Hendrix stresses student in student-athlete
Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Last week’s announcement that Hendrix College might soon return to football probably startled some people younger than 60, who didn’t realize the school had ever been involved with football.
Well, Hendrix joined college football in 1906, during the game’s pioneering infancy. From 1911-1933, Hendrix’s Warriors played the Arkansas Razorbacks 17 times and even salvaged two scoreless ties.
The late Joe B. McGee, a legendary Conway newspaperman and a fervent Hendrix alumnus, used to claim that one of those games became a key element in the development of the Razorbacks’ modern athletic program.
As McGee explained, when Hendrix forced a 0-0 tie on Arkansas in 1920, it prodded Arkansas administrators and boosters to look for a coach who wouldn’t have to settle for a tie with Hendrix.
That coach turned out to be Francis Schmidt, hired by Arkansas from Tulsa in 1922. Schmidt led the football Hogs to a 42-20-3 record in seven years and also introduced them to basketball, where they dominated the Southwest Conference immediately, rarely losing a league game.
Ivan H. Grove moved from Tulsa to Arkansas with Schmidt as an assistant coach, and left in 1924 to head up athletics at Hendrix, where he retired from coaching as a revered father figure in the 1950 s.
Hendrix tied Arkansas again in 1932, but that series ended the next year with a 63-0 Razorbacks victory. One newspaper account solemnly reported that Hendrix “threw a scare into Arkansas in the opening minutes.” A small, privately funded and expensive (even by 1930 s Depression standards ) liberal arts school, Hendrix generally had much better success in basketball or track. Football was discontinued after the 1960 season.
For the past year or so, Hendrix committees have explored the possibility of resuming football — compiling relevant data and sounding out faculty, students and alumni on the subject. For sure, this is an institution that has never rushed to judgment.
Presumably a similar amount of research led to Hendrix’s 1991 decision to leave the NAIA and the now defunct Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference to join NCAA Division III and the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference.
At the time of the switch, Hendrix was an AIC basketball power under Coach Cliff Garrison, who won 463 games and five conference titles in 31 seasons.
People outside the Hendrix orbit were puzzled. Joining the SCAC would mean additional men’s and women’s programs and extensive travel. Obviously the decision was driven by philosophical rather than financial considerations.
There are no athletic scholarships in Division III; athletes have the same access to academic scholarships, grants, loans, etc., as any other student.
Down through its athletic history, Hendrix had never seemed entirely comfortable with the process of (as Joe McGee once put it ) “paying students to sweat in public.” Indeed, Hendrix Athletic Director Danny Powell stressed last week that the projected football revival will be financed “by external sources to ensure money would not be taken from academic programs.” He said SCAC schools spend about $ 300, 000 to $ 400, 000 on football.
Only three of the 12 SCAC members are presently without football programs. Estimates are that Hendrix’s next football squad won’t be on the field until 2010 at the earliest.
“It’s a ‘Southern’ conference, but we have members in Colorado and Indiana,” said Garrison, now senior associate for athletic development. “We have 19 [men’s or women’s ] programs. Football and women’s lacrosse would make 21.
“ Birmingham Southern dropped from Division I to Division III to join the SCAC last year. They didn’t play football in D-1, but they started a football program last year.
“ About 32 percent of our enrollment [roughly 1, 200 ] participates in athletics. That’s the kind of ratio we hope to maintain, and football should help increase our male enrollment.” Hendrix President Timothy Cloyd said last week that athletics will remain secondary to academics. Actually, that’s been the prevailing system since the Warriors discovered football 102 years ago.
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