Super Fans in PARADE

Writer Will Leitch wrote an intelligent PARADE Magazine cover story today on super fans. While I wish there was a bit more historical context (I am quoted briefly, but not about football's past), the piece does a good job highlighting some of the themes that seem to crop up again and again in fan studies: fandom is an extension of audiencing into everyday life, fans form a deep sense of community, fandom builds identity and friendships, etc. Leitch located and talked to actual fans, allowing them to explain their own behavior and avoiding the usual dismissive narratives of fans as dangerously pathological or superficially amusing. Good for him and for PARADE (which, let's be honest, is not known for the weight of its social analysis) in taking fandom seriously as a constructive social phenomenon.

Football Girl

From Jesse Lynch Williams, The Girl and the Game, and Other College Stories, 1908.

The "football girl" was a type of audience member in the world of collegiate sports at the beginning of the twentieth century. She was defined by a particular historical context involving both the emergence of the "co-ed" on America's college campuses and the growing prevalence of football as the competitive game of choice between institutions in the late 1890s and early 1900s. (Aside from a comic recording by Miss Rae Cox in 1907 titled "Baseball Girl," depicting the ups and downs of a fan's emotions during a game, there is no significant corollary in America's other pastime).

Similar to the matinee girl, the football girl was a common subject of male journalistic curiosity. That someone of the "fairer sex" (gender stereotypes of women as emotional, overly-sensitive, and nurturing were alive and well in the 1900s) would be interested in watching a competitive match involving "brute" physical force was both titillating and confounding for many male writers. Historical descriptions in magazines and books typically described the football girl as separate from "regular" male fans, giving her both "special" and marginalized status, as Freeman Freebush demonstrated in his National Magazine article on football in 1897:

 “…So much for the player. Now for the people who follow the sport. There is an interesting assortment. There is, of course, first of all, the great body of college students, the men who know the game better than they do their alphabet.  At a very respectable distance from them comes the “old grads,” the men who year after year steal away from their business or their profession and “take in” the big matches as religiously as any youth of twenty. On that great day or days they don their colors, swing into line and cheer as lustily as in the days when the world had no care for them. After the above two types comes the average citizen, the man who attends the big games, not always from any great love of the sport but because he makes it a principle of his life to see all the big shows. Anything grand in the spectacular line and he is there. He is the man, moreover, who cheers for the winning team, the “upper-dog” fellow. In his wake, comes the inevitable “little mucker,” always irrepressible, always much in evidence. How some of these urchin-sports manage to secure the price of admission is indeed a sphinx problem, but without them, their antics and their wise remarks, the event would seem sorely incomplete.
  I reserve a separate paragraph in honor of the last and greatest group of spectators—the girls. The world has man creations but none quite so fetching as the football girl. You think you see the American maiden at her best at dances, promenades and summer resorts, but you don’t. She is tame on these occasions compared to the moment when she makes her triumphant entry on Hampden Park or Manhattan Field, a moving vision of bright eyes, sweet smiles, gay colors and a wealth of flowers. A bevy of such starts a cheer from the grand stand all along the line. Excitement and enthusiasm give luster to their faces, anticipation eagerness to their manner. Perhaps they are a trifle conscious of the striking picture they make before such a multitude, and the influence is as wine. Who knows? I’m sure I don’t.” [Freeman Furbush. “Football As We Find It.” National Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 2, November 1897: 161]

Writers regularly marveled at the possibility that women would want to watch football. Commenting on the Yale-Princeton game on Thanksgiving, 1880, for example, writer Henry Chadwick took special pains to note the stamina of the football girls in the audience, who stayed to the end of the game--through a snowstorm--just like the male spectators: 

“…The crowd present to see the match was thoroughly a representative American assemblage. Intelligent in its judgment and in its appreciation of the best points of the contest, full of vim and excitement, and bent on seeing fair play. While partisan feeling was displayed, it was too evenly distributed to exhibit any one-sided prejudices. Both sides were encouraged, and both had a fair filed provided for them. Moreover, there was American pluck shown in the staying powers of the assemblage in facing a heavy snowstorm to see the battle out to its close. In this the ladies present—and plenty of bright eyes gleamed on the manly players in the field from the grand stand—displayed as much spirit as the men. They stood it out to the last, like true American girls, who know no flinching when called upon to countenance their favorites of the opposite sex. Fortunately, the list of wounded in the battle was unusually small, despite the rough mauling and tackling they were in turns subjected to.”
[Henry Chadwick, “Foot-Ball: The College Championship” Brentano’s Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 3,  December 1880: 243-44.]

