When Geeks Were Gods

Osutein-Sensei On the University of Chicago
& the Foundations of American Football
The most exciting moment in this year's NFL season so far was the Chicago Bears miraculous come-from-behind win in the last minutes of their game against the Arizona Cardinals (as detailed earlier by Jack's Jock). While the game will go down in the records as one of football's most thrilling, what is less known to history is that both of those teams got their names from a most unlikely place: the University of Chicago.

Today the U of C is considered the nerdiest of nerd schools, the place where brilliant but pasty sun-averse students go when they're afraid of being beaten up by the hardened street thugs that attend Harvard. It is, in short, the world's most prestigious Star Trek convention. In its earliest days, however, the U of C was an athletic powerhouse that not only dominated, but partially invented, the game of American football.

Much of that invention can be credited to one man: Amos Alonzo Stagg, coach at the U of C from its founding in 1892 to 1932. Stagg was a first-rate innovator, and while the coach at Chicago he devised a number of elements that we now consider the most basic components of the game. Namely, the huddle, the lateral pass, numbering plays, the tackling dummy, and even putting players' names on the backs of their uniforms.

The University itself became a founding member of college football's most storied conference, the Big Ten. Under Stagg, Chicago rose to be one of the best teams in the country, winning seven Big Ten championships, and the national championship in 1905. Oddly enough, the U of C is the only team that remains undefeated against Notre Dame. So dominant were they, that the Chicago team was nicknamed the "Monsters of the Midway," after the Midway Plaisance that borders the campus.

Even after Stagg left Chicago in 1932, the University continued to make football history. A U of C quarterback named Jay Berwanger became not only the first man to win the Heisman Trophy in 1935, he also became the Heisman Trophy (the statue atop the award is modeled after Berwanger). Yes, every year, the NCAA honors that year's best offensive player by giving him a statue of a U of C alumn. Irony abounds.

In 1939, concerned that a sport as violent as football was incompatible with the mission of a scholarly university, the U of C football program was shut down. Stagg Field, named after the great coach, remained standing, and it was directly beneath its west stands that Enrico Fermi and other scientists ushered in the atomic age in 1944 by creating the first self-sustained atomic reaction as part of the Manhattan Project. As Kurt Vonneghut notes wryly in Time Quake, "The university considered football too violent, so they shut down the stadium and built a nuclear bomb factory instead." Irony, of the apocalyptic variety, abounds.

With its legendary football program gone, the U of C started down the long, dark road to dorkdom. Eventually, Stagg Field was torn down to make way for the university's main library, the Regenstein, arguably the epicenter for all nerdiness on earth. However, the U of C's gridiron legacy endures, both in college and pro football. Including, as I noted earlier, in the names of two NFL teams.

The Chicago Bears apparently believed the moniker "Monsters of the Midway" was too good to pass up, so they adopted it (along with the stylized "C" the U of C team had used on its helmets)—despite the fact that Soldier Field is nowhere near the Midway Plaisance. It must have been the alliteration. Whatever it was, it stuck, and the Bears have been nicknamed the "Monsters of the Midway" ever since (currently, their crushing defensive line is most often given the title).

At that time, however, Da Bears were not the only team in town. As with baseball's Cubs and White Sox, Chicago football was initially divided on a North Side/South Side line. Da Bears originally played at Wrigley while the Chicago Cardinals played to the south. The South Siders were a bit downtrodden and their first uniforms were actually old jerseys borrowed from the powerhouse college team at the University of Chicago. The jersey's official U of C maroon color had faded to cardinal red, so the coach nicknamed his team the "Chicago Cardinals." When the team moved to Arizona, they kept the name but added cardinals to their helmets, perhaps to make it look like they were named after the bird rather than poorly washed
hand-me-down laundry.

So, last month, when the Monsters of the Midway took to the field against the Cardinals, with their names on their backs, and took to huddles and threw lateral passes, it was all thanks to the U of C. And now that you know a little more about the invention of American football, will you enjoy the game that much more? Is the Heisman Trophy just a tad more meaningful? Does the Regenstein Library seem a little bit cozier? Has the U of C become just a little more hip?

Probably not.

But at least you’ve learned some great trivia to pass around at cocktail parties. And knowing trivia that is utterly trivial is something that all U of C alumns, whether the jocks of old or the nerds of now, can truly appreciate.