Who Started Oklahoma Football?

If you polled the mass majority of Oklahoma football fans it is doubtful that a majority would think an 18-year old female music teacher had any effect on the tradition of Sooner Football. Grace Adaline King was a prodigy, who, upon graduating Emporia Teacher's College gave a concert to President Boyd and was granted a job on the spot. According to David W. Levy's history of the University, The University of Oklahoma: A History Volume I, Grace King captivated everyone on campus with her simplistic positive affirmations, such as, "It is simpler to smile than to frown." She instantly won the respect of her peers and students before leaving in 1901 after getting married to a prominent local figure, James Maguire.

However, Grace King left an indelible mark on Oklahoma football by suggesting to President Boyd a very impressive young man from Emporia College to head Boyd's new English Department in 1897. David W. Levy tells the story:

King had been at the University of Oklahoma only since the start of the 1896 school year; but when she learned in the summer of 1897 that Boyd might be looking for someone to build an English Department, she boldly recommended the bright and promising young teacher from back home in Emporia. Acting upon her suggestion, President Boyd telegraphed Parrington in late July 1897. He would be passing through Emporia on the Santa Fe, he said, and would welcome the opportunity for a few words at the train station. At the appointed hour, Vern Parrington hopped on his bicycle and pedaled to the station. He and Boyd introduced themselves and were engrossed in conversation about the new university at Norman when it was time for Boyd's train to pull away. In a flash Parrington flung his bike onto the train, continued his talk with Boyd until the next station, and then pedaled himself back home. In early August an offer came from Boyd: for $1,000 a year Parrington was hired to organize the study of English at the University of Oklahoma.

Though Boyd was taken with the young man's potential to teach and organize an English Department (and was impressed by his excitement of talking of the University, even though it meant a three-mile bike ride home), it is unlikely that even Boyd knew of the impact the hire would have on the new football program.

Vernon Parrington arrived at Oklahoma much like Boyd had five years before, with a misunderstanding of the land he was about to experience. Bruce Brown wrote about Parrington's experience in an article on Astonisher.com, "A searing wind blew great dust clouds from the southwest as I stepped off the train and started for the University. I passed through a stretch of burnt-up, slovenly village, and out along a quarter mile of plank walk -- the very nails of which were partly drawn out by the heat -- and at last came to the University grounds, a small patch of brown prairie with a single red brick building topped off with a wartlike cupola."

You can imagine Parrington's shock, even though he was only coming from Emporia, Kansas at the time, he had spent time and gotten a degree from Harvard University. He was now a far cry from the Cambridge, Massachusetts campus that was so beautiful, even though he never cared much for the experience overall. Parrington brought with him a nasty curveball he'd used to create a semipro baseball career and knowledge of this budding game of football that he played when he was a student at the Ivy League School.

When Boyd met Parrington in a depot in Emporia to discuss the position created in a newly formed English Department, America was continuing its adolescence. A landmark Supreme Court case deemed "separate but equal" to be constitutional, stating that segregation according to the law was political not social. This paved the way for the repressive Jim Crow laws that would disable the south for years to come.

William McKinley had just been inaugurated as the 25th President of the United States and the Spanish-American War was looming a year in the future. Abroad, Alfred Nobel passed away and his will established prizes to be given for peace, science, and literature. In Athens, Greece, the first ever Olympic Games were being held to truly test the world's greatest athletes.

In Harold Keith's Oklahoma Kickoff, he speaks of a quote by the train conductor who drove the University boys to Oklahoma City for the game. Apparently, there was a disagreement relating to whether or not the boys on the train were football or baseball players, and this is how the conductor said one could settle the argument: "If they look like they will fight at the drop of a hat, they are football players. If they look like they will run at the drop of a hat, they are baseball players. These are football players."

Keith tells us that the University had officially fallen in love with the game after this successful 2-0 season. A constitution was drawn up along with an athletic association, who was so enthusiastic and enamored with football that they decided to build a shower bath in the basement of the university building specifically for the football team.

Norman was becoming modern with new concrete sidewalks instead of boardwalks, new buildings and houses popping up all over, and the tree-planting efforts of Dr. Boyd taking full effect. The University now boasted 359 students and fences surrounded the campus. Vernon Parrington alluded to another positive advancement in The Umpire: "The Ivy on the north side of the university has reached the second story window." Everything seemed to be on the rise for the University of Oklahoma.

Parrington not only served as professor, department chair, coach, athletic director, manager, trainer, and referee but also was a publicity virtuoso. According to the Oklahoma Football Media Guide in 1995, Parrington published a semi-monthly news magazine.

"His lucid, colorful, neatly-turned stories of the university games in the Umpire, the school's new semi-monthly news magazine which he founded that autumn, were classics. Everything Parrington touched, he seemed to vitalize."

Vernon Parrington's writing talents didn't begin and end there; he achieved international acclaim for his life's work long after leaving Oklahoma. In 1908, Parrington and his boss, the man responsible for bringing him to Norman, David Ross Boyd were fired for reasons wholly unrelated to their performance. 1907 had brought statehood to Oklahoma and a radical political shakeup to go along with it. Boyd, Parrington, and 23 others lost their jobs with reasons given for termination being the radical sins of drinking, smoking, and dancing.
Luckily for Parrington, he had made quite an impression on outgoing President Boyd, who made a recommendation to University of Washington President Thomas Kane who made a special trip to Emporia and hired Parrington. He flourished in the beautiful terrain of Washington and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in History for his work Main Currents of American Thought, Vol. I and II. His work is still considered one of the most comprehensive works of American literary research. To this day he remains the only Sooner Football player or coach to win a Pulitzer Prize.