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The William and Mary
Athletic Scandal of 1951:
Governance and the Battle for
Academic and Athletic Integrity
RONALD A. SMITH†
Department of Kinesiology
Penn State University
When the athletic scandal broke in 1951 at William and Mary College, intercollegiate athletics in America had been commercialized and professionalized
for nearly a century. A myriad of problems, especially surrounding football,
resulted. William and Mary, a small co-educational college with a male population of about 700 students, decided to become big-time athletically when, just
prior to World War II, the president, with the backing of the governing board,
financed the hiring of a well-paid coach and began subsidizing athletes from
two alumni funds. Academic standards dropped for athletes, high school transcripts were altered, grades of athletes were changed to keep players eligible, and
rules of the National Collegiate Athletic Association were broken in order to
compete with such big-time institutions as Michigan State University and the
University of Oklahoma. Before academic integrity was regained, the president
resigned as did the dean, the football and basketball coaches, several professors,
and the alumni society director. Soon, small-time athletics replaced big-time
sports.
†
Correspondence to [email protected].
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P
RESIDENT JOHN POMFRET SAT IN HIS OFFICE in America’s second oldest college and
read a letter from the Dean of the College of William and Mary. It was not the kind of
communication that would buoy the spirits of the fifty-two-year-old college president in
the spring of 1951. The message from the boyish looking, thirty-six-year-old dean, Nelson
Marshall, minced few words: “The present administration of our intercollegiate athletic
program is dishonest, unethical and seriously lacking in responsibility to the academic
standards of William and Mary.”1 The opening salvo eventually led to the resignation of
both President Pomfret and Dean Marshall. The forced resignations of the football and
basketball coaches, the censorship and eventual resignation of the Executive Secretary of
the Alumni Society, the resignations of the Dean of Men, the Dean of Women, the Librarian, the Bursar, the Director of Admissions, and a number of professors were all results of
the ’51 scandal. In addition, an open conflict broke out among the faculty, president, and
the governing board of William and Mary. Seldom, if ever, had any individual college or
university been so ripped apart over athletic policy and practice.
The William and Mary fiasco, as important as it appeared to be, was not even considered the most important scandal in the early 1950s. The first years of the 1950s were the
most volatile since the founding of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)
at the close of the 1905 football season. Only months before the William and Mary
exposé, the greatest betting scandal in American sport since the famous 1919 Black Sox
baseball scandal was uncovered. Thirty-three players from seven NCAA institutions admitted conspiring to rig college basketball contests in twenty-three cities in nineteen states.
Judge Saul Streit condemned college athletics during the sentencing of three guilty players
from the great Kentucky team. “I found undeniable evidence,” wrote Streit, “of covert
subsidization of players, ruthless exploitation of athletes, cribbing on examinations, illegal
recruiting, a reckless disregard for the players’ physical welfare, matriculation of unqualified students, demoralization of the athletes by the coach, the alumni, and the townspeople.”2 The year before the betting scandal broke, a majority of institutions voted,
under the new NCAA “Sanity Code,” to oust seven universities for violating rules restricting the payment of athletes but lacked the needed two-thirds vote to eliminate them.3
Later that year, nearly every member of the U.S. Military Academy football team, with a
57-win, 3-loss, and 4-tie record under Earl “Red” Blaik from 1944 to 1950, broke the
honor code and were dismissed for cheating on examinations.4 In the fall of 1951, a racial
scandal broke out when an Oklahoma A&M player blind-sided Drake University’s great
Johnny Bright, purposely breaking the jaw of the African-American runner and passer.5
The William and Mary athletic scandal, though, typified what was considered wrong with
college athletics in post-World War II America. The quest for victory and institutional
prestige overwhelmed the sense of morality on many college campuses. College presidents
and especially governing boards lacked the moral fortitude to lead effectively their institutions. William and Mary was a clear example.
The principal question that this paper intends to explore is the relationship among
faculty, president, and governing board relative to the governance of intercollegiate athletics at William and Mary. Specifically one can ask if it is possible for college presidents to
control athletics within their own institutions or, on a larger scale, inter-institutionally. A
half-century before the William and Mary scandal, the leading figure in higher education,
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Charles W. Eliot of Harvard, gave a clue to the answer. Eliot, who was president from
1869 to 1909, questioned whether he had the power to control athletics. Eliot, after being
asked to take the leadership role in reforming college athletics following a particularly
brutal and unethical 1905 football season, refused to do so. He responded to a request
from Henry MacCracken, New York University’s chancellor, to call a conference to reform
football but declined, declaring that college presidents “certainly cannot reform football
and I doubt if by themselves can abolish it.”6 For a quarter century Eliot had been trying
to reform college athletics at Harvard without success.7
Since Eliot’s time, a multitude of reformers of college athletics have called for college
presidents to become involved in the governance of football, not to withdraw as did Eliot
in 1905. Probably the most resounding call for presidential involvement came in the
1929 Carnegie Report, American College Athletics.8 In that often quoted but seldom read
document, the report of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching stated
emphatically that “the man who is most likely to succeed in uprooting the evils of recruiting and subsidizing is the college president.”9 More than a generation later, the American
Council on Education recommended that college presidents become more involved in the
governance of intercollegiate athletics.10 By the 1980s, a National Collegiate Athletic
Association Presidents’ Committee on College Athletics was created with legislative power.