Conversely, writers rationalized women's presence at such a raucous sporting event by rendering them objects of beauty. As writer Jesse Lynch Williams suggested:

“…A good deal has been said about the American out-of-door girl. She is seen at about her best, I think, at a college football game. Of all the women of all the outdoor crowds in the world, so far as I have had the opportunity of looking them over, these animated faces are the loveliest. Two old bachelors, who are not very ancient, and who always go to games together, have an interesting scheme for deciding which shall pay for the dinner which concludes their day’s fun; they bet on which color will be sported by the greater number of pretty girls. So, as the crowd passes by, they solemnly check off each two girls in turn, according to her colors and her comeliness. That evening they toast all of them.” [Jesse Lynch Williams, “The Day of the Game,” Outing Magazine, 1907: 145]

Image from “The Day of the Game,” Outing Magazine, 1907. Note that the caption suggests that the women are not fans, attending a game for their own pleasure, but rather  the "sisters, cousins, and aunts" of the players. 

An anonymous poem in Judge's Library: A Magazine of Fun focused on the football girl not as a diversion for male audience members but more specifically as a muse for the "strenuous lusty play" of the men on the field: 

The strife is fierce on the gridironed field,

Where the lines of battle sway,

And strength and spirit alike are steeled 

For strenuous, lusty play.

The banner of fame streams forth as prize,

Its beckoning folds unfurl;

But mightier far is the flag that flies

In the hand of the football girl.

And many a stripling chants full oft 

the words of his college cheer,

And many a rival flaunts aloft

His colors of meaning dear.

But, straining phalanx or quivering rows,

Ah, where is the blind, dull churl

Whose heart swells not at the hue that glows

On the cheek of the football girl?

Renown will come to a favored 

The emulous crowd among

Their praise be spread by a generous crew,

In deafening chorus sung.

But, oh, most fortunate he of all

Who, after the furious swirl,

May hear his name as a token fall

From the lips of the football girl.

[Judge’s Library: A Magazine of Fun, No. 173, August 1903: n.p.]

This kind of evidence provides accumulates gender stereotypes and romantic fantasies rather than useful knowledge about women's football culture; we only know about the "football girl" through male eyes. It's clear that women were attending college football games in considerable numbers at the turn of the century and that their participation appeared segregated--both in the stands and in accounts of the games. But I'm still searching for evidence that might help us to learn more about the actual motivations and experiences of these female fans. How did they understand their own participation at games? How did they talk to one another about the play on the field? To what extent were they aware of male assumptions about their participation? Did they care? How did they negotiate those perceptions?

Fans on the Field

World Series, 1903

Huntington Ave Park, Boston, 1904

Ohio Football League Championship, 1906

Brookside Park, Cleveland, 1914

Stagg Field, Chicago, 1915. Chicago History Museum.

One of the things that impresses me most when I look at images of early sporting events is just how close the audience was to the field of play. While this is still generally true for amateur and college games, in professional sports, the grounds of play have become sacred; audiences cannot enter the space during game time without risking censure, arrest, or a heavy fine. In fact, when fans are allowed to cross the boundaries of the field, that act is always ritualized and marked as special; it's okay when a home team wins a championship, for example, or when one has paid a fee for a specially-guided tour.

But it wasn't always so. Look at these images. Before stadiums and bleachers organized the flow of sports crowds into designated areas, audiences tended to congregate as close as possible to the players. Especially in baseball, the audience helped to shape the field's broader outlines; in some games, fans were actually on what we could today consider the frame of the field. In all, fans' bodies, voices, and dynamic responses must have been a far more integral part of the game.

Yale Football Game, 1879

In football, around the turn of the century, it was decided that something had to be done about the crowds. As Walter Camp explained in his 1894 book, American Football, audiences were starting to create problems for the news kinds of highly-ruled play that had developed. In other words, they needed to be separated from the game:

To-day the teams which meet to decide the championship are brought up to the execution of at least twenty-five different plays, each of which is called for by a certain distinct signal of its own. The first signals given were “word signals;” that is, a word or a sentence called out so that the entire team might hear it and understand whether a kick or a run was to be made. Then, when signals became more general, “sign signals” (that is, some motion of the hand or arm to indicate the play) were brought in and became for a time more popular than the word signals, particularly upon fields where the audience pressed close upon the lines, and their enthusiastic cheering at times interfered with hearing word signals. Of late years numerical combinations have become most popular, and as the crowd is kept at such a distance from the side lines as to make it possible for teams to hear those signals, they have proven highly satisfactory… (120-121)

Compare these two images of the first Rose Bowl in 1902 and then the first game in the new Rose Bowl stadium in 1923:

The audience is bigger, obviously, but what's notable, I think, is the extent to which they have been moved, away from the field, up on grandstands, and behind barriers. I wonder what the relationship of this removal is to the late 19th century "disciplining of spectatorship" in theater and music, where audiences were asked to silently behold--or, at least, not interfere with--the unfolding of a work onstage? Or is this all simply progress--audiencing made more convenient, the field made visible to all, the game allowed to be played as a pure contest between teams?  

