American Football Becomes the Dominant Intercollegiate National Pastime

Abstract

American colleges in the nineteenth century rejected British cricket for baseball and British soccer and British rugby for American football. While Americans copied British culture in many ways, they were often not direct copies. The historical concept of American Exceptionalism has been questioned by historians, but if there ever was an American Exceptionalism, the cases for the American games of organised baseball and football surely can be made. The actions of several individuals and influence of a variety of forces insured the creation of and dominance of American football as the intercollegiate sport of choice by the turn of the nineteenth century. In American institutions of higher education ‘gridiron football', in the vernacular of that era, represented the nascent ‘national pastime' that triumphed on US campuses.