Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/434

380 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO games attracted crowds of from twenty to twenty-five thousand spectators. It was not the policy of the University to emphasize football by providing such accommodations on Stagg Field as would invite immense concourses of people. It provided inviting accom- modations for only about eight thousand spectators. For the great games temporary seats and standing-room were provided. These games awakened all the enthusiasm of the University. In anticipation of them student mass meetings were held, new college yells invented, and cheer leaders appointed to organize and encour- age the cheering which it was fondly hoped would stimulate the team to its most heroic efforts. There has been much football literature, but it is doubtful if the game has inspired a finer ballad than that produced by one of the University's poets, Horace Spencer Fiske. It is a part of the athletic history of the institution. The first stanza and refrain are here given: When the crowd has cheered the hostile teams and the band has played its best, And roaring rooters warmed the lungs within the coldest breast; When hat and cane and flag and feet have marked each rolling shout, And the coin has told its little tale and the whistle sounded out Then the untried, slippery pigskin lies at rest upon the ground, And silence wraps the people with expectancy profound. Oh, the kick-off and the tackle and the sudden-footed punt, And the stillness of the players on a down; And the plunging and the lunging in the swaying battle's brunt, And the megaphonic cries of town and gown ! In its intercollegiate contests the University may be said fairly to have divided the honors with the best teams of the Western Conference. In the different kinds of games football, track, basket-ball, tennis, gymnastics, swimming, cross-country running, and golf it turned out championship teams. Its teams won the western championship in football four times by an undisputed title and once with a title not quite conceded by its rivals, and thirteen times in tennis, or, to be exact, thirteen times in singles and thirteen times in doubles. In basket-ball in the ten years after intercollegiate contests began Chicago teams won the cham- pionship three seasons and tied once for first place. But strong