| College Football All-Southern Team | |
|---|---|
| Awarded for | The best Americancollege football players at their respective positions on teams from theSouth |
| Country | United States |
| First award | c. 1895 |
TheCollege Football All-Southern Team was anall-star team ofcollege football players from theSouthern United States. The honor was given annually to the best players at their respective positions. It is analogous to theAll-America Team and was most often selected innewspapers. Notable pickers of All-Southern teams includeJohn Heisman,Dan McGugin,George C. Marshall,Grantland Rice,W. A. Lambeth,Reynolds Tichenor,Nash Buckingham,Innis Brown, andDick Jemison.
Princeton's 115-0 drubbing ofVirginia in 1890 marked football's arrival in the south by playing a northern school.[1][2][3] Virginia was considered theSouthern champion.
Major football programs in the South used to include: members of theSouthern Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SIAA), the conference representative of theDeep South and used more strictly to mean the South east ofVanderbilt University inNashville, the predecessor to today'sSoutheastern Conference (SEC, which originally represented the Southern states west and south of theAppalachians); theSouth Atlantic Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SAIAA), representative of theSouth Atlantic States and especiallyVirginia andNorth Carolina, the predecessor to today'sAtlantic Coast Conference (ACC); and theSouthwest Conference, representative of theSouthwest United States, a predecessor to southern portions of today'sBig 12 Conference. These categories apply only broadly. For example,North Carolina was in both the SIAA and SAIAA at different points in its history.Clemson, today in the ACC, was in the SIAA; andWashington & Lee, today in neither, was a member of the SAIAA.
The SIAA was the oldest of these, founded in the winter of 1894 by Vanderbilt chemistry professorWilliam Lofland Dudley. The SIAA was often seen as large enough to represent the South at large; and with officials and coaches and so forth of potential selectors restricted to viewing conference play, an All-SIAA team was sometimes equivalent to the All-Southern team; apparently with increasing frequency since 1902. For example, the 1905 composite selection from theAtlanta Journal reads "It must be taken into consideration, however, that each gridiron Sir Oracle was requested by the Journal to confine his selections to members of clubs composing the S. I. A. A. This organization really represents the greater south, as its scope is wider and more general.V. P. I. can scarcely be figured in the calculation as that institution hasn't played any of the S. I. A. A. representatives."[4] South Atlantic writers of course were not fond of this, and would sometimes critique the latest All-Southern selection with titles such as "Virginia and Carolina no longer in the South."[5]
In 1922 teams from the SIAA and SAIAA left for theSouthern Conference and All-Southern teams become effectively All-Southern Conference teams. By 1933 the contemporarySoutheastern Conference was established. The major programs then in the SEC, "All-Southern" teams become associated with the by comparison minor conferences of the Southern Conference or SIAA especially after the formation of theAtlantic Coast Conference in 1953.
Walter Camp's annual "official" All-America first team had been historically loaded with college players fromHarvard,Yale,Princeton,Penn, and otherNortheastern colleges.[6] The dominance of Ivy League players on Camp's All-America teams led to criticism over the years that his selections were biased against players from the leadingWestern universities (then in America the West meant theGreat Lakes region), including Chicago, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Notre Dame.[7][8][9] Many selectors picked only Eastern players. For example,Wilton S. Farnsworth's All-American eleven of 1910 for theNew York Evening Journal was made up of five players from Harvard, two from West Point, and one each from Yale, Princeton, Penn, and Brown.[10] In 1894,Michigan defeated Cornell and lobbied for its centerFatty Smith to be the first Western All-American. The resistance to selecting Smith (or any other Western player) as an All-American is reflected in the following newspaper account from December 1894:
"Some of the western colleges have developed great players on their teams and this year may claim for them a position on the All American team. Notably the University of Michigan claims for their center 'Fatty' Smith the supremacy in his position. But the western institutions have not yet mastered the eastern knowledge of all the details and fine points of the game. Smith has made a great record against the west and even against Cornell, but the Ithacan center was not a master of his position. When brought to face a man like the Stillman of today or the Bulliet of last year, Smith would simply be lost and entirely out generaled. So it would be with all of the claimants for line positions from western teams. And no one claims for a moment that western back field men could play in the same class with eastern men."[11]
The selectors were typically Eastern writers and former players who attended only games in the East. In December 1910,The Mansfield News, an Ohio newspaper, ran an article headlined: "All-American Teams of East Are Jokes: Critics Who Never Saw Western Teams Play to Name Best in Country -- Forget About Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois."[7] The article noted: "Eastern sporting editors must be devoid of all sense of humor, judging by the way in which they permit their football writers to pick 'All-American' elevens. What man in the lot that have picked 'All-American' elevens this fall, saw a single game outside the North Atlantic States? With a conceit all their own they fail to recognize that the United States reaches more than 200 miles in any direction from New York. ... Suppose an Ohio football writer picked 'All-American' teams. Ohio readers would not stand for it. But apparently the eastern readers will swallow anything."[7]
The perception of bias was even worse in the South than in the West,[12][13] and Camp's team eventually grew to accommodate Western football in a way it never did with the South. To illustrate an example of this,Chicago punterClarence Herschberger in1898 andMichigan backWillie Heston in1903 made Camp's first team. By 1905, Camp said V. P. I.'sHunter Carpenter was probably the best football player in the United States, but he hadn’t personally seen him and refused to name him to the All-American team because he wouldn’t pick any player that he hadn’t seen.[14][15] In 1906,Owsley Manier made Camp's third-team All-American.Buck Mayer, in1915, was the South's first consensus All-American.[16] In1917, the same year as the South's first national champion team,John Heisman'sGeorgia Tech, Tech playersWalker Carpenter andEverett Strupper were the first two from theDeep South selected first-team All-American.[17]The next yearBum Day was the first player on a Southern team selected for Camp's first team. Only six southern players ever made Camp's first team before his death in 1925, Day along with:Bo McMillin ofCentre,Red Weaver of Centre;Bill Fincher of Georgia Tech;Red Roberts of Centre; andLynn Bomar of Vanderbilt.[18] Therefore for many years the All-Southern team was how the south recognized its best.Fuzzy Woodruff commenting on the 1921 composite selection of theAtlanta Constitution andAtlanta Journal states "This composite pick has now been recognized as the south's official football hall of fame. No southern player can receive a higher honor unless he happens to be named on Walter Camp's All-American."[19] By 1933 as above the modern Southeastern Conference was established, and All-SEC teams took prominence in the south; but also the south's recognition on All-America teams had increased, for the1932 College Football All-America Team featured three southern consensus All-Americans:Pete Gracey ofVanderbilt,Jimmy Hitchcock ofAuburn, andDon Zimmerman ofTulane.
Inductees into theCollege Football Hall of Fame named to one or more All-Southern team include:
TheAssociated Press andFWAA in 1969 put out a Southeast Area All-Time football team for the first 50 years of football (1869–1919) and the second 50 (1920–1969).[20][21] On the selection committee wereZipp Newman, Jack Hairston, Jesse Outlar, Cawood Ledford, Bud Montet, Carl Walters, and Raymond Johnson.[22]
The 1869–1919 team included:
Roberts, Dougherty, and Guyon were unanimous selections for the team.
Of the second era (1920–1969), notable stars from theAll-Southern era (i.e., until 1932) included:
John Heisman would sometimes post all-time All-Southern teams. His selection of 1916 includes:[23]
