Ronald A Smith
Biographic Data
| ID | 3631130 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ronald A Smith |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ronald A |
| FAMILY NAME | Smith |
| SIGNATURE | SMITH R A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Penn State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 38 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1939 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
College Sports
If you were to read one book to understand the history of men's and women's intercollegiate athletics in the United States, it would be Eric Moyen and John Thelin's College Sports: A History. The two scholars, with a keen interest in college sports, have used the most prominent secondary books and research articles sprinkled with a few primary sources to give a new interpretation of the intersection of athletics and higher education. A major them…
The NCAA, Concussions, and the Lack of Concern for Athletes
For most of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) showed little concern for football brain injuries and concussions. It began with the creation of the NCAA (1905–6) and its new Football Rules Committee failing to effectively address the issue following the death of a Union College football player from a cerebral hemorrhage suffered in a pile-up during a 1905 game with New York…
Discredited
This second book on the early twenty-first century athletic-academic scandal at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill follows that of UNC history professor Jay Smith and whistleblower Mary Willingham, who in 2015 published Cheated: The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports. Discredited: The UNC Scandal and College Athletics’ Amateur Ideal is authored by journalist Andy Thomason, a Chapel Hill …
A Personal Involvement in the Origin of NASSH
Over a half-century ago, I was involved in the early discussions of a sport history organization with the principal founder of NASSH, Guy Lewis. I recount the pre-NASSH years and the formation of NASSH including the all-male and physical education origins in a meeting with the National Physical Education Association for Men in 1971. Besides Guy Lewis, others are noted including Marvin Eyler, Carl Bode, Seward Staley, John Betts, Alan Metcalfe, Br…
NASSH Timeline
Marvin Eyler, who later successfully administers the creation of NASSH, receives his PhD under a “sport historian,” Seward Staley, at the University of Illinois.Marvin Eyler and Seward Staley discuss the potential of a sport history organization.Seward Staley is instrumental in creating a history of sport section of the National College Physical Education Association for Men (NCPEAM).Max Howell, a future NASSH president, becomes a professor at th…
How We Can Save Sports
American Football Becomes the Dominant Intercollegiate National Pastime
American colleges in the nineteenth century rejected British cricket for baseball and British soccer and British rugby for American football. While Americans copied British culture in many ways, they were often not direct copies. The historical concept of American Exceptionalism has been questioned by historians, but if there ever was an American Exceptionalism, the cases for the American games of organised baseball and football surely can be mad…
Arrogance and Scheming in the Big Ten
Book Review| July 01 2014 Arrogance and Scheming in the Big Ten: Michigan State’s Quest for Membership and Michigan’s Powerful Opposition Young, David J., M.D. Arrogance and Scheming in the Big Ten: Michigan State’s Quest for Membership and Michigan’s Powerful Opposition. Lansing, Mich.: DJY Publishing, 2012. Pp. xxiv+345. Notes, bibliography, timeline, and photographs. $21.95 pb. Ronald A. Smith Ronald A. Smith Penn State University Search for o…
The Rise of Gridiron University
Book Review| July 01 2013 The Rise of Gridiron University: Higher Education’s Uneasy Alliance with Big-Time Football Ingrassia, Brian M. The Rise of Gridiron University: Higher Education’s Uneasy Alliance with Big-Time Football. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012. Pp. 322. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $34.95 cb. Ronald A. Smith Ronald A. Smith Penn State University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Goog…
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
Book Review| July 01 2011 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, (2008). Produced and directed by Kevin Rafferty. Kevin Rafferty Productions. Distributed by Kino International. 104 mins. Ronald A. Smith Ronald A. Smith Penn State University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Sport History (2011) 38 (2): 294–295. https://doi.org/10.5406/jsporthistory.38.2.294 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook T…
Bowled Over
Book Review| April 01 2011 Bowled Over: Big-Time College Football from the Sixties to the BCS Era Oriard, Michael. Bowled Over: Big-Time College Football from the Sixties to the BCS Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. Pp. 334. Illustrations, notes, and index. $30.00. Ronald A. Smith Ronald A. Smith Penn State University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Sport History (2011) 38 (1): 154–1…
The End of Autumn
Book Review| July 01 2010 The End of Autumn: Reflections on My Life in Football Oriard, Michael. The End of Autumn: Reflections on My Life in Football. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Pp. xx+346. $25.00 pb. Ronald A. Smith Ronald A. Smith Penn State University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Sport History (2010) 37 (2): 314–316. https://doi.org/10.5406/jsporthistory.37.2.314 Cite Icon Cite Share I…
Far More Than Commercialism
Nearly all the leading universities in the US constructed enormous American football arenas following Harvard's 1903 stadium until the Great Depression concluded most stadium building at the close of the 1920s. Stadiums were the most materialistic campus symbols of the ‘Golden Age of Sport’, icons representing what critics charged was the crass commercialization of higher education. Yet, they were much more than money makers. From Harvard wanting…
