Harvard University Athletics

The following is a listing of secondary sources related to the history of the Harvard athletics, held by the Harvard University Archives, other Harvard Library repositories or via e-resources. Please note that this is not an exhaustive bibliography.  Most of the electronic resources are only available to Harvard Library users with a valid HarvardKey login.

General:

Bertagna, Joe. Crimson in Triumph: A Pictorial History of Harvard Athletics, 1852-1985. Lexington, Mass.: S. Greene Press, 1986.

Council of Ivy Group Presidents. The Directory and Record Book of Ivy League Athletic: Special Five-year Edition. 1993.

Council of Ivy Group Presidents. The Directory and Record Book of Ivy League Athletic: 1996/1997 edition.

Haritos, Anna Katherine. The Rhetoric of Eugenics in Physical Education: The Agenda of Dudley Allen Sargent, Harvard University, 1879-1919. (A.B., Honors in History and Science) Harvard University, 2002.

Harvard Varsity Club. The H Book of Harvard Athletics, 1852-1922. The Harvard Varsity Club, 1923.

Harvard Varsity Club. The Second H Book of Harvard Athletics, 1923-1963. Harvard Varsity Club, 1964.

Harvard Varsity Club. The Third H Book of Harvard Athletics: 1963-2012. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Varsity Club, 2014.

Lee, Candice Storey. Playing to win: The Evolution of Athletics and Reform in American Higher Education. Thesis (Ed.D.) Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, May 2012. [Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global].

Lippig, Alar. Charles W. Eliot's Views on Education, Physical Education, and Intercollegiate Athletics. Thesis (Ph.D.) Ohio State University, 1980. [Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global]

Maiorana, Sal. Ivy League Athletes: Profiles in Excellence at America's Most Competitive Schools. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2014.

McQuilkin, Scott Alan. A History of Intercollegiate Athletic Reform during the Progressive Era, 1890-1920. Thesis (Ph.D.) Pennsylvania State University, 1995. [Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global].

Smith, Ronald A. Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big-Time College Athletics. Oxford University Press, 1988.

Smith, Ronald A. 1988. “A Failure of Elitism: The Harvard-Yale Dual League Plan of the 1890s.” The New England Quarterly 61, no.2 (1988): 201–13. [Available via JSTOR].

Smith, Ronald A. “Commercialized Intercollegiate Athletics and the 1903 Harvard Stadium.” The New England Quarterly 78, no.1 (2005): 26–48. [Available via JSTOR].

Smith, Ronald A. 2008. “Far More Than Commercialism: Stadium Building from Harvard's Innovations to Stanford's 'Dirt Bowl'.” International Journal of the History of Sport 25, no.11 (2008): 1453–74. [Available from Taylor & Francis Online].

Ullyot, Theodore Warren. Preparation for the Battle of Life: The Physical Education Question at Harvard, 1898-1919. Thesis (A.B., Honors) Harvard University, 1990. .

Welch, Paula D. Silver Era, Golden Moments: A Celebration of Ivy League Women's Athletics: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Yale. Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1999.
 

Baseball:

Coolidge, William Henry. Base Ball at Harvard. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Base Ball Club, 1903.

Lewis, Harry. 2011. "Protoball at Harvard.” Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game 5, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 41–45.

Lindholm, Karl. “The Black Matty: William Clarence Matthews, "Harvard's Famous Colored Shortstop," and the Color Line.” Black Ball 7 (2014): 54–172. [Available via ProQuest].

Rubinow, Katya Bronwyn. The Harvard Baseball Program: Participation, Authority, and the Body in the Ritual of College Baseball. Thesis (A.B., Anthropology) Harvard University, 1998.
 

Basketball:

Horger, Marc. 2005. “A Victim of Reform: Why Basketball Failed at Harvard, 1900-1909.” The New England Quarterly 78 , no.1(2005): 49–76. [Available from JSTOR].

Orton, Kathy. Outside the Limelight: Basketball in the Ivy League. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2009.

Piltch, Steven S. Academics and Athletics: A Comparison of the Basketball Programs at Harvard University, Northeastern University and Boston College, 1991. Analytic paper (Ed.D.) Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1991.
 

Cheerleading:

Peluse, Angela Lynn. Pom-pom Power: The History of Cheerleading at Harvard. Thesis (A.B., Honors in Women's Studies, and History), 2001.

 

Crew/Rowing:

Durick, William G. “The Gentlemen's Race: An Examination of the 1869 Harvard-Oxford Boat Race.” Journal of Sport History 15, no.1 (1988): 41–63. [Available via JSTOR].

Herrick, Robert Frederick. Red Top: Reminiscences of Harvard Rowing. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1948. [Red Top also in an EBook edition from De Gruyter].

Mathews, Joseph J. 1960. “The First Harvard-Oxford Boat Race.” The New England Quarterly 33, no.1  (1960): 74–82. [Available via JSTOR].

Mendenhall, Thomas Corwin. The Harvard-Yale Boat Race, 1852-1924: and the Coming of Sport to the American College. Mystic, Conn.: Mystic Seaport Museum, 1993.

Mumford, George Saltonstall. Twenty Harvard Crews. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1923.

Saint Sing, Susan. The Eight: A Season in the Tradition of Harvard Crew. 1st ed. New York, N.Y.: St. Martin's Press, 2010.

Wellman, James. The Story of the Harvard-Yale Race 1852-1912. New York: Harper, 1912.

 

Football:

Albright, Evan J.  “Three Lives of an African American Pioneer: William Henry Lewis (1868-1949).” The Massachusetts Historical Review 13 (2011): 127–163. [Available via JSTOR].

Bealle, Morris A., and Hamilton Fish. The History of Football at Harvard, 1874-1948. Columbia Publishing Co., 1948.

Bergin, Thomas Goddard. The Game: The Harvard-Yale Football Rivalry, 1875-1983. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.

Colt, George Howe. The Game: Harvard, Yale, and America in 1968. New York: Scribner, 2018.

Corbett, Bernard M. Harvard Football: Images of Sports. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2002.

McDuffie, Clinton E. College Football in Turmoil: How Violence, Virility and Social Darwinism Defined College Football, 1880-1915. Thesis (Ph.D.), University of Missouri - Kansas City, 2015. [Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global].

Sack, Allen L. The Commercialization and Rationalization of Intercollegiate Football: A Comparative Analysis of the Development of Football at Yale and Havard in the Latter Nineteenth-Century. Thesis (Ph.D.) Pennsylvania State University, 1974. [Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global]

Spirn, Samuel Whiston. A Scientific Sport Fit for Gentlemen: Why Rugby Supplanted Soccer in the Early History of American Football, 1860-1877. Thesis (A.B., Honors in History) Harvard University, 2003.

Synnott, Marcia G. “The "Big Three" and the Harvard-Princeton Football Break, 1926-1934.” Journal of Sport History 3, no.2 (1976): 188–202. [Available via JSTOR].
 

Hockey:

Corbett, Bernard M. The Beanpot: Fifty Years of Thrills, Spills, and Chills. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002.

 

Rugby:

Thorne, Christopher Michael. Ritual and Social Modeling in Harvard Rugby Culture.  Thesis (A.B., Anthropology), Harvard University,1990.