Instilling a Rugged Manhood: The Popular Press Coverage of College Athletics and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, 1896-1916

Within the context of the Progressive era, this dissertation offers an in-depth analysis of the state of intercollegiate athletics around the turn of the twentieth century, the transformations it underwent, and the media's role in that process. The National Collegiate Athletic Association was founded in 1906-in the middle of the Progressive era-after a public outcry for football reform came in 1905, a year that produced eighteen deaths and one hundred forty-nine reported injuries.Using framing theory and the concept of collective memory, this study seeks to explore the coverage of college athletics by popular mass circulation magazines from 1896 to 1916 and the coverage of the National Collegiate Athletic Association by the New York Times and the evening edition of the New York World from 1906 to 1916.Four media frames were found in popular magazines from 1896 to 1916 focusing on college athletics, including Call for Reform, Muscular Christianity, Evils of College Athletics, and Methods in Strategy. The most dominant frame, "Call for Reform," emphasized the constant debate occurring within the pages of these magazines as to whether the benefits of competitive college athletics outweighed their possible evils. The primary examples were commercialism, professionalism, football rule changes, and alumni issues. The "muscular Christianity" frame reiterated the importance and benefits of college athletics as a key to defining men as men worthwhile, stressing a martial mentality. Even though primarily focused on manhood, examples of this frame applied to women's athletics as well, and it was the only one to highlight women's athletics.To combat the tendency of educators and sporting advocates to oversell the benefits of college athletics, popular magazines published articles noting the "evils of college athletics," namely the win-at-any-cost mentality and the hero culture surrounding popular athletes. The most common example of this frame focused on the shift in focus from academic scholarship to athletics. The "methods in strategy" frame provided vivid details to readers as to the ways in which to develop and make an intercollegiate team as well as the proper training for certain sports.Close examination of the New York Times and The Evening World reveals the dawning of the NCAA's evolution into a dominating and powerful regulator of intercollegiate athletics as these newspapers charted the progression of its growing influence over college athletics. As more institutions joined and as the most prestigious institutions gave up their resistance to join, the NCAA began its transformation into the largest and most influential governing body in the field of intercollegiate sports, and the struggle for control of intercollegiate athletics is highlighted throughout this analysis.