In the 1990s, the prominent “Report of the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics” called for a new structure of reform, the “one-plus-three” model in which
“the ‘one’—presidential control—is directed toward the ‘three’—academic integrity, financial integrity and independent certification.”11 Presidents became more visible than at
any previous time since the 1905 football crisis out of which the NCAA was created.
Being visible does not necessarily mean being effective. Historically, presidents generally have not been successful in reforming their own institution’s athletic programs nor
have they been effective in inter-institutional settings. A case study of William and Mary
in the 1940s and 1950s reveals the inability of a college president to lead when athletics are
involved and when the president is in conflict with the governing board. The outcome of
the William and Mary episode supports the view that governing boards hold the ultimate
power in the control of intercollegiate athletics, not the president. The presidency of
William and Mary’s John Pomfret may be symbolic of the many institutional leaders who
have historically lacked both the power and the courage to make athletics an integral part
of the educational aspect of higher education.12
William and Mary: The Small College in Big-Time Athletics
William and Mary in the 1940s was, next to Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher learning in America. Unlike Harvard, the Williamsburg, Virginia college
had not gone through a late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century period of big-time
athletics. William and Mary in the 1890s and early 1900s was having difficulties surviving. It had closed its doors for a period in the mid nineteenth century, and it was, by the
beginning of the twentieth century, only a third-rate college. By the 1930s, William and
Mary was described by one of its own professors as little more than a “normal school” with
“far more vocational work than what one would expect to find in a real liberal arts college.”13
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Not only was William and Mary undistinguished as a liberal arts college, it lacked a
virile image. Like other colleges with a significant teacher education curriculum, William
and Mary attracted a large female enrollment. This was a concern to its faculty and
administrators, one of whom was President John Bryan, who set out to create a strong
liberal arts college and increase the masculine image. Athletics, especially football, were
used to promote the manly factor, something considered important by the male-led institutions of higher education from the nineteenth century.
President Bryan moved to promote football through the hiring of a well-paid coach
and subsidized athletes. In 1939, he hired Carl Voyles, a Duke graduate, to coach the
football team. “Here was William and Mary with a miserable little team,” recalled a
faculty member, “and Mr. Bryan decided to have a good one.”14 A decision was made to
attract football players by providing college resources as financial incentives. Money collected from two funds, the Alumni Scholarships Fund and the Loyalty Fund, were channeled almost entirely to athletes.15 One individual, Charles P. McCurdy, was especially
concerned about the change in policy. McCurdy, Executive Secretary of the Alumni Society but then on duty in the military early in the Second World War, warned that the bigtime athletic program was “sooner or later going to cause a lot of difficulty for the College.” He was concerned that the awarding of scholarships to academically unqualified
athletes from money obtained for all students was “a betrayal of a trust.”16
As America’s involvement in World War II deepened, the Athletic Association of the
William and Mary alumni also questioned the act of granting financial assistance to athletes, but they were more concerned with the effect of the new athletic thrust upon academic integrity. The Athletic Association delivered a report to the William and Mary
governing board, the Board of Visitors. The report revealed problems of admitting “barely
qualified students,” of reorganizing the “curriculum downward,” and revising the “scholastic conditions of remaining in college.”17 An example of a 1942 student on an athletic
grant-in-aid was Marvin Bass, later an assistant coach during the 1951 scandal, before
becoming head coach. Bass, during his freshman year, received three “F’s,” six “D’s,” two
“C’s,” one “B,” and an incomplete. Bass was reflective of the athletes on the football team,
who during that year earned eight times more “F’s” than “A’s.”18
The stage for future athletic problems had been well set under the leadership of President Bryan by the time he retired in 1942 and a new president was elected. The choice of
the Board of Visitors was John Pomfret, a prominent historian and dean at Vanderbilt
University. Taking office in the midst of World War II, Pomfret soon suggested a discontinuance of the Alumni Athletic Committee. The alumni committee had recently recommended to the Board of Visitors that athletics be curtailed, and Pomfret suggested the
creation of a Board of Visitors’ athletic committee to replace it.19 The president’s action
appeared to support strong involvement of the governing board.
With the backing of the president and board, Carl Voyles’s football team achieved a
new success. As one alumnus stated to Pomfret, Voyles had “done more to reestablish the
College of William and Mary as a men’s college than any other one individual . . . and has
made the college more attractive to the alumni.”20 Other big-time athletic institutions
began to court Voyles, creating a concern among some alumni. Fearing that Pomfret was
not doing enough to keep Voyles, one graduate charged Pomfret with curtailing the ath-
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President John Pomfret was caught
between William and Mary's desire to
play Big-Time football and its attempt
to be one of the elite small college
academic institutions. COURTESY OF
COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY ARCHIVES, WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA.
letic program at William and Mary. “At the same time,” wrote the former William and
Mary man, “you are asking us, the alumni, to be more loyal in our giving. Is this consistent?”21 The concern was well-grounded, for Auburn offered Voyles $12,000 to coach, 50
percent more than Voyles was making at William and Mary. Indeed, Pomfret and William and Mary had not done enough financially to keep Voyles, and he moved on.
