (Watterson, 1988). At the start of 1912, the NCAA adopted the fourth down, changed the point values for touchdowns and field goals, and removed the twenty-yard restriction on the forward pass. It was in this historical context that Johnson wrote and published Stover at Yale, but the discrepancies between fiction and reality remained with the fictional accounts presenting a kinder, gentler football and very scholarly athletes worthy of all the praise heaped upon them.

The athlete-hero worship in Stover at Yale carries over from both the daily press as well as the dime store novel fiction. Stover experiences this exaggerated praise firsthand on the train ride to Yale. In the following passage, Stover’s reputation as a football player precedes him:

“There’s a couple of fellows from Lawrenceville coming up,’ said a voice from a seat behind him. ‘McCarthy and Stover, they say are quite wonders.’”

“I’ve heard of Stover; end, wasn’t he?’”

“Yes; and the team’s going to need ends badly.’”

It was the first time he had heard his name published aboard. He sat erect, drawing up one knee and locking his hands over it in a strained clasp. Suddenly the swimming vista of the smoky cars disappeared, rolling up into the tense crowded, banked arena, with white splotches of human faces, climbing like daisy fields that moved restlessly, nervously stirred by the expectant tensity with which he stood on the open field waiting for his chance to come (Johnson, 1912, p. 6).

Before ever setting foot on the Yale campus, Stover’s place as a hero and eventual legend are assured. The response to and anticipation of Stover as a Yale football player parallels the adulation highly touted recruits received, which secured these players positions as gods on college campuses nationwide.

In the typical style of the sport fiction of the time, the issue of football brutality does not arise. College football had gone through many critical periods during Frank Merriwell’s existence, but by the time of Stover’s introduction all the mass formation plays associated with football were eliminated. Yet the style of play, particularly by the hero, remained clean and non-violent. Johnson (1912) illustrates this point well in a description of Stover’s football skills during an afternoon practice:

Two or three plays through the center, struggling and squirming in the old fashion of football, were succeeded by several tries at his side. Stover, besides three years’ hard drilling, had a natural gift of diagnosis, which, with the savagery of his tackling, made him, even at this period, an unusual end, easily the best of the candidates on the field. He stood on guard, turning inside the attack, or running along with it and gradually forcing his man out of bounds. At the other times he went through the loose interference and caught his man with a solid lunge that was not to be denied (p. 76).

Here, the “old fashion of football” depicts plays full of “struggling and squirming” when the reality of football involved grappling and crushing. The game of football delineated in this passage exemplifies the youthful pleasure often associated with sport, and the boys of this team would earn praise from Camp as such joyful play suggests the players obtain only “glory and satisfaction” from the game. Stover “had a natural gift of diagnosis” that vaguely resembles Merriwell’s ability to “divine in advance,” once again suggesting the god-like abilities of these gallant fiction heroes. The way that Stover plays the game of football sounds graceful and almost gentle as he “gradually forces his man out of bounds” or “caught his man with a solid lunge.” Stover plays a respectable, gentlemanly version of football that does not attempt to run other players down or injure them with a devastating blow. Unfortunately, college football was a blood-drenched sport full of violent fights and deliberately cruel plays that left many a player face down and lifeless on the field.

One very obvious difference between the Merriwell tales and Johnson’s novel appears in the treatment of the student-athlete. Merriwell performed well enough in his studies to pass and participate in his various sports, perpetuating the idea that student-athletes are in college to play sports rather than learn. Johnson, although further persisting with the image of the “dumb jock,” elaborates on Stover’s schoolwork while previous fiction stories only assumed the athlete to be a good student, but not outstanding. Stover’s attitude towards his academic work can be observed in the following excerpt:

Every hour was taken up with the effort of mastering his lessons, which he then regarded, in common with the majority of his class, as a laborious task, a sort of necessary evil, the price paid for the privilege of passing four years in pleasant places with congenial companions (Johnson, 1912, p. 97).

Whether or not the hero attains academic greatness, Stover puts forth “effort” into “mastering his lessons,” which seems ironic because just “effort” on the gridiron would be deemed unacceptable. Interestingly, Johnson places Stover with mere mortals as his opinion about the workload coincides “with the majority of his class.” The important point here addresses issues as pertinent today as in 1912, and that is academic standards for athletes and eligibility. In order to keep a dominant football team, professors during football’s early days would pass players, while at some institutions the players never even attended class and their enrollment was suspect. Once again, juvenile sport fiction paints a picture that distorts the reality of college football, the players, and the practices that occurred around the sport, leaving an idealistic version that became a paragon to young boys across the country in the early twentieth century.

College football emerged slowly from English rugby, evolving into today’s game over a period of forty years. Promoting the changes in college football was Walter Camp, the leader of the Yale football program, which became the epitome of football success. Football’s popularity increased after twenty years of development primarily due to the interest in the sport by the daily press. The relationship that developed between college football and the press benefited both participants by creating a demand for football games outside the realm of academe and increasing the readership of daily newspapers with fans eager for details of their favorite teams. In addition, Camp used the newspapers to express the “collegiate ideal” of football that stress gentlemanly play, amateurism, and participation based primarily on the “love of the game.” However, football barely survived its infancy with the brutality characteristic of the game, and throughout the 1890’s and the 1900’s, many teams dropped their football programs or at least considered the action.

The popular press chose to portray a different image of football to the American people. Across the pages of many dailies, Camp’s ideal football became the norm with elegant prose comparing football to the art of war and initiating the hero worship of the college athlete. As the sport coverage became more exaggerated in the papers, the virtuous game envisioned by Walter Camp formed itself upon the pages of juvenile sport literature. The protagonist of a dime store novel, Frank Merriwell, asserted himself as the model for children’s sport fiction from 1896 to the present while also embodying Camp’s “collegiate ideal.” Along with perpetuating the hero worship now a familiarity with star college football players, the Merriwell saga and subsequent fiction glossed over the realities of the college game. In descriptions of games, the play in fiction never appears brutal while at the same time seeming manly. The state of college football today directly relates to the game of the past. Issues of eligibility, amateurism, and fair and clean play remain heavily debated today after years of argument and adjustment. Although the media now reports on the downfalls of college sport, and often clamor for reform, the same ideals of amateurism and playing for the spirit of the game are still associated with college athletics, and many spectators still believe in these ideals over a hundred years after being introduced by the legendary Walter Camp.


Works Cited