Today's Tidbit... UChicago and Western Conference Purity Banquets

The football crisis of 1905-1906 led to many rule changes to make the game safer, including legalizing the forward pass. Some schools, like Northwestern, Columbia, Cal, and Stanford, dropped football, while others deemphasized football. For example, the Western Conference (Big Ten) agreed to play only five games apiece.

Another attempt to make the game more gentlemanly came through “Purity Banquets,” an Amos Alonzo Stagg idea that others adopted. The first purity banquet came on the eve of Purdue's visit to UChicago in 1906 for the season opener when Stagg invited Purdue to share a meal with his team at Chicago's Hutchinson Commons, where the teams were intermixed so most had an opposing player to their left and right.

Faculty and coaches spoke to the teams and extolled the virtues of sport and being gentlemen on and off the field, Amos Alonzo Stagg told the crowd:

We meet here on a historical occasion. This is the first time in the history of college athletics rival teams have met at the festal board the night before the game. The idea here is to eliminate the bitterness between rival teams. We too often have held the idea the other fellow was not human, that he should be battered down by fair means or foul. We meet tomorrow as men trained to do our level best in sacrifice to our universities.

Purdue must do its best to win; Chicago must do its best to win. If Purdue wins, all glory to Purdue; if Chicago wins, all glory to Chicago. But remember we must all be gentlemen and sportsmen.

'Rival Football Elevens Attend "Purity" Banquet,' Chicago Tribune, October 20, 1906.

Referee Paul Hackett, who attended, declared that the banquet had cured more football ills than all the new rules of the past ten years. Walter McCornack, who was Northwestern's coach the previous three years, also spoke since he umpired the game the next day.