Play-by-Play
Onward to Victory
Journal Article Onward to Victory: The Crises That Shaped College Sports. By Murray Sperber. (New York: Holt, 1998. xxviii, 578 pp. $32.50, ISBN 0-8050-3865-5.) Get access Ronald A. Smith Ronald A. Smith Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 87, Issue 1, June 2000, Page 298, https://doi.org/10.2307/2568047 Published:…
The Six-Minute Fraternity
Games and Empires
Journal Article Games and Empires: Modern Sports and Cultural Imperialism. By Allen Guttmann. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. xii, 275 pp. $24.50, ISBN 0-231-10042-6.) Get access Ronald A. Smith Ronald A. Smith Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 82, Issue 2, September 1995, Pages 780–781, https://doi.o…
Big-Time Football at Harvard, 1905
Big-Time Football at Harvard, 1905
In 1905, twenty-six-year-old Bill Reid, a former Harvard athlete, was wooed back to the campus by the offer of a salary higher than that of any faculty member and approaching that of long-time president Charles W. Eliot. His mission: beat Yale. With the intent of providing a how-to manual for future coaches, Reid set down day by day an account of his activities on and off the field. In so doing, he provides clear evidence of what many have suspec…
Press Games
Mass Society and the Bomb
The accepted division of the pacifist‐dominated antinuclear movement in the late 1950s into radical pacifism, nuclear pacifism, and traditional pacifism rests primarily on an analysis of the different tactics that each group employed against the bomb. Yet pacifists never confined themselves to foreign and nuclear policy. Only by examining a broader intellectual context can certain pacifist ideas, as well as intrapacifist political disputes, be fu…
Fritz Pollard
Fritz Pollard: Pioneer in Racial Advancement. By John M. Carroll. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992. xiv + 298 pp. $32.95, ISBN 0-252-01814-1.) Get access Ronald A. Smith Ronald A. Smith Pennsylvania State University, University Park Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 79, Issue 4, March 1993, Pages 1655–1656, https://doi.org/10.2307/2080318 Published: 01 March 199…
Lee Richmond, Brown University, and the Amateur-Professional Controversy in College Baseball
W HEN Ernest Lawrence Thayer wrote at the Bat in 1888, he had in mind a certain Casey from his hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts, which had fielded a team in the National League when Thayer was a youth. A teenager in 1880, Thayer may well have watched as J. Lee Richmond pitched the first perfect game in major league history. Richmond, evidently invigorated by the revels of his college commencement weekend, set down twentyseven straight Clevela…
Sports and Freedom
Sports & Freedom
A Sporting Time
Journal Article A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820–70. By Melvin L. Adelman. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986. xiii + 388 pp. $24.95.) Get access Ronald A. Smith Ronald A. Smith Pennsylvania State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 73, Issue 4, March 1987, Page 1027, https://doi.org/10.2307/1904091 Published: 01 March…
Onward to Victory
Journal Article Onward to Victory: The Crises That Shaped College Sports. By Murray Sperber. (New York: Holt, 1998. xxviii, 578 pp. $32.50, ISBN 0-8050-3865-5.) Get access Ronald A. Smith Ronald A. Smith Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 87, Issue 1, June 2000, Page 298, https://doi.org/10.2307/2568047 Published:…
A New Look at the Effect of Course Characteristics on Student Ratings of Instruction
Faculty members who are interpreting student questionnaire results often assume that smaller class sizes and higher levels of instruction receive higher ratings, even though researchers report conflicting results. This study examined the effect of course characteristics on student ratings in a variety of instructional situations. Data were collected in 1,777 classes in five departments at all levels of instruction over 3 years. When results were …
A Personal Involvement in the Origin of NASSH
Over a half-century ago, I was involved in the early discussions of a sport history organization with the principal founder of NASSH, Guy Lewis. I recount the pre-NASSH years and the formation of NASSH including the all-male and physical education origins in a meeting with the National Physical Education Association for Men in 1971. Besides Guy Lewis, others are noted including Marvin Eyler, Carl Bode, Seward Staley, John Betts, Alan Metcalfe, Br…
American Football Becomes the Dominant Intercollegiate National Pastime
American colleges in the nineteenth century rejected British cricket for baseball and British soccer and British rugby for American football. While Americans copied British culture in many ways, they were often not direct copies. The historical concept of American Exceptionalism has been questioned by historians, but if there ever was an American Exceptionalism, the cases for the American games of organised baseball and football surely can be mad…
The historic Amateur‐professional dilemma in American college sport
(1985). The historic Amateur‐professional dilemma in American college sport. The International Journal of the History of Sport: Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 221-231
"Man in the "Cut-Over
Seven Lean Years
"Man in the "Cut-Over
America's Sporting Heritage
Journal Article America's Sporting Heritage: 1850–1950. By John Rickards Betts. (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1974. xv + 428 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $9.95.) Get access Ronald A. Smith Ronald A. Smith Pennsylvania State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 62, Issue 1, June 1975, Pages 129–130, https://doi.org/10.2307/1901341 Published:…
