University of Chicago. Dept. of Physical Culture and Athletics

The University of Chicago’s Division of Physical Culture and Athletics was established in 1892. It was governed by one of the four original University Boards with authority over non-instructional areas of the University. It was later reorganized as the Department of Physical Culture and Athletics (1911-1933), the Office of Physical Education (1934-1937), Men's and Women's Divisions of Physical Education (1937-1974), and finally as the Department of Physical Education and Athletics.

Founding President William Rainey Harper envisioned a university that comprehended athletic training and competition. Under the directorship of Amos Alonzo Stagg (1892-1933), the University developed a strong intercollegiate, intramural, and class sports program. A founding member of the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives in 1895, more commonly known as the “Big Ten Conference,” Chicago’s stadium at Stagg Field seated some 50,000 spectators by the end of 1920s. The Maroons’ football supremacy earned them the nickname “Monsters of the Midway,” later borrowed by the Chicago Bears in the 1940s and the 1980s. The Chicago-Michigan football game, held on Thanksgiving Day, was a major sporting and social event between 1893 and 1905; the competition was compounded by personal rivalry between Stagg and Fielding Yost, Michigan’s coach.

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