Panoramic Audiences

The "panorama," a wide all-encompassing view of a subject (usually a landscape or a battle), was a regular feature of urban popular culture for much of the 19th century. Panoramas were painted on wide and sometimes cylindrical canvases and some had mechanisms that allowed them to rotate, but all offered spectators the illusion of immersion in a scene. Once photography became more common in the late 19th century, more "realistic" panoramas of cities and national parks were created by placing several wide-angle shots side-by-side; by 1900, specially-designed panoramic cameras were used by professional photographers to depict large structures, geographical expanses, and groups of people.

Panoramic photographers seemed especially interested in the increasingly large audiences for political rallies, sporting events, and concerts at the turn of the century. A stadium or theater audience was difficult to reproduce with an ordinary camera, since it typically stretched beyond the viewing field. But the panoramic camera could capture the entire seating area of a hall or amphitheater (albeit with slight distortion). And by representing the whole of that audience from a fixed position, something that was not possible to the normal eye, the panorama artfully enhanced the audience's significance. Such photographs are an untapped resource for audience studies in terms of the detail they offer about performance spaces, as well as audience behavior, public decorum, and the vital role of spectators and listeners in American popular culture.

The Library of Congress has an excellent collection that is available online. A few samples of the photographs follow.

New Theatre, Chicago, 1906

President Wilson addressing Associated Ad Clubs, Independence Square, Philadelphia

Harvard-Dartmouth Game, 1903

Rubenstein Club, 1908

The next three are too big to depict properly, but the detail is amazing. You can find them here and here and here....

Squires-Burns Fight, 1907

Arbor Day 1908

President Taft, State Fair, Detroit, 1911

Audience Engineering

In the mid-19th century, the popularity of tours by European virtuoso performers (Fanny Elssler, Jenny Lind, Leopold de Meyer, Ole Bull, etc.) had promoters and city leaders scrambling to find venues large enough to accommodate the increasingly large audiences. Older cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans typically had standing theaters or churches that could hold large numbers of people, but many towns and smaller cities had to improvise. Jenny Lind, to the embarrassment of genteel Boston observers, for example, performed in the Fitchburg, Massachusetts, railway station.

Mass meetings of all kinds soon became in demand. Audiences marvelled at the emotions created by huge crowds, especially in urban communities, where residents could suspend their normal isolation and anonymity and see themselves literally gathered, as a single entity. Boston’s National Peace Jubilee, for instance, developed by band leader Patrick Gilmore in 1869, to celebrate the end of the Civil War, was the largest single concert gathering in the United States, including an orchestra of 1,000 (along with a total of 11,000 singers) and an audience of 50,000, all in a temporary coliseum, constructed entirely out of wood.

Interior of the Coliseum of the 1869 National Peace Jubilee

In 1872, Gilmore did it again in the World Peace Jubilee. Architect William G. Preston redesigned the since demolished 1869 coliseum on an even bigger scale, with a seating capacity of 100,000 (and a 2,000-pice orchestra and a chorus of 20,000). 

At events like this, the thunder of applause was as interesting as any performer; indeed, the physicality of the moment created excitement out of risk as much as pleasure. Flyers for the 1869 Jubilee advertised "AN IMMENSE COLISEUM, The largest structure in America, capable of accommodating FIFTY THOUSAND PERSONS, has been erected especially for this occasion." And, as one writer said about the Peace Jubilee in 1872: “Not the least moral feature of the Festival is the applause,--so overwhelming in its demonstration that timid souls have said their prayers and trusted blindly in the stability of wooden rafters.”

Gilmore tried to downplay this risky excitement in his own accounts of the festivals, but clearly it was part of the appeal: “The builders, contractors, architects, and building committee were all gentlemen of great experience, and fully appreciated the responsibility of their task. They knew that the safety and security of Fifty Thousand lives were in their hands, and they took every precaution to guard against accident by making the structure strong and solid enough to bear ten times the weight and pressure to which it would ever be subjected…From morning till night, for weeks and months, the Building Committee, one or all, were almost constantly on the ground, watching every inch of progress made. Fully satisfied that everything possible was being done which the knowledge and experience of the builders and their own foresight could suggest to make the structure safe beyond a doubt, they turned a deaf ear to the malicious rumors that would have swept away all confidence…” (From Patrick Gilmore, History of the National Peach Jubilee and Great Musical Festival, 1871: 277).