Saga of American Sport
Journal Article Saga of American Sport. By John A. Lucas and Ronald A. Smith. (Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1978. x + 439 pp. Illustrations, charts, notes, and index. $16.50.) Get access Harold Seymour Harold Seymour Asheville, North Carolina Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 66, Issue 1, June 1979, Pages 102–103, https://doi.org/10.2307/1894678 Published: 01 June 1979
Sport, Politics, and Harvard
Research
Ty Cobb
Journal Article Ty Cobb. By Charles C. Alexander. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. ix + 272 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $16.95.) Get access Ronald A. Smith Ronald A. Smith Pennsylvania State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 71, Issue 3, December 1984, Page 663, https://doi.org/10.2307/1887544 Published: 01 December 1984
The historic Amateur‐professional dilemma in American college sport
(1985). The historic Amateur‐professional dilemma in American college sport. The International Journal of the History of Sport: Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 221-231
A New Look at the Effect of Course Characteristics on Student Ratings of Instruction
Faculty members who are interpreting student questionnaire results often assume that smaller class sizes and higher levels of instruction receive higher ratings, even though researchers report conflicting results. This study examined the effect of course characteristics on student ratings in a variety of instructional situations. Data were collected in 1,777 classes in five departments at all levels of instruction over 3 years. When results were …
A Sporting Time
Journal Article A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820–70. By Melvin L. Adelman. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986. xiii + 388 pp. $24.95.) Get access Ronald A. Smith Ronald A. Smith Pennsylvania State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 73, Issue 4, March 1987, Page 1027, https://doi.org/10.2307/1904091 Published: 01 March…
A Failure of Elitism
ADARTMOUTH student was right on target: Harvard and Yale, he said, delight in their own company best.' He was referring to decisions by both Harvard and Yale in 1875 and 1876 to withdraw from the annual intercollegiate regatta. A decade and a half later, Harvard and Yale attempted to do in all sports what they had done in crew. John Seymour Wood's Harry's Career at Yale, an 1892 historical novel set in the 1870s, described why Yale and Harvard we…
Sports & Freedom
Fitness and Freedom
Sports and Freedom
Journal Article Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big-Time College Athletics. By Ronald A. Smith. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. xiv + 290 pp. $29.95.) Get access Donald Spivey Donald Spivey University of Connecticut Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 76, Issue 3, December 1989, Pages 904–905, https://doi.org/10.2307/2936446 Published: 01 December 1989
Sports and Freedom
Lee Richmond, Brown University, and the Amateur-Professional Controversy in College Baseball
W HEN Ernest Lawrence Thayer wrote at the Bat in 1888, he had in mind a certain Casey from his hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts, which had fielded a team in the National League when Thayer was a youth. A teenager in 1880, Thayer may well have watched as J. Lee Richmond pitched the first perfect game in major league history. Richmond, evidently invigorated by the revels of his college commencement weekend, set down twentyseven straight Clevela…
Mass Society and the Bomb
The accepted division of the pacifist‐dominated antinuclear movement in the late 1950s into radical pacifism, nuclear pacifism, and traditional pacifism rests primarily on an analysis of the different tactics that each group employed against the bomb. Yet pacifists never confined themselves to foreign and nuclear policy. Only by examining a broader intellectual context can certain pacifist ideas, as well as intrapacifist political disputes, be fu…
Fritz Pollard
Fritz Pollard: Pioneer in Racial Advancement. By John M. Carroll. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992. xiv + 298 pp. $32.95, ISBN 0-252-01814-1.) Get access Ronald A. Smith Ronald A. Smith Pennsylvania State University, University Park Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 79, Issue 4, March 1993, Pages 1655–1656, https://doi.org/10.2307/2080318 Published: 01 March 199…
Big-Time Football at Harvard, 1905
In 1905, twenty-six-year-old Bill Reid, a former Harvard athlete, was wooed back to the campus by the offer of a salary higher than that of any faculty member and approaching that of long-time president Charles W. Eliot. His mission: beat Yale. With the intent of providing a how-to manual for future coaches, Reid set down day by day an account of his activities on and off the field. In so doing, he provides clear evidence of what many have suspec…
Press Games
The Six-Minute Fraternity
Games and Empires
Journal Article Games and Empires: Modern Sports and Cultural Imperialism. By Allen Guttmann. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. xii, 275 pp. $24.50, ISBN 0-231-10042-6.) Get access Ronald A. Smith Ronald A. Smith Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 82, Issue 2, September 1995, Pages 780–781, https://doi.o…
Big-Time Football at Harvard, 1905
Onward to Victory
Journal Article Onward to Victory: The Crises That Shaped College Sports. By Murray Sperber. (New York: Holt, 1998. xxviii, 578 pp. $32.50, ISBN 0-8050-3865-5.) Get access Ronald A. Smith Ronald A. Smith Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 87, Issue 1, June 2000, Page 298, https://doi.org/10.2307/2568047 Published:…
Play-by-Play
Sports, Gender, and Society (26 works) · American Sports and Literature (23 works) · History (21 works) · History (21 works) · Political science (18 works) · Law (17 works) · Law (17 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts (14 works)