Ruben McCray, an assistant for several years under Voyles, was chosen to replace
Voyles. McCray’s yearly salary under a three-year contract was $5,000, nearly 40 percent
less than that received by his predecessor, but it was still more than most professors received.22 Athletics had not been de-emphasized. Soon after McCray’s hiring, President
Pomfret told the Board of Visitors Athletic Committee that the policies accepted the year
before would continue: that is, athletes would be recruited and given aid based on athletic
merit or financial need or both. Pomfret publicly made the policy appear fair to all concerned, saying there was “no reason why a boy with athletic ability should not receive the
same consideration and encouragement that is given every other needy and meritorious
male student among our undergraduates.”23 Nevertheless 75 percent of the athletes received scholarships for their physical talents, but few academically talented, non-athletes
received them. Both the pay of the coach and athletes indicated that physical talent was
more valued at William and Mary than were the academic talents of professors and nonathletes. Actions by William and Mary and its president belied Pomfret’s words that “the
college is not interested in setting a special caste of athletes.”24
The post-World War period of athletic prominence and deceit had been created by a
combination of actions of the Board of Visitors, by the decision of the president not to
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Coach Ruben McCray recruited good football players who were academically deficient and who
needed illegal help to get into college and remain eligible. COURTESY OF COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY
ARCHIVES, WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA.
challenge his superiors, and by the Faculty Athletic Committee and the Scholarship Committee that favored the promotion of big-time athletics. In the fall of 1946, the Board of
Visitors clearly delineated the college’s policy for a big-time football program. The Board
of Visitors’ policy provided that William and Mary should “compete successfully with
other teams in the state of Virginia belonging to the Southern Conference to such an
extent that we may reasonable expect to win more contests than we lose.”25 President Pomfret’s
recommendation to the Board, to return to a policy of playing football with small-tomedium-sized liberal arts colleges that gave no athletic subsidies, fell on deaf ears. The
Board of Visitors, in contrast, wanted to compete with the other Virginia schools in the
Southern Conference—Virginia, Virginia Military Institute, and Virginia Polytechnical
Institute, and their heavily subsidized football players.
President Pomfret did not strongly contest the greater visibility of the commercialized
and professionalized football program though, as several individuals later attested, he was
opposed to it. Like most college presidents in the past century, Pomfret stood by as bigtime football increased in regional and national visibility. When Coach Ruben McCray
completed a very successful football season in 1947 and led his team to the Dixie Bowl, he
was offered several other coaching positions. President Pomfret, to keep McCray, recom358
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mended raising his salary to that of Coach Voyles five years before, increasing McCray’s
salary by over 60 percent in five years.26
The NCAA Sanity Code and a Deliberate Evasion
William and Mary was caught in the hypocritical stance of supporting subsidized
athletes and paying a coach 25 percent more than its highest paid professors at the same
time that it voted for the so-called “Sanity Code” of the National Collegiate Athletic
Association. In 1948, the member institutions of the NCAA voted overwhelmingly to
abolish full athletic grants-in-aid, limiting aid to tuition only. Full scholarships could only
go to athletes who carried “B” averages or above. To enforce its decision, the NCAA
created the first “death penalty” for violators of the Code—that is, banning them from the
NCAA.27 President Pomfret told his Board of Visitors what it already knew—that William and Mary was not in compliance with the NCAA Sanity Code. Most of William and
Mary’s football players were subsidized well above the NCAA limits, but fewer than 20
percent of the players had grade point averages to warrant the payments. Pomfret recommended ignoring the NCAA rules because, he said, most Southern colleges intended to do
so. “Southern colleges,” he noted, “are going to sign the Code and get along as best they
can.”28 The Faculty Committee on Athletics agreed with Pomfret and the other institutions that refused to abide by their own national legislation. In a resolution presented to
Pomfret, the Faculty Committee on Athletics stated that it was highly desirable to offer
athletic scholarships larger than those permitted by the NCAA Sanity Code.29
The position of covertly challenging the NCAA was evidently supported by Dean of
the College Sharvy Umbeck. Umbeck was a professor of sociology and an extremely
successful coach of the William and Mary tennis team. He was also chairman of the
Faculty Athletic Committee and a member of the committee charged with handing out
scholarships and financial aid. Dean Umbeck and athletic director and coach, Ruben
McCray, organized a number of on-campus jobs for athletes to meet their college expenses. In order to get the athletes to take the work positions, that they formerly were not
required to do, the administrators set out to violate the Sanity Code by offering wages that
were up to four times the prevailing campus wage rate for non-athletes.30
President Pomfret was in a difficult position regarding athletics and the Sanity Code,
and it had been made more stressful with the appointment of Umbeck as Dean of the
College. In some ways, Pomfret was resisting the development of big-time athletics at this
small, primarily liberal arts college with about 700 male students. In 1947, he had opposed the staunch athletic backer, Umbeck, who was elected as Dean of the College.
