Intercollegiate Sports in America, 1900-2019

Spring 2019


Story and Fact

Historians tell stories about the past. The discipline of history provides the methodology to ensure that the storytelling matches the data. Every history begins with a proto-story, an idea that the historian has about what happened and why, about the significance of events that occurred at some place and at a particular time. Historians do not approach the past in a random fashion but instead, like all researchers, they begin with an idea they want to test, using the methods of history to understand the information and data available. Unlike experimental scientists, historians cannot recreate the conditions and circumstances of the events and the characteristics of the people they study. They must rely on information about the past that they can discover and verify to support their analysis and interpretation.

Facts: Although we may believe we understand data and facts, they can sometimes prove elusive. Some facts are easier than others. A date of birth or death, the year of a flood or earthquake, the month of the battle, the score of the football game, these all represent data points or facts that we can usually establish with some confidence.

Other data prove more difficult. The beginning of the French revolution, the number of people in America before the European conquest, the number of Africans enslaved and brought to the Western hemisphere and the number of deaths in that trade. These facts prove more elusive. In theory, we have an infinite number of possible facts we can identify within the time and place of our historical story, but in practice we do not need them all to tell the story.

Stories: The story defines the facts we need. If we tell the story of the first football game we need one set of data, but if we tell the story of the first football quarterback's life we need different information. If we want to understand the powerful attraction of sporting events for their fans, we need one set of information, but if we want to know how universities pay for the sporting events that prove so popular, we need different data. The story creates a domain of necessary infoirmation and a hierarchy of importance for all the data within that domain.

The story we can tell based on the result of our the search for information changes as we learn more, as we accumulate additional relevant data. If our anticipated story imagines that college sports succeeds because it produces a major source of revenue for colleges and universities, and we find that most college sports programs lose money, then we must re-frame the story because it does not match the data. Instead, we must look for the explanation for the popularity of college athletics elsewhere, perhaps in the connection between these competitions and academic donations to the university or between sports and student recruitment. The revised story, then, will require us to identify additional, perhaps different information.

Logic and Perspective: Every story has a premise, but in developing stories about the past we have an obligation to logic. We cannot, for example, imagine that corruption in college spots is a phenomenon of this generation unless we have determined that previous generations were pure in their pursuit of athletic success. In every historical study, present-mindedness is always a challenge. We may think that what we believe today is what others in the past believed or should have believed when that is not so. Or, we may believe that today's events represent something new and different, when they simply echo past behavior.

If today we think it inappropriate to ask alumni to pay directly for the personal expenses of student-athletes, we may misunderstand the practices of people in the early 1900s for whom such behavior was not only normal but expected. Our stories must recognize that the expectations of previous generations may not match our frame of reference today. That difference, too, becomes a data point.

When we evaluate a historical work--an article, a paper, or a book--we generally begin with the author's story and we assess the success of that story by how well it matches and uses data, how well it persuades us that the logic of its argument is sound, and how strong its evidence sustains its narrative. If an author writes a story about the corruption of college sports (a common and frequent theme) based on confidential interviews with unnamed players and coaches, we may not have much confidence in the story. If the author writes a similar story based on court cases, financial records, and interviews with named witnesses, (evidence we can verify), we will have much higher confidence in the story.

Good historical stories have a point of view, a purpose, and a solid base of data and evidence. A good historical story explains something that we do not understand or that we have previously misunderstood. A good historical story persuades us by the logic of its argument and by the quality of its information.

Generations, Tools, and Projects

History's stories change over time. We do history not so much to understand the past as to clarify the present. Each of us lives but a short historical time. We make decisions about our lives based on the experience and information that we can acquire up to the moment we must make the decision. Rarely do we have the opportunity to remain aloof until we are old and wise from the experience of observation. Instead, we look to stories of the past to provide us with the vicarious experience that may give us the wisdom and perspective to make better decisions today.

