We\u2019re not naive about college football. <\/p>\n
It was blood sport at the turn of the 20th century. According to the website of Dickinson State University\u2019s Theodore Roosevelt Center, the gridiron was known to have \u201cseveral troubling aspects, including excessive violence during play, fatalities on the field, the use of non-student athletes, recruiting scandals, and corrupt referees.\u201d <\/p>\n
News reports tallied at least 18 college football fatalities during the 1905 season. The collegiate game<\/a> survived mostly because then-President Teddy Roosevelt loved the game and pushed for reforms to prevent it from being banned.<\/p>\n None of us remembers that era, but we are nostalgic for the quirky rivalries we grew up with \u2014 the meet-you-in-the-middle Texas-OU<\/a> contest, the Stanford-California (UC Berkeley) Big Game<\/a> with its ax trophy, and the TCU-SMU Battle for the Iron Skillet<\/a>. College football still had devoted fans, but the play itself was safer and officiating more professional than in those early decades. It was scandalous, if not unexpected, when coaches offered nonacademic enticements to attract gifted high school athletes.<\/p>\n Now, at big-time football schools, everybody\u2019s a professional. Some coaches make millions; top players sign lucrative name, image and likeness deals; and ESPN pays billions of dollars for worldwide media rights to College Football Playoff games. <\/p>\n Opinion<\/p>\n