Big audiences didn’t disappear—you start to see the impact of mass meetings and concerts, especially, in sports, where stadium construction increases to accommodate audiences for baseball and football. As an article from a gymnasium construction company states, "It is announced in the newspaper column that the Yale football management is to make determined effort to accommodate all the spectators who may wish to attend the Yale-Harvard football game this fall, a condition of affairs which has not existed in previous years. Some 4,000 additional seats are to be erected, giving the gridiron stands a seating capacity of about 31,000. The new stands will be so erected as to close the corners and fill in the sides. Comparison with the Harvard stadium, used for the first time last year, still shows a greater capacity at Cambridge. The Harvard stadium proper seats about 25,000 persons, but by means of additional stands 35,000 can be accommodated. (American Gymnasia and Athletic Record, Vol 1, September 1904-August 1905. Boston: American Gymnasia Company: 11)

Temporary “stands” were one thing; it became clear by the 1890s that the lasting appeal of sports would require more scientific examination of how create solid, safe, and enduring audience structures. I’m only beginning the exploration of this particular science, but here’s a glimpse, from a paper on “live loads”—another term for audience!--delivered at the meeting of the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1904:

"It is freely admitted the writer’s results give figures greatly in excess of those given by the accepted authorities (outside of some municipal building laws), both in the United States and in Europe, but the experiment is one very easily tried by anyone who may feel unconvinced. Doubtless, mixed crowds of men and women, such as football spectators, may weigh less per square foot, with an equal degree of personal discomfort, than the body of students in the writer’s experiments. It should be remembered that a closely packed crowd is not likely to be in a mood to take calmly any undue deflection or appearance of weakness in the floor, and the result of such seeming insecurity is not pleasant to contemplate. In the writer’s opinion, such floors as those of passageways, corridors, standing-room in theaters, assembly rooms without fixed seats, ballrooms, etc., should be calculated for a weight closely approaching 150 lb. per sq. ft., or, in some cases even more, without exceeding the unit stresses of Mr. Schneider’s Paragraph 17. Possibly, a large standing assemblage, such as is common at political meetings, likely to applaud by stamping; or, a throng of dances; or a body of drilling soldier, might call for an additional impact provision."(C. C. Schneider, “The Structural Design of Buildings.” Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Paper No. 997: 443-444)

An image from C. C. Schneider's 1904 paper on "live loads."

Football's Continuous Ovation

Before the establishment of professional football (the American Professional Football Association was founded in 1920), there was college football. Many of the core practices of American football (or "new football") were worked out in this time period, from team cheers to rules of play to techniques for keeping crowds off the field. Interestingly, even a cursory reading of reports from before 1920 shows the extent to which the audience was very much a part of the experience. While today fans might cheer, in the 1890s cheering itself was seriously considered a “play,” contributing to the outcome of any game. For example, regarding the Yale-Princeton Game of 1892, one writer complained that the crowd was not involved enough; Yale won despite the spectators’ lackluster involvement. (“Yale and Princeton, -92.” The Illustrated American, Vol. 12, December 10, 1892, 579):

“The new football,” says a writer in the Nineteenth Century, “is a far more effectual arouser of the unregenerate passions of mankind than either a political gathering or a race meeting…At a modern football match…it is a distinct point that the players are human beings, with sensibilities much on a par with the sensibilities of the spectators. These latter are well aware of the fact. And it is by playing loudly upon their sensibilities that the spectators endeavor to incite their darlings to strain every nerve to win.” 

Not very loudly did the forty odd thousand persons present at the football match, played between the Yale and Princeton teams at the Manhattan Athletic Field, New York-city on Thanksgiving Day, play upon the susceptibilities of the young collegians, but sufficiently loudly to incite Yale to win by 12 to 0. 

It was not nearly as interesting a game as that played between Yale and Harvard at Springsfield, Mass., the Saturday before, for it was a metropolitan game. It was the right thing to see, and probably half the people present knew nothing about and cared less for the game. At the Springfield game, on the other hand, nearly every one who saw it knew something about football and everyone was enthusiastic. In New York it is not "good form" to express too loudly your ‘unregenerate passions….

There are many more descriptions and issues around audience for pre-professional football, some of which I will deal with in separate posts. For now, let me share a description of the emotions of the crowd during a college game, by Freeman Furbush. (“Football As We Find It.” National Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 2, November 1897: 161+). For him, football is all about the spectators. Humorous pieces like this, offered at a time when football was growing as popular entertainment, helped to educate naïve readers—including the literary-minded, middle-class subscribers to National Magazine--about how to think about their own potential participation in the game.