Pomfret had nominated a mathematics professor, Harold Phalen, to the Board of Visitors,
but the Board rejected him and chose Umbeck. The appointment of Umbeck rather than
Phalen, English professor Melvin Jones believed, was “an insult to the President.”31 The
Board’s action, according to history professor Harold Fowler, was a “major defeat for Pomfret
in relation to the Board.”32 It probably was, for Umbeck, who had a heavy involvement
with the people supporting big-time athletics, was now significantly involved in carrying
out athletic policy at the upper levels of William and Mary. The appointment of Umbeck
over Pomfret’s choice was a premonition of greater athletic trouble between the president
and the Board of Visitors.
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Dean Nelson and the Internal Athletic Scandal Exposure
When Sharvy Umbeck resigned as Dean of the College in 1949 to become president
of Knox College in Illinois, his replacement was as unlike him as was the change in the
football program from the 1930s to the 1940s. An unknown to the Williamsburg campus, the new dean, Nelson Marshall, had been the off-campus Director of William and
Mary’s Institute of Marine Science. Marshall was a youthful-looking academic in his midthirties, but unlike many administrators he did not lack intestinal fortitude when it came
to acting on intercollegiate athletics. Almost as soon as he took over as dean, he found
evidence of wrongdoing in the athletic department.
The scandal may have first surfaced when an injured football player revealed in the
late 1940s that his football scholarship was going to be taken away by Coach McCray
because of a knee injury. He told his story to a member of the faculty and friend of
athletics, Wayne Kernodle, who sympathized with the athlete and asked him to testify
before the Faculty Athletic Committee. Dean Nelson Marshall, a handball partner and
friend of Kernodle, was at the time also head of the Athletic Committee. The player also
told of athletes accepting unauthorized money, while others were receiving grades for
courses they had not taken.33 These revelations stimulated Marshall to probe deeper to see
if the allegations of wrong doing had substance.
The William and Mary Registrar and Dean of Students, J. Wilfred Lambert, began
an investigation of admissions and grades of William and Mary athletes. Lambert first
discovered alterations of high school transcripts of prospective freshmen athletes that insured their admission to the College. For more than a decade, the records of potential
freshmen athletes went first to the athletic department rather than to the admissions office. Tracing doctored transcripts to the athletic department where a faulty typewriter
Dean Nelson Marshall led the
investigation of the football and
basketball programs, exposing the
athletic scandal of 1951. COURTESY
OF COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY
ARCHIVES, WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA.
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Barney Wilson, the basketball
coach, changed grades of his players as well as receiving kickbacks
from his secretarial assistants.
COURTESY OF COLLEGE OF WILLIAM
AND MARY ARCHIVES, WILLIAMSBURG,
VIRGINIA.
gave the scheme away, Lambert concluded that football coach and Athletic Director Ruben
McCray was likely the guilty party.34 The investigation continued for more than a year,
and the scandalous disclosures continued. Athletes who were physical education majors
were found to have received grades for summer school courses when they were not in
attendance. There were nine such cases. One student received “B” grades in four courses
during the summer of 1949 while he was a truck driver for a company in Newark, New
Jersey.35 In addition, Coach McCray often placed failing second semester freshmen physical education majors into upper level physical education courses, which he taught, to raise
their grade point averages.36 McCray also was found to have pressured a physical education instructor to raise a student’s grade from a “D” to a “B” during the 1949-1950 school
years.37 The transcript of one athlete who had received an “F” from Wayne Kernodle,
Faculty Athletic Committee member and sociology professor, had been changed to a “B”
despite never coming to class or turning in papers.38 Furthering the institutional corruption was the revelation that Barney Wilson, the basketball coach, was also involved in the
grade-changing intrigue. Adding to the disgrace was the scheme of Coach Wilson, who
used female undergraduates as secretarial assistants, to demand a 10 percent kickback of
their secretarial wages. One secretarial assistant claimed that she was told to remain quiet,
for her basketball-playing boyfriend would lose his scholarship if she said anything.39
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President Pomfret was informed during the 1949-1950 year of the grade tampering
scheme within the athletic department by both Registrar Lambert and College Dean
Marshall. Pomfret could not believe that McCray, whom he had known for years, would
be involved in such activities, but he ordered future high school transcripts to go first to
the administration not the athletic department. When an assistant football coach was
fired during the year, one who was suspected of involvement in the grade tampering,
Pomfret believed no further action was necessitated.40
With the ongoing internal divulgence of athletic abuses, Dean Marshall continually
pressed President Pomfret to take stronger actions. Marshall, according to one of his
faculty, “was a crusader.” Pomfret, on the other hand, was cautious as he saw the potential
for a “very explosive” situation.41 Marshall not only loathed the cheating of the athletic
department, he was strongly opposed to the double standard adopted by William and
Mary for its athletes. He condemned the system in which the William and Mary Educational Foundation was raising money presumably for the benefit of the entire student
body, yet only athletes received its scholarships.42 Marshall also opposed the hypocritical
stance of granting scholarships to non-scholar football players who had a graduation rate
of only 32 percent while 58 percent of all freshmen entering the College got their degrees.43 Pomfret, more the pragmatist than the idealist, wanted the scandal to go away
before it became a public issue. It would not go away, and Marshall would not countenance the sordid affair.
