[Bad~Rodeo]

Not only did Hutchins buck the dominant trends in philosophy and instruction, he also challenged higher education's emphasis on intercollegiate football. Hutchins abolished the university's football team in 1939 because he believed students needed to focus on scholarship and Chicago should play football only if it could remain competitive with major athletic programs. This was a momentous decision as the Maroons were a founding member of the Big Ten Conference and once a national powerhouse under the famed coaching of Amos Alonzo Stagg. In fact, Stagg, who had retired from Chicago in 1933, had been the first coach in the nation to be a tenured professor, and his large athletics' budget was exempted from normal institutional review. Even as late as 1935, Chicago's Jay Berwanger became the first Heisman Trophy winner, but by 1939 Chicago's scoreboard indicated that the glory days had passed, including a 61 - 0 loss to Harvard. Therefore, despite the legacies, and partly because of them, after much debate the university dropped football.

University of Chicago!

[Logophile]

From the Wall Street Journal, 30 October 2009:

Mr. Hutchins never would've had enough support to ax the football team in 1939, historians say, if Chicago's teams had still been the mighty Monsters of the Midway. (That nickname, now associated with the NFL's Chicago Bears, originated with Mr. Stagg's Maroons; "Midway" refers to a park that runs through campus.) Aiding Mr. Hutchins's cause was Chicago's massive decline on the field—due in part to Chicago's higher academic standards. In 1939, Chicago's final major-college season, the Maroons lost 85-0 to Michigan and 61-0 to Ohio State and Harvard.

Dropping football helped build Chicago's image as a top destination for serious-minded graduate students and faculty. Over 80 Nobel Prize winners have studied, taught or researched at Chicago. "That's part of the magic of Chicago," says Robin Lester, who wrote a book about Mr. Stagg and Chicago football. "That's their thing. It's still a serious place for kids to get an education."

Today, Chicago is once again embracing athletics as part of a larger push to invest in campus life beyond the classroom. Last week, the school celebrated the 40-year anniversary of the return of varsity football; Chicago now plays on the non-athletic-scholarship Division III level. "We're still being true to the notion that it's not in the interest of universities to create mass-entertainment spectacles," says John Boyer, dean of Chicago's undergraduate college. "I always tell people that those games in '39 were the best thing that ever happened to us."

I would like to see BYU emulate Chicago and concentrate on becoming "a serious place for kids to get an education." (It would also be nice to see some BYU alums and faculty win some Nobel Prizes.) I believe that a Division I athletics program is an obstacle to academic success, if only because of the expense.

Frankly, I am also worried that a major scandal involving the athletics programs will tarnish BYU's reputation.

Unfortunately, BYU is not likely to eliminate their intercollegiate athletics programs or even move down to Division III so long as they are still competitive in Division I. As a longtime fan of BYU, it pains me to say this, but here goes: Perhaps the best thing that could happen to BYU would be a few seasons like the ones Chicago had in the late 1930s.