Generations: History's stories speak to different issues at different times. Although history itself, the occurrence of past events, never changes, what we need to learn by studying that history changes. When we worried about our place in the international community, we studied diplomatic history to learn about the conduct of formal relationships among nations. When we needed to understand trade and commerce, we studied economic history. When we worried about the social structure of our society, we studied issues of race, class, and gender.

Each generation must engage the challenges of its time by revisiting the past for experience that speaks to the present. This is why historians reinterpret major events (the civil war, the conquest and colonization of America, the fall of Rome, the rise of China). Sometimes we find new information when we revisit the past because we now need to know different things and so look for different information that did not matter before. The data and evidence needed to understand diplomatic history may not matter as much for the study of social conflict, a topic requiring different information and evidence. Each generation speaks to its own problems, its sense of opportunity now and in the future.

Sometimes history helps us recognize that our moment, challenges, and opportunities are not as unique as we imagine them to be. We want to believe that we live in special times. That our moment of history is significant and unusual and that our problems are particularly important. This may be true, but in most cases it is not. Humans have experienced much in recorded history, and often what appears new is but a somewhat different recurrence of things done before. What we see around us today is indeed important and significant to us, personally, but that does not make today's challenges unique in every respect.

Sports history is particularly prone to this misconception. Sports fans, by the nature of the games they love, focus primarily on the current season, rarely look beyond yesterday to understand today. They imagine that today's challenges of college sports are far greater than at any time in the past, without knowing the past. When someone looks back, of course, today's sports story appears remarkably similar in many ways to yesterday's.

Although history never repeats itself exactly, it nonetheless reflects a continuous process of change and adaptation. Today's version of a continuing process is best understood when we know more than the surface events of the current scandal, crisis, or triumph. For sports people, this present-mindedness conflicts with what appears to be a remarkable interest in the history of their sport, or the history of their university's sports program. The web sites of every university are filled with chronologies of the institution's glorious athletic past. Yet this retrospective enthusiasm for past triumphs is usually highly selective, focused on celebratory elements in the past that reinforce today's agenda. Sports history of this type looks not to yesterday's games to understand today's issues but, instead, to glorify today's anticipated triumphs.

Tools of History: Historians use a wide range of tools in their work. These include reference works of statistical compilations or documentary collections, dictionaries, and general histories, but in all cases historians use the materials left by the past. These materials vary in quality and scope, completeness and relevance, and historians use a careful methodology to validate documents, detect false reports, compare statistics, and assess the completeness of information. Because history is an accessible discipline, many people think they understand history, but they underestimate the work involved.

If history is an exercise in imagination and creativity, it is also an artisan craft. Historians, like other builders of complex things, must have a design, a plan, appropriate materials, and a set of tools. They must use the right materials for the right purpose and follow a logical design for their project.

A mason who shows up with any kind of brick and hopes to make a good wall will end up with an ugly unstable structure. A true artisan will have a design for the wall, a plan for its construction, and a list of the type and quantities of brick and mortar required. The mason's plan will specify the sequence of actions required to construct the wall. Our mason may well be creative and design a beautiful wall, with curves and decorations, but if the mason as artisan does not have the skills, materials, and tools to build the wall or builds it with inappropriate materials and inadequate tools, then all the creativity will not produce a quality wall, but a false and weak structure.

Historians, too, can imagine a beautiful historical story, but if they do not do the artisan work required to design, plan, and build that story, the resulting history will be weak, unpersuasive, and false. Much of what historians do in their training and in their work is artisan craft: finding sources, constructing arguments, and testing them against the available information for validity and logic.

When we watch the master bricklayer at work building a wall, it appears effortless, natural, and the result admirable. When we read the accomplished historian's work we see what also looks effortless, natural, and admirable. If we, as amateurs, try to build a brick wall, we immediately discover that there is much about bricklaying we do not know, there are skills we have not learned, and there are tools we cannot use. If we rush to write history without a clear understanding of the tools and training the project requires, we too will find the task a challenge and the result unsatisfactory.

©2019