In April of 1951, while President Pomfret dragged his feet, Marshall challenged the
president to take decisive action. Recognizing that the dishonest and unethical actions of
the athletic department were tearing at the academic fiber of William and Mary, Marshall
forced the issue by telling the president:
Having taken my stand without gaining concrete support in terms of decisions
and actions, I am without a satisfactory next step. I might acquiesce but to do
so does not seem in the best interests of this institution. I might work directly
against this phase of the College administrative attitude. . . . Obviously this
would not do. . . . Such is the position in which I find myself with respect to the
College’s attitude toward our athletic situation and therefore I offer
my resignation.44
The resignation, Marshall knew, endangered his own career and could cause havoc to
William and Mary if reasons for his resignation became known publicly.
President Pomfret, by now in a state of confusion on what to do, refused to accept
Marshall’s resignation; rather he asked Marshall to investigate more fully and to make a
recommendation to him. In the meantime Pomfret made good a promise of several years
to recommend to the Board of Visitors that Coach McCray be advanced to full professor
in the physical education department.45 This nearly inconceivable action of promoting
an individual who was under investigation for undermining the institution’s academic
values, clearly shows the state of siege which Pomfret must have felt. Three weeks later, the
president reviewed his dean’s report documenting the irregularities in the athletic and
physical education departments headed by Coach McCray, a report that recommended a
Board of Visitors’ review of the whole case.46
President Pomfret reconsidered the charges and, rather than bringing the bad news to
the Board of Visitors, asked the faculty to set up a committee to investigate further. A
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committee of five, headed by historian Richard Morton, was created.47 Yet, before the
committee could begin an investigation, President Pomfret called the five to his office the
day after they were appointed and said that he had given the head basketball and football
coaches the choice of responding to the committee about granting unearned credits and
falsifying high school transcripts or resigning effective following the coming football and
basketball seasons.48 On the Fourth of July, the president announced to the faculty committee that both Coach McCray and Coach Wilson would resign in early 1952, allowing
each to more easily find other jobs. The delayed, forced resignations were obviously not a
perfect solution to what Nelson Marshall later referred reluctantly to as “justice with mercy.”
It was merciful, especially to McCray and his family for whom Pomfret had high regard.49
With the president’s action, the Morton committee believed it eliminated the need for the
faculty to continue its investigation.50
The Board of Visitors Takes Charge: The President Resigns
A scandal of national proportions was only postponed temporarily by President
Pomfret’s delaying tactics. Pomfret did not transmit the coaches’ resignation decisions to
the Board of Visitors until August 7, one month after the two coaches had resigned.51 An
angry head of the governing board, Judge Oscar Shewmake of Richmond, Virginia, and a
former William and Mary football player, took the offensive, indignant that his Board was
not kept informed of the athletic troubles. Judge Shewmake immediately called for a
special meeting of the Board of Visitors for August 15.
Before the full Board met, two shocking events took place. The two coaches, McCray
and Barney Wilson, flew to Cape May Point, New Jersey, summer home of President
Pomfret, and tendered their resignations to be effective immediately. To add to the
Judge Oscar Shewmake, head of the William
and Mary governing board, treated the faculty with disdain, and the faculty fought back
in a battle over athletic control. COURTESY OF
COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY A RCHIVES,
WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA.
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inflammatory nature of the situation, two days later a letter was published in the Newport
News from Dean Nelson Marshall to an ex-assistant coach who had been fired by McCray
in 1950. Alfred Vanderweghe, the fired coach and instructor in physical education, was
first believed to have tampered with the transcripts. The July 6 letter from Marshall had,
however, exonerated Vanderweghe.52 The letter of apology was the first official statement
made public about the athletic malpractice existing at William and Mary. With the resignation of the coaches and the revealing letter, the press descended upon the Williamsburg
campus. The scandal broke wide open.
The members of the Board of Visitors were embarrassed, and they were not about to
accept any blame for setting the stage for the scandal. The Board’s written policy of
winning more games than they lost, coupled with the knowledge and tacit approval of
violating the NCAA Sanity Code, made the Board culpable. However, they chose to
blame only the college administrators for the institutional embarrassment. Rector of the
Board, Shewmake, summoned President Pomfret, Nelson Marshall, and several others to
testify before them. In an officious manner, the pompous Rector led the proceedings.
