Chronicles Of Faith by Patterson Frederick D. Goodson Martia Graham

Author:Patterson, Frederick D.,Goodson, Martia Graham.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780817382834
Publisher: University of Alabama Press

The strongest opposition I faced on campus while I was president, other than that from individuals who had personal interests, came from alumni, who were unhappy because I would not go out and buy football athletes. The alumni aren’t afraid of the president. They’re already out of school, and they’ll say what they think. As the president, I usually tried to accommodate them within reason. Sometimes it wasn’t possible.

When I visited a city in which there was an alumni club, I frequently met with its members. At these gatherings the poor athletic performance of the institution was a matter of discussion. Usually these alumni weren’t contributing any money to the school to speak of, but the performance of their alma mater’s athletic teams was a source of pride. For many of them, the reputation of an outstanding team may have afforded more favorable publicity for the school than what we were doing academically. The alumni wanted bragging rights.

During my administration, Tuskegee was being defeated regularly at football. Earlier, Tuskegee had had a long string of highly successful teams composed of players from our high school right through its college seniors; you didn’t have to be in our college division to play on the Tuskegee team. Some students played long enough to be good. A guy named Stevens was known all over the South as a fellow who could run with the football. Big Mule and his brother Little Mule also had reputations. Then there was the Adams family, a noted clan of Tuskegee graduates who were all six-foot, two hundred pounders. However, when Dr. Moton added the final two years of the college curriculum, transforming us from a normal school into a four-year college, only students in the college division were allowed to play on the Institute teams. The alumni were unhappy because they wanted Tuskegee football teams to win as they had in the past. I wanted good teams too, but I wasn’t willing to use our already scarce resources to entice students to come to Tuskegee just to play ball.

We were trying to give the best education the students could afford, but Tuskegee did not have much money. If I spent money on athletes, that money couldn’t go into education. I didn’t see buying football players—and the bragging rights they might give us—as worth the expense. “Years from now, when our hired athletes have finished college and can’t make a living at tennis or football or basketball,” I told the alumni, “they will be very unhappy people. I want Tuskegee graduates to be able, with their education, to start a good job and hold it. I don’t think football will help.”

In this day and time, when football players have so many opportunities to play after college, I might have felt differently. I might have helped to recruit outstanding athletes and to give them whatever help I could. Today money is involved for those schools whose alumni become professional athletes. But in those days, all blacks had was “bragging rights” about what their team had done.

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