Reform Efforts.

Reformers in the 1930s hoped to deemphasize intercollegiate football. They wanted fewer games, and they wanted coaches to be educators and counselors rather than taskmasters. After the death of a Yale player in 1931, reformers were alarmed that the number of fatalities had almost tripled from 1930 to 1931. But the public was indifferent. A 1931 report of the Carnegie Foundation called for reforms in college football, just as it had done ten years earlier. The report lamented what the foundation felt were corrupting influences (alumni dollars, massive press coverage) that were turning football into a quasi-professional sport rather than a purely collegiate one. At the same time the report cited positive growth in such programs as Notre Dame's and hesitated making any clear-cut recommendations. The report expressed hope that the Depression would do the job of retrenching athletic programs, which, it suggested, students had begun to...