The Dean of the College, Marshall, felt so intimidated by Shewmake that he, at one point,
asked for the opportunity to defend himself with counsel. The judge shot back at Marshall,
indicating that he was not charged with anything and would not need a defense attorney.
“When you are,” he scolded Marshall, “you will be here not as a witness.”53 Pomfret was
treated with even less dignity. The questioning of Pomfret, a Board member said, was
“like a courtroom procedure,” which destroyed the relationship between the board and
the president.54 Pomfret’s fate at William and Mary was sealed.
The Board of Visitors, who according to Nelson Marshall were “just nuts on athletics,” expected Pomfret to resign. Upon returning from the Board’s inquisition in Richmond, Pomfret turned to William and Mary Registrar and Dean of Men, J. Wilfred Lambert, and said: “Well, I shall submit my resignation. . . . I have lost my usefulness for the
faculty and there is no point for me to continue.”55 True. The Board of Visitors, reminisced James W. Miller, who became acting-president, “had put a very pious look on its
face and decided that Pomfret was to blame. . . . It was the Board,” Miller continued, “not
the President, who was basically responsible for the big athletic program. Pomfret had not
wanted that, the Board had. The Board and the alumni were the ones that wanted bigtime athletics.”56
The leader of the faculty, Nelson Marshall, was in a different situation from Pomfret
because he neither dragged his feet nor supported granting Coach McCray’s promotion to
full professor. Yet, his relationship to the Board was no better than the president’s. As the
individual who pushed the investigation of malpractice in big-time athletics, Marshall said
of himself: “I am sure they didn’t want me around there very long.”57 As it turned out, he
was there for only a short time but long enough for the Board and faculty to fight a battle
for athletic control.
The Faculty Fights the Battle for Faculty Athletic Control
The faculty of William and Mary, as those at many American institutions of higher
learning, felt impotent in efforts to control intercollegiate athletics. The faculty had a
Faculty Athletic Committee but, like those at many other colleges, it had few powers when
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important questions were raised, and it was often stacked with those who favored continued expansion of the athletic program. When Nelson Marshall resigned from the Faculty
Athletic Committee in 1950, he could see that the real power lay with the Board of Visitors’ Athletic Committee, not his own. The faculty committee, Marshall believed, “certainly was not a faculty committee in the sense of being free to represent the faculty.”
When Marshall served on the committee he had the “strange feeling of merely existing to
give a respectable and acceptable look to policy that was decided elsewhere.”58 As an
example, in the fall of 1950, the Board of Visitors’ Athletic Committee attempted to
pressure the Faculty Athletic Committee to conform to its standard. When it differed, the
Board’s Committee reported to the full Board of Visitors that the Faculty Athletic Committee should “be interested in the advancement of the athletic program of the College
and not in the curtailment thereof.”59
The ad hoc investigative committee of the faculty formed by President Pomfret in
June of 1951 found the same situation. When Judge Shewmake called a special meeting
of the Board of Visitors in Richmond in August, the committee, headed by historian
Richard Morton, wanted to be represented at the hearings. Judge Shewmake invited
Morton to come to the hearings, but when Morton arrived he was told to remain outside
the hearing room. The Committee was told that the athletic hearing was “within the
province of the Board of Visitors” and not a province of the faculty.60 The faculty was
upset over the lockout for several reasons, though possibly none was greater than the
faculty’s belief that the Southern Conference agreement required faculty control of athletics. Judge Shewmake was upset when Nelson Marshall told him this, but Shewmake and
the Board exploded in anger when a nearly unanimous William and Mary faculty signed a
faculty manifesto three days after President Pomfret resigned.61
The William and Mary faculty reacted to the power play of the Board, not by withdrawing, as many faculties in American higher education have tended to do when confronted either by boards or presidents, but by carrying their concerns to the Board, the
alumni, and the public. While the faculty considered petitioning the governor to ask for
the resignation of the Board of Visitors, they concluded that a manifesto would serve their
purposes.62 The lengthy faculty statement of September 17 was three weeks in the making, dominating days, nights, and weekends of five individuals: Dean Nelson Marshall,
historian Harold Fowler, professor of English Mel Jones, librarian Bob Land, and alumni
secretary Charles McCurdy.63 When completed, the faculty had 20,000 copies printed,
sending the manifesto to the governor of Virginia, the William and Mary alumni, and the
students, while distributing copies to the press nationally. When the faculty received
permission from Judge Shewmake to speak before his group, the entire document was read
to the Executive Committee of the Board of Visitors.64
The faculty document railed at the athletic policies set by the William and Mary
governing board, calling them “insidious influences” that steadily sapped the academic
standards of the College. The policy, the manifesto claimed, resulted in “a distortion of
values, cynicism, and feeling of real resentment.” The faculty pointed out clearly for the
Board to see that “faculty control of all phases of intercollegiate athletics is required” by the
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. “The principal of faculty control has not
hitherto been practiced,” it stated, but “it must be practiced in the future.”65
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Judge Shewmake, however, would not have his powers lessened nor have the big-time
athletic program diminished if he could help it. Shewmake was probably still smarting
from a decade-old incident when he had not been selected to be on the Board of Visitor’s
search committee which originally recommended John Pomfret for the presidency, a choice
he did not favor.66 Shewmake was furious that the faculty was “stepping outside of its role
as the faculty and trying to take over the college and run the college.”67 The board,
according to one of its members, decided to cut the “faculty’s power and position” and did
so.68 In the power play, Shewmake and the Board did not wait for faculty involvement in
choosing a successor to Pomfret. Only one month after James W. Miller, a philosophy
professor, had been picked as acting-president, the Board elected a naval officer, Admiral
Alvin Duke Chandler, as president of William and Mary.
