The development of inter-college athletics in America is traced from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, looking in particular at the influence of Harvard and Yale.

Perhaps more than any other two colleges, Harvard and Yale gave form to American intercollegiate athletics--a form that was inspired by the Oxford-Cambridge rivalry overseas, and that was imitated by colleges and universities throughout the United States. Focusing on the influence of these
prestigious eastern institutions, this fascinating study traces the origins and development of intercollegiate athletics in America from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Smith begins with an historical overview of intercollegiate athletics and details the evolution of
individual sports--crew, baseball, track and field, and especially football. Then, skillfully setting various sports events in their broader social and cultural contexts, Smith goes on to discuss many important issues that are still relevant today: student-faculty competition for institutional
athletic control; the impact of the professional coach on big-time athletics; the false concept of amateurism in college athletics; and controversies over eligibility rules. He also reveals how the debates over brutality and ethics created the need for a central organizing body, the National
Collegiate Athletic Association, which still runs college sports today. Sprinkled throughout with spicy sports anecdotes, from the Thanksgiving Day Princeton-Yale football game that drew record crowds in the 1890s to a meeting with President Theodore Roosevelt on football violence, this lively,
in-depth investigation will appeal to serious sports buffs as well as to anyone interested in American social and cultural history.

'Ronald Smith ... displays the same fastidious attention to detail research that distinguished his earlier work, The Saga of American Sports, in this timely and readable narrative. The extensive appendix, a product of many hours spent in search of primary sources in several college archives, anchors the discussion in each of the sixteen skilfully crafted, cleverly connected chapters.' John M. Charles, College of William and Mary in Virginia, Journal of Educational Administration and History, Volume 24, Number 1, January 1992