1897 was a banner year for two reasons: first, relations with Yale were resumed; second, W. Cameron Forbes '92 was appointed head coach. This marked the beginning of scientific coaching at Harvard. The team of 1889, guided in its football theories by Forbes, had in the lineup four men who were to direct Harvard coaching for 14 of the next 17 years. They were B. H. Dibblee '99, W. T. Reid '01, J. W. Farley '99, and Percy Haughton. Haughton, perhaps the greatest football coach, was appointed in 1908. Unfortunately for him, the athletic committee had abolished professional coaching, and he served without salary that first year.
The following season, Haughton had to revamp the offense completely, as the last remnants of the brute force plays were abolished, with rules prohibiting pushing and pulling of the runner. The wedge had disappeared long since; it had to. Public outcry over football deaths and injuries had reached such an extent that in 1906 President Roosevelt influenced the College to stop the game once again. Haughton's arrival signaled resumption.
The brightest era of Harvard football was beginning. The first football stadium had been built at Soldiers' Field in 1902--with funds donated by an alumnus--at a cost of $295,000. For three seasons, 1913-15, Harvard was recognized unquestionably as the best team in the country. Its stadium had a 55,000 seating capacity; and it was only long after Haughton had left that interest was to wane and 20,000 of these seats were to be removed.
The 1914 game was the first played in Yale Bowl, and the first in which a new weapon--the lateral pass--was used against the Crimson. But Haughton was prepared. The defense spread out over the field, leaving only three men in the line.
The next year an individual hero overshadowed the coaching. Richard King '17 gained immortality by scoring the first touchdown against Yale in Soldiers Field Stadium, which had been in use since 1903. On that day the Crimson earned its most satisfying triumph, pushing across five more touchdowns to defeat the Elis, 41-0.
In the pre-World War I days, interest in football gradually spread across the nation, and embryonic squads of the future lords of the sport--Army, Notre Dame, Michigan, began to appear.
Near the end of the War the traditional "Ivy" founders of the sport began to show an uneasiness about the hold football had over Americans. In an attempt to curb certain practices adopted by colleges anxious to become football powers, the heads of Harvard, Yale and Princeton met and set forth the "Presidents' Agreement," which outlined specific rules to be followed in recruiting and giving aid to players.
President Lowell, in his Report to the University, stated: "All alumni are urged to refrain from offering an inducement to any schoolboy to enter Harvard, when the compelling motive is his athletic skill." The remark was taken with a grain of salt by loyal sons. After all, Harvard was the Rose Bowl champion, wasn't she?
But New Year's Day, 1920, was to be the high-water mark. The tide began to ebb.
At first it was hardly noticeable. In 1921 the College introduced an innovation, by playing a "doubleheader" football game. Its first team met B.U., the second team played Middlebury, and both squads shut out their opponents. Moreover, games did not seem to be lacking stamina. In 1926, the roughness of the Princeton game caused that University to sever athletic relations with Harvard for two years.
The important change in athletics which occurred in the Twenties, however, concerned not only football, but rather constituted a break with the University's long-standing official aloofness towards athletics.
The policy of "athletics for all" had been announced in 1919, when compulsory PT was instituted for freshmen. Seven years later the University granted real recognition to inter-collegiate athletics, and assumed a measure of direct control over the heretofore autonomous program. In 1926, William J. Bingham '16 was made the first Director of Athletics.
All funds of the Harvard Athletic Association were brought under College control, and the HAA was required to present an annual budget. The Director of Athletics was made a member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the Athletic Committee--in existence since