"The Steel Strike of 1959 drove the iconic mill town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, into despair. But in a time of crisis, this small community just outside Pittsburgh found glory on its high school field. After five undefeated seasons under the firm but compassionate guidance of future-Hall of Fame coach Chuck Klausing, the Braddock Tigers had the national record for consecutive wins in their sights. Even Sports Illustrated rushed to cover this history-making team, which dramatically cemented its legacy on the very last play of the season. In the words of Klausing himself, "Greg Nichols couldn't have written it better if he'd been on the sidelines with us." But more than simply the inspirational story of a record-breaking team, this intimate chronicle recounts the striking workers who stood tall against the steel industry--and a setback in the Supreme Court--and whose strength was mirrored in the field heroics of steel-town boys on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons. Striking Gridiron takes us from the grueling preseason to the sidelines, from the school hallways to the streets and homes, to reveal a beleaguered blue-collar town from a bygone era"--
In the midst of a strike and economic uncertainty, a football team from an iconic steel town just outside Pittsburgh set out to capture its sixth straight season without a loss, uniting a region and inspiring the nation. In the summer of 1959, most of the town of Braddock, Pennsylvania--along with half a million steel workers around the country--went on strike in the longest labor stoppage in American history. With no paychecks coming in, the families of Braddock looked to its football team for inspiration. The Braddock Tigers had played for five amazing seasons, a total of 45 games, without a single loss. Heading into the fall of ‘59, this team from just outside Pittsburgh, whose games members of the Steelers would drop by to watch, needed just eight victories to break the national record for consecutive wins. Sports Illustrated and other media descended upon the banks of the Monongahela River to profile the team and its revered head coach, future Hall of Famer Chuck Klausing, who molded his boys into winners while helping to effect the racial integration of his squad. While the townspeople bet their last dollars on the Tigers, young black players like Ray Henderson hoped that the record would be a ticket to college and spare them from life in the mills alongside their fathers. In Striking Gridiron, author Greg Nichols recounts every detail of Braddock's incredible sixth, undefeated season--from the brutal weeks of summer training camp to the season's final play that defined the team's legacy. In the words of Klausing himself, "Greg Nichols couldn't have written it better if he'd been on the sidelines with us." But even more than the story of a triumphant season, Nichols's narrative is an intimate chronicle of small-town America during the hardest of times. Striking Gridiron takes us from the sidelines and stands on game day into the school hallways, onto the street corners, and into the very homes of Braddock to reveal a beleaguered blue-collar town from a bygone era--and the striking workers whose strength was mirrored by the football heroics of steel-town boys on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons.
The quarterback sends his wide receiver deep. The crowd gasps as he launches the ball. And when he hits his man, the team's fans roar with approval-especially those with the deep pockets. Make no mistake; college football is big business, played with one eye on the score, the other on the bottom line. But was this always the case? Brian M. Ingrassia here offers the most incisive account to date of the origins of college football, tracing the sport's evolution from a gentlemen's pastime to a multi-million dollar enterprise that made athletics a permanent fixture on our nation's campuses and cemented college football's place in American culture. He takes readers back to the late 1800s to tell how schools embraced the sport as a way to get the public interested in higher learning-and then how football's immediate popularity overwhelmed campuses and helped create the beast we know today. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Ingrassia proves that the academy did not initially resist the inclusion of athletics; rather, progressive reformers and professors embraced football as a way to make the ivory tower less elitist. With its emphasis on disciplined teamwork and spectatorship, football was seen as a "middlebrow" way to make the university more accessible to the general public. What it really did was make athletics a permanent fixture on campus with its own set of professional experts, bureaucracies, and ostentatious cathedrals. Ingrassia examines the early football programs at universities like Michigan, Stanford, Ohio State, and others, then puts those histories in the context of Progressive Era culture, including insights from coaches like Georgia Tech's John Heisman and Notre Dame's Knute Rockne. He describes how reforms emerged out of incidents such as Teddy Roosevelt's son being injured on the field and a section of grandstands collapsing at the University of Chicago. He also touches on some of the problems facing current day college football and shows us that we haven't come far from those initial arguments more than a century ago. The Rise of Gridiron University shows us where and how it all began, highlighting college football's essential role in shaping the modern university-and by extension American intellectual culture. It should have wide appeal among students of American studies and sports history, as well as fans of college football curious to learn how their game became a cultural force in a matter of a few decades.
