New challenges await Sprint Football tradition

The Penn sprint football team has a new name this season, but the same long tradition. There is no longer a lightweight football team at Penn. Yes, there is still a varsity team of men under 165 pounds playing football against other schools. The new proper name for this sport, however, is sprint football. In June, head coaches and athletic directors from the five participating schools in what was then the Eastern Lightweight Football League met to discuss the future of the league. The most obvious result of the meeting was the name-change from "lightweight" to "sprint." Starting this fall, the league is called the Collegiate Sprint Football League. Penn coach Bill Wagner said that the meeting's participants decided that the term "lightweight" had a negative connotation by suggesting an inferiority to the regular squad. The term "sprint" does a much better job of emphasizing the speed of the players and the excitement of the games. There was another reason for the name-change. According to the sprint football media guide, increased publicity of weight issues in collegiate wrestling prompted the NCAA to establish many new rules and regulations regarding weight loss. The rules are meant to make weight loss less dangerous for wrestlers who are trying to make a certain weight class. This led to the end of the term "lightweight," as league officials were wary of problems similar to those of wrestling. Still, the meeting in June was not held solely to discuss a name-change. There were some serious problems with the ELFL which needed to be addressed. Those problems can be observed more clearly by first looking at the history of the league. The beginning of sprint football can be traced to Harvard-Yale football games. The two schools had teams of players under 150 pounds who competed before the varsity games to entertain fans. Officials there decided that this brand of football had its own unique entertainment value. It was also a way for smaller students who loved football to play the game competitively. In 1934, the Eastern 150-pound Football League was established with seven members -- Cornell, Lafayette, Penn, Princeton, Rutgers, Villanova and Yale. At the time, these were the schools which had some of the best varsity football teams in the nation. Penn's then-President Thomas Gates lauded the sport's initiation as "football for all!" As the size of athletes got larger, the league needed to make adjustments. "The weight limit rose to 154 pounds, then 159 pounds, and most recently, 165 pounds, which was just a few years ago," Wagner said. Many of the schools which first competed in the league did not last long. After World War II, the league consisted of original schools Cornell, Penn, Princeton and Rutgers, as well as Columbia, Army and Navy. Lafayette and Villanova were out, as were Harvard and Yale. Today, the league consists of only Cornell, Penn, Princeton, Army and Navy. The other schools' programs did not last for a variety of reasons. First, there have been increasing problems involving gender equity. "It is really tough to have a sprint football team with all the emphasis on gender equity," Wagner said. "There have been some serious team crunches due to gender equity that we've been able to survive." There is an ever-decreasing number of men's sports at Penn which do not have female counterparts. Next year's addition of a women's golf team exemplifies this point. There is no counterpart for sprint football, and some schools which have placed an added importance on gender equity in the athletic department have frowned upon the sport. This was the case at Rutgers, whose sprint football team fell apart in the late 1980's. Columbia had a different problem in the late 1970's. According to Wagner, the Lions had such a bad varsity football team that students who were small enough for and would have played sprint football instead were called up to the regular team. As a result, the Columbia sprint football team got very weak and demand for it decreased greatly. Already under gender equity pressure, the school ended its program. In the last few years, similar problems existed at Princeton. The team went through financial problems and almost went club in a desperate effort to keep the sport in any fashion. That, Wagner said, was the main reason for the meeting in June. Fortunately, the kinds of problems which have ended or damaged sprint football programs at other schools have not done the same at Penn. The Collegiate Sprint Football League, while only five members strong, is confident that it can grow and prosper for a long time. The name may have changed a couple times, but sprint football has lasted for 64 years. The sport's loyal players, fans and coaches expect to see it around for at least another 64.