Today's Tidbit... When Students Built Football Stadiums

(1906 Texas yearbook)

College athletic teams began as student-run organizations. Athletes initially trained themselves and then formed athletic associations to handle the finances and hire coaches. Athletic administration then transitioned to faculties, alums, graduate student managers, and, finally, professionals.

Those transitions did not occur evenly across the nation. While alumni donations allowed the administrators at Harvard and Syracuse to open massive concrete stadiums in 1903 and 1907, many schools nationwide had primitive facilities that were improved not by hiring a contractor but by students raising funds and providing the labor during the renovation and expansion process. Though it is hard to imagine today, students at the Universities of Missouri and Texas did just that in 1907.

Missouri entered the 1907 season playing at Rollins Field, which was little more than an open field with seating for 1,500. Big games attracted more people than the available seats, so Mizzou fans and visitors sat in carriages and wagons or stood several deep around the field.

Desiring an improved stadium for the upcoming games with Texas and WashU, the student body organized itself and created a plan to double Rollins Field’s capacity. Working with Dean Waters of the Agriculture Department, the students identified 70 white oaks in a nearby state forest, felled them, hauled the timber out with teams of horses, and used the wood for posts and planks. The students also quarried rocks for the bleacher foundations. The students then used those materials to build an expanded set of bleachers at Rollins Field.

Before, during, and after the building process, other students raised $1,100 for various expenses by selling silk ribbons reading "Bleachers '07" for 50 cents apiece. At the same time, the campus women fed their male counterparts as they labored on the work crews. The students completed the project in time for the Texas game, a 5-4 victory for the Tigers. Despite losing, the Texas fans and team were left Columbia impressed by the expanded stadium and the process the students used to fund and perform the work.

Game action and the crowd in the new bleachers for the WashU game (1908 Missouri yearbook)