I was able to look through copies of the first two written books about MSU athletics. Each were published by John Wendell Bailey 17 years apart, 1930 and 1947. I figured some of you guys might at least appreciate seeing what they looked like and perhaps learning some of the details described within the pages.
The books were written very different from the prints our athletics department puts out today. Bailey provides an overview of the history of MSU at the time, a history of each individual sport that state plays and a history of when MSU incorporated it, and provides information, that I would expect in all athletic books, regarding team records and awards. In the 1947 edition, Bailey gives a detail about the perception of football at the time and it sounds almost identical to the media today. The first of two points that rang home were about how harmful/brutal the sport was to the students that played. Several people, led by the president of Harvard, were pushing to improve student safety and perhaps remove the sport from colleges. The second point harped on how colleges were pumping money into it due to football being the most popular sport. The colleges relied heavily on it to fund the debts of all the other sports that the athletic department supported, which is why it is still much a mainstay today.
The books were written very different from the prints our athletics department puts out today. Bailey provides an overview of the history of MSU at the time, a history of each individual sport that state plays and a history of when MSU incorporated it, and provides information, that I would expect in all athletic books, regarding team records and awards. In the 1947 edition, Bailey gives a detail about the perception of football at the time and it sounds almost identical to the media today. The first of two points that rang home were about how harmful/brutal the sport was to the students that played. Several people, led by the president of Harvard, were pushing to improve student safety and perhaps remove the sport from colleges. The second point harped on how colleges were pumping money into it due to football being the most popular sport. The colleges relied heavily on it to fund the debts of all the other sports that the athletic department supported, which is why it is still much a mainstay today.
