College Football 1938

[SU68]

Here's a link to a pretty cool 1938 map of college football teams.

http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~249434~5515817

 

[SWC75]

Look at all the major college teams in the northeast. There may have been too many of them to form a conference and the schools got so used to being independetns it was years before they finally did. By that time we'd lost Penn State. Maybe we could have Notre Dame at one time, too.

 

[atom58]

Interestingly, you will search in vain for Florida State on the 1938 map as they were the "Florida State College for Women" from about 1905 until 1947 when they became Florida State University. They had once been simply "Florida State College" and played college football including games against Georgia Tech until the Buckman Bill in the State Legislature made them one of the best "girls' schools" of that era. UF opposed the creation of FSU's football program saying there were not enough HS players in the state to supply both state programs.

Another interesting retrospective is 1959's proposed "Airplane Conference" (under section 1.1 below) which was ultimately vetoed by the service academies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconference

 

[SWC75]

Interestingly, you will search in vain for Florida State on the 1938 map as they were the "Florida State College for Women" from about 1905 until 1947 when they became Florida State University. They had once been simply "Florida State College" and played college football including games against Georgia Tech until the Buckman Bill in the State Legislature made them one of the best "girls' schools" of that era. UF opposed the creation of FSU's football program saying there were not enough HS players in the state to supply both state programs.

Another interesting retrospective is 1959's proposed "Airplane Conference" (under section 1.1 below) which was ultimately vetoed by the service academies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconference

I have seen a verision of that included Syracuse base don our championship that year. Miami was also involved. The AAWU was the predecessor of the Pac 8/10/12 and had come flying apart because most of the schools were found cheating by the NCAA, not unlike what happened to the Southwestern Conference, (the SWC!!!), in the 90's.

 

[Scooch]

Look at all the major college teams in the northeast. There may have been too many of them to form a conference and the schools got so used to being independetns it was years before they finally did. By that time we'd lost Penn State. Maybe we could have Notre Dame at one time, too.

Very cool map. The changing priorities of northeastern colleges really destroyed any chance there could ever be a viable big-time conference. In a different universe we're in a league with a mix of Ivies, service academies, and football-focused private schools.

 

[atom58]

Another couple of very interesting things the old map shows: (1) the teams in the Mid-Atlantic region that would form the ACC in 1953 were all members of the Southern Conference, which like the Ivy League today, had a ban on post-season play, and (2) the major West Coast conference was the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC). When the ACC formed to escape the ban on bowl games, many names were put forward, but the name Atlantic Coast Conference was the one adopted, I think owing to the fact the PCC was a pretty big deal at that time and the East Coast geography went with the ACC name:

http://www.webcitation.org/65Bl9Updo

I couldn't copy and paste the names (suggested by sports fans) from the address above but many of them had a "Deep South flavor".

As SWC75 mentioned, the PCC disintegrated in 1959 b/c of numerous scandals:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Coast_Conference

 

[SWC75]

That year's bowl games:

That's Carnegie Tech losing the Cotton Bowl to national champion TCU. They are now Division III's Carnegie Mellon.

The touchdown you see Duke giving up on the last play of the Rose Bowl was the only score of any kind they'd given up all season. They lost 3-7 to USC.

 

[texascpa]

Of course every team's banner is represented on the outer perimeter of the map or the wheel, except, guess who...Syracuse.