ere was a slow but steady growth in both intramural and intercollegiate competition, though this remained largely in the Northeast. Baseball competition was firmly established by 1860. Intercollegiate football started as an offshoot of a heated baseball rivalry between Princeton and Rutgers, and a challenge brought about the first American intercollegiate football match. In this and subsequent contests, local rules prevailed. By 1880 a number of competitive frameworks had been created, with leagues and conferences linking schools together in track, rowing, and baseball (Rooney, 1987, 12-13).
The first organized baseball team in America was the New York Knickerbockers from the 1840s. Baseball at that time emphasized socializing in clubs, but after then Civil War baseball spread geographically and broke through many class and economic lines:
American pride in place, an outgrowth of the democratic booster enthusiasm for life, has helped to shape the locational pattern of present-day sport, particularly its unique intercollegiate structure. The establishment, and eventual success, of a great many American communities and institutions of higher learning stemmed from boosterism. The impulse to boost one's place, and the pride in community, state, region, and country which underlies the impulse, is simply the American way (Rooney, 1987, 15).
Universities apparently learned from the recruiting and compensation practices that the town baseball club sponsors had created. Recruitment of college athletes started in the 1880s some ten years after the professional movement in baseball. Before 1900, compensation usually consisted of some type of employment, lodging, meals, and other kinds of factors, all primarily funded by fraternities and alumni. Only the best athletes were subsidized, and the scholarships that were offered were usually vague, with a typical statement being that the athlete would be well cared for if he came to...