"Fighting Whiskey and Immorality" at Auburn: The Politics of Southern Football, 1919-1927

Abstract

On sunny Saturday afternoon in early November 1927, President Spright Dowell of Alabama Polytechnic Institute, today's Auburn University, walked up gleaming white marble steps of Alabama state capitol on his way to special meeting of his school's board of trustees. The single item on agenda was motion to dismiss him from his job. During his seven-year tenure, Dowell had obtained accreditation, raised admission standards, and improved professional qualifications of faculty. He had created an administrative bureaucracy and introduced modern accounting, auditing, and purchasing procedures. Prior to his arrival, registration had been two-week-tong nightmare; now it was accomplished in two days. He energetically lobbied notoriously parsimonious Alabama legislature for increased appropriations, and when sufficient funding was not forthcoming, he orchestrated fundraising drive that collected over half million dollars. These funds paid for construction of nearly two dozen campus buildings and such vital infrastructural needs as safe and reliable water supply. Yet this solid record was overshadowed by raging public controversy sparked by decline of once-powerful Auburn football program. Dowell had deemphasized football from beginning of his tenure, and 1927 team was about to complete first winless season in school history. Trustees and football boosters publicly criticized Dowell, and delegation of students met with Governor Bibb Graves to report that student body had voted overwhelmingly for his dismissal. The trustees responded by mounting formal investigation, complete with public hearings. The flurry of charges and countercharges paralyzed campus and dominated headlines for month, and trustees now held Dowell's fate in their hands. (1) Although he likely knew that he had little chance to keep his job, Dowell remained publicly confident as he entered showdown in Graves's office. In characteristically blunt fashion, he asserted that his achievements outweighed puerile clamor of football-crazed mob. He maintained contemptuous, self-righteous attitude toward students and alumni who sought his ouster. He regarded as absurd notion that winning football program could be sine qua non of his tenure in office. He have known better. Like numerous university presidents before and since, Spright Dowell learned that vicissitudes of football can make or break collegiate administration. The trustees' meeting was brief and to point: Dowell was out, effective at end of academic year. He had dismissed his critics as an irresponsible mass possessed of mob spirit, but in end, trustees had sided with mob. (2) The Dowell controversy is partially explained as an episode in long-running struggle between athletics and academics in American higher education. Dowell was resolutely hostile to big-time intercollegiate football, and he was determined that athletic tail not wag academic dog at Auburn. He considered football program a continuous problem that threatened to ... more serious work of institution. He undertook quixotic campaign to diminish the unnatural and exaggerated position which [football] occupies in eyes of students and of public. He suggested that intercollegiate sports were no more important than intramural athletic competition, intercollegiate debate teams, student orchestras, dramatic club, glee club, or agricultural and engineering societies. Dowell seemed to think that if he lectured campus community and public zealously enough about dangers of big-time football, he could convince them that their priorities were misplaced. Colleges, he insisted, existed primarily to train men of character for business of life, and football should not be allowed to sidetrack or eclipse real purpose for which this institution exists. …