The faculty request to be consulted in the selection of the next president had been
completely ignored by Shewmake and the Board. Despite the Board’s meeting with faculty representatives on the issue, the Visitors voted two hours later to elect Chandler, in a
nearly unanimous vote with only one abstention. Five days later, as the faculty seethed
with contempt for the Board, Chandler was inaugurated as president. However, five
minutes before the ceremony began, Nelson Marshall, Dean of the College, handed a
letter to Acting-President James Miller. In it, Marshall rejected the procedure for electing
Chandler and installing him as president. These actions, Marshall said, “constitute a
studied insult to our faculty. . . . These acts,” he continued, “are an attack by the board of
visitors on the principles of free expression of a responsible faculty opinion.”69 Marshall
concluded his letter with his resignation.
The Alumni Get Involved: Another Detractor Exits
The saga might well have concluded with a dean resigning and the Board of Visitors
keeping control of William and Mary and its athletic program. However, one of the key
players of the faculty manifesto was not ready to bend before the governing board and its
big-time athletic policy. Charles McCurdy, the Executive Director of the Alumni Society,
had decided in the spring of 1951, well before the scandal broke, to write an account of
athletics at William and Mary for The Alumni Gazette. It was an exposé of the academic,
financial, and moral costs of football at William and Mary. McCurdy, who had been
working for the College alumni for fourteen years, had materials ready for publication as a
three-part editorial series in the fall of 1951. McCurdy’s first article in the September issue
of The Alumni Gazette, “Football at William and Mary, 1939-1951,” charged that football
players received scholarships not based upon scholarship; regularly failed courses such as
science, math, English, and history, but remained eligible through enrollment in improper
upper level physical education courses; received free tutoring not available to other students; and had a graduation rate of less than one in three.70
As editor of The Alumni Gazette, McCurdy made the issue look more like the muckrakers of the early 1900s than the usual goodwill offerings of alumni magazines, and it was
not pleasing to the alumni board of directors. The directors of the alumni society were
displeased with McCurdy, who sided with the faculty against the Board of Visitors. Continued publication of the editorial series, they believed, would embarrass the new president. Meeting for five hours, the alumni directors voted 7-1 to censor the publication and
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to bar the remainder of McCurdy’s series, possibly the first censorship in William and
Mary’s history.71 McCurdy tendered his resignation. Another athletic policy dissident
was gone.
Scores of alumni responded to McCurdy’s editorial and resignation, nine times as
many favoring the faculty in its contest of wills as those siding with the Board of Visitors.72
Yet, his own alumni board would not agree with McCurdy. “I am convinced,” McCurdy
wrote in early 1952, “that my position was the right one and that time will prove just
that.”73 McCurdy took a parting shot at the president of the Alumni Association, Charles
Sullivan, for banning his editorials. In fact, McCurdy said, even though the Alumni
Association refused to endorse the faculty manifesto on athletics, it was the faculty’s “statement alone which saved the College’s accreditation—something that the last two presidents and the board of visitors could not do.”74
The Scandal Closes: An Accounting Is Made
Accreditation was only one of many problems the athletic scandal had created. If
William and Mary lost recognition among other institutions of higher learning because of
a big-time athletic program gone awry, would the college again risk going in this direction
under the Board of Visitors and the new president Chandler? The answer appeared at first
to be yes. Both Chandler and the Board wanted to remain visible nationally in football,
and the Board had reconfirmed its policy statement to win more than it lost in football
prior to Chandler’s taking office.
The College struggled to bring the athletic program under faculty control in the fall
of 1951 as demanded by conference legislation. Chandler first asked the faculty to agree
to provide full scholarships to athletes.75 Chandler told the Board of Visitors: “If intercollegiate athletics at William and Mary are to be maintained at a level which will enable us to
compete with our natural rivals in Virginia and elsewhere, we will need scholarships for
about 50 boys in football.”76 The faculty, however, recommended only thirty scholarships
in all sports including football. Furthermore, the William and Mary faculty favored dropping most big-time schools from its schedule in the future including such universities as
Michigan State, Oklahoma, Penn State, Pittsburgh, and Texas, and that became the new
policy under a Board of Visitors that adopted revised athletic guidelines in 1952. Probably more important to the whole concept of academic integrity of William and Mary
than cutting the number of athletic scholarships and reducing the intensity of the football
schedule was the new policy of recruiting athletes in the future who would meet the same
entrance requirements as other students.77 In addition, de-emphasis was seen in the athletic budget. The 1952-1953 budget was reduced by over one-third.78 This had been
forced on William and Mary as alumni gifts, which were often directed to athletics, dropped
over 20 percent immediately following the scandal.79 De-emphasis on athletics and an
emphasis on academics were exactly what most of the faculty had desired, and it was true
for many, but obviously not all, of the alumni.
