Date of Award
Spring 4-28-2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
History
First Advisor
Kristen Foster
Second Advisor
Bryan Rindfleisch
Third Advisor
Michael Donoghue
Abstract
This dissertation examines how collegiate football functioned as a contested site for defining masculinity and institutional identity in the United States between 1945 and 1972. Focusing on the leadership and interactions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Football Foundation (NFF), and the University of Notre Dame, the project argues that these institutions promoted competing models of masculinity that reflected broader tensions between moral authority, institutional control, athletic success, and social change in postwar America. This dissertation argues that postwar collegiate football did not express a single dominant masculine ideal but instead became a site of ongoing institutional conflict, as the NCAA, the National Football Foundation, and the University of Notre Dame constructed, promoted, and renegotiated competing visions of masculinity that reflected tensions between commercialization, moral reform, competitive success, and social transformation between 1945 and 1972. Chapter One analyzes how the NCAA, NFF, and Notre Dame articulated a moralized ideal of football masculinity rooted in discipline, character, and amateurism, most prominently advanced by NFF leader Chester LaRoche. At the same time, NCAA president Walter Byers oversaw the rapid expansion and commercialization of the sport, producing structural pressures that increasingly rewarded competitive success over ethical restraint. These developments generated enduring tensions between Notre Dame’s projection as a model of “winning the right way” and the growing acceptance of a “winning at all costs” mentality across college football. Chapter Two focuses on the period from 1954 to 1963, when institutional expansion, shifting competitive models, and Notre Dame’s on-field mediocrity fractured consensus about the university’s identity. As Father Theodore Hesburgh articulated a vision of academic and institutional modernization, alumni, administrators, and fans advanced competing interpretations of Notre Dame’s masculine ideal. Chapter Three centers the analysis on the 1966 “Game of the Century” between Notre Dame and Michigan State in order to examine how Notre Dame renegotiated its masculine ideal to include race between 1964 and 1972. In the end, this dissertation demonstrates that collegiate football in the postwar United States functioned as a powerful but unstable arena for negotiating masculinity, institutional authority, and social change.