Big Ten football fans pack gridiron cathedrals that hold up to 100,000 spectators. The conference's fourteen member schools share a broadcast network and a 2016 media deal worth $2.64 billion. This cultural and financial colossus grew out of a modest 1895 meeting that focused on football's brutality and encroaching professionalism in the game.

Winton U. Solberg explores the relationship between higher education and collegiate football in the Big Ten's first fifty years. This formative era saw debates over eligibility and amateurism roil the sport. In particular, faculty concerned with academics clashed with coaches, university presidents, and others who played to win. Solberg follows the conference's successful early efforts to put the best interests of institutions and athletes first. Yet, as he shows, commercial concerns undid such work after World War I as sports increasingly eclipsed academics. By the 1940s, the Big Ten's impact on American sports was undeniable. It had shaped the development of intercollegiate athletics and college football nationwide while serving as a model for other athletic conferences.

| Cover Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Prologue Part One: From Disorder to Order 1. The Beginning of the Big Ten 2. Michigan Withdraws from the Conference 3. The Crisis over Amateurism 4. The Conference and the War Part Two: From Order to Disorder 5. The Big Ten in the Golden Age of Sports 6. The Commissioner and the Conference 7. The Big Ten Stadiums 8. Red Grange and the Lure of Professional Football 9. The Conference at Work 10. The True Spirit of the University 11. The Carnegie Report 12. The Big Ten Censures Iowa 13. Cross Currents 14. Closing Out Half a Century Epilogue Appendix 1: Conference Rules Appendix 2: Faculty Representatives Notes Bibliography Index | "Anyone interested in college football, the history of intercollegiate athletics, and the attempts at governance, will find this book an important addition to their library and their knowledge."—Sport Literature
"Winton U. Solberg's Creating the Big Ten is a superb work on a significant topic in American social and institutional history." —The Journal of American History
"A great resource for scholars and fans wanting an in-depth look at how the conference came together, and almost came apart, and the many different paths it might have taken along the way." —Journal of Sport History
|Winton U. Solberg (d. 2019) was professor emeritus of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His many books include The University of Illinois, 1894-1904: The Shaping of the University and Redeem the Time: The Puritan Sabbath in Early America.