There was a quiet, but underlying question behind the athletic scandal. What was to
be the educational focus of William and Mary College? Was it to be a small, but leading,
liberal arts college, or was it to expand into a larger state university like those across the
nation, providing professional and vocational training to the masses of students? The
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Board of Visitors, all of whom were political appointees, had favored the professionalbusiness-vocational model where size and visibility dominated. Big-time football fit well
into this model. The Board apparently approved of a physical education department to
harbor its athletes, who performed the task of publicizing the institution. Yet, it was
gained at a considerable cost, for it provided little education or even degrees for those
enrolled in men’s physical education. There was no clearer example at William and Mary
of vocational education, rather than a liberal education, than the men’s physical education
department. The choice of a non-academic as president, Alvin Chandler, was probably
intended to insure the continuance of the vocational and big-time athletic mode. As the
former Dean of Women at William and Mary noted following the scandal: “Certainly
there was no point in continuing to fight to make William and Mary a first-rate liberal arts
college. However, if it is to be a second-rate semi-professional college,” Dean Katharine
Jeffers said, “they ought to have at least a second-rate president.”80
The faculty, unlike the Board, wanted to move toward the small liberal arts model. In
the 1940s and early 1950s, according to James Miller, the philosopher who became the
acting-president during the scandal, William and Mary “was on its way to reassuming its
rightful position among the two or three leading colleges in liberal arts and sciences in
America.”81 Nelson Marshall agreed: “We’d like to think of ourselves in the league with
places like Swarthmore, Haverford, just the best of the liberal arts colleges.”82 To that,
alumni secretary William McCurdy concurred. He, too, was fighting for the liberal arts
tradition, and he saw the men’s athletic program, especially football, as a great hindrance.
William and Mary, he noted, had done away with such curricula as home economics,
library science, education, and women’s physical education in the 1930s and 1940s. That,
he believed, was “a great step forward.” McCurdy wanted to eliminate eventually physical
education for men.83
The two presidents of the 1930s and 1940s, James Bryan and John Pomfret, attempted to achieve excellence in both academics and men’s athletics. A commitment to
excellence in athletics at a national level was apparently more than a college with 700 or
800 male students could support without jeopardizing a desire for excellence in academics. Bryan moved in both directions willingly. Pomfret was dragged along reluctantly
relative to athletics, and it caused friction between the president and the Board of Visitors.
The small, liberal arts college was not able honestly to attain both a big-time athletic
program and a nationally recognized liberal arts college.84
In the end, the Board of Visitors was responsible to a great extent for the athletic
scandal of 1951. The Board set both academic and athletic policy. The Board’s members
appeared far more interested in athletic victories than in academic success. In the midst of
the scandal the college librarian, Robert Land, wrote poignantly to the governor of Virginia to protest the quality of the Board of Visitors. He chastised Governor John Battle
and his predecessor whom he said should be embarrassed for appointing individuals “of
mediocre ability and undistinguished reputations who have proved . . . that they are far
more interested in athletic victories than in academic standards.”85
The William and Mary scandal of 1951 is only one point in the history of athletics in
higher education, but it may be an important one if there are any lessons to be learned
from history. Governing boards must be considered as an important component of the
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athletic equation. As governing boards set athletic policy either by direct action or by
default through inaction, they are and have been critical units in the development of
intercollegiate athletics for the entire period of the twentieth century and into the twentyfirst century. The William and Mary scandal of 1951 shows this clearly. While, historically, bringing athletic programs in line with concepts of academic integrity has generally
been considered the task of faculty and presidents,86 it is nearly impossible unless the
governing boards are willing participants. Only after the William and Mary Board of
Visitors acquiesced in a new athletic policy in 1952 and 1953 was the College able to
create for the future a more favorable climate for maintaining both athletic and academic
integrity.87
1
Nelson Marshall to John Pomfret, 20 April 1951, in Appendix to William and Mary Faculty Minutes, 14 September 1951, College of William and Mary Archives, Williamsburg, Virginia (hereafter
W&MA).
2
See Charles Rosen, Scandals of ’51: How the Gamblers Almost Killed College Basketball (New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978), 202, 215; and Stanley Cohen, The Game They Played (New York:
Carroll & Graf, 2001).
3
Proceedings of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, 1950, pp. 180-207; New York Times, 15
January 1950, p. 42.
4
The New York Times carried a lengthy series of articles exposing the evils of intercollegiate athletics
of the early 1950s, including the West Point scandal. See 22-24 March 1954. See also James Blackwell,
On Brave Old Army Team: The Cheating Scandal that Rocked the Nation: