Rollins Football Team, 1907
Rollins Football Team, 1908
Rollins Football Team, 1921
Do you remember the Rollins Football team? Probably not, the Football program at Rollins was dropped in 1949. The problems associated with college football are well known, especially for smaller colleges that try to support those programs. In the long run, the lack of football saved the college money and time.
Today, the football team is punchline for a college T-shirt and nice trivia question. Yet, the football program at Rollins also gives historians and those interested in sport history a chance to examine race relations in Florida. In 1947, the Homecoming game between Rollins College and Ohio Wesleyan was canceled because the Ohio Wesleyan team wanted to bring an African-American player. When Hamilton Holt, the college president, announced that the Rollins v. Wesleyan football game was canceled, he stressed that the college made this decision to preserve the racial balance in the community. The issue at hand was simple. Should Ohio’s Kenneth Woodward, a Black running back, be allow to play in the game.
The crisis was created in part because the Ohio Wesleyan team, which has promised not to bring Woodward, reversed their decision and press to bring their teammate. Face with allowing the African-American player to attend or suspending the homecoming game, the Board of Trustees and the President chose to stop the game. In deciding to cancel the game, Holt was force to articulate his position on race in United States. A founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Holt was known for his public stands against racial and social intolerance.
Holt argued that while his own family history and personal sentiment opposed racial discrimination, the decision to stop the football game was driven by a desire to preserve the racial climate in Winter Park. The decision to call off the game of course drew attention from people on both side of the issue. Some condemned the decision, while others were mindful of the problems that would have been created by allowing an African-American player to freely compete in the Jim Crow South. Indeed, the racial climate in 1947 offered ample proof that Jim Crow restriction on African-American would be enforced through violence and intimidation. Nonetheless, there was clear evidence that African-Americans were unwilling to take such abuse.
In 1944, a statewide NAACP chapter, under the leadership of Harry T. Moore, began a campaign against lynching and in 1944 the group won a major victory when the state's white only democratic primary was ruled unconstitutional. Moreover, Moore was instrumental in raising African-American voter registration in Florida from five percent in 1934 to thirty percent in 1950, the highest in the South. Moore's story emphasize African-American desire overcome segregation's restriction, but his death in 1951 in a bombing highlights the fears that drove Holt's decision.
The recent story about the creation of a football club on campus has refocused attention on Rollins' Football history. While football's appeal in southern culture has only increased since the end of Rollin's program, the reality of funding a football program have not gotten easier. Indeed, the controversy over the cost of collegiate sport has grown more heated as rising tuition costs lead observers to question the future of access to higher education. Strangely, while professor's salaries are an open question for many critics of higher education, costs associate with sport are seemly accepted. Indeed, while professor salaries have grown little, major salaries for coaches, especially football coaches at major programs have been and continue to be formidable. Whether or not the current effort will result in a return to Rollins' glory days as a football power is yet to be determined. Still, the issues tied to football's re-emergence on campus go beyond play and touch on vital questions linked to rising costs in higher education.
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