Intercollegiate football and educational radio: Three case studies of the commercialization of sports broadcasting in the 1920s and 1930s

From the late 1920s to the mid-1930s, broadcasting of intercollegiate sports at many state institutions migrated from educational radio stations to commercial networks. Amid the economic pressures of the Great Depression, the sale of sports broadcasting rights provided universities with a steady revenue stream, while the publicity from the broadcasts raised their profile among citizens and legislators whose support was crucial to state institutions. Yet, commercialization bolstered critics’ claims that intercollegiate athletics had become a business rather than an extracurricular activity. Drawing upon the scholarship of critical political economy, this dissertation examined the process by which commercial radio became the venue for big-time intercollegiate athletics—even at institutions that had their own radio stations—at a time when reformers insisted that only an amateur status and educational purpose for sports could justify the presence of big-time athletics on campus. In case studies of three land-grant institutions—Penn State, Ohio State, and the University of Wisconsin—this dissertation found that the decision to sell broadcast privileges was resisted by directors of educational radio stations on campus, supported by athletic and conference directors, and largely ignored by administrative pragmatists who were distracted by the daunting task of keeping their institutions solvent throughout the Depression. This study concluded that the decline of educational radio as a purveyor of college sports mirrored the overall decline of non-commercial broadcasting in the 1930s. It also reflected the wider debate on the role of the state as the representative of the collective interest in a free enterprise system. The partnership between big-time football schools and commercial broadcasters, forged in the Depression Era, created the climate of collaboration in which television broadcasting of intercollegiate athletics would flourish in subsequent decades. Ohio State and Wisconsin were exceptions in that they continued to carry intercollegiate sports on their own university stations. In doing so, each demonstrated the feasibility of an economic model for sports broadcasting that was grounded in the public service outreach and extension missions of the land-grant institution rather than the competitive, profit-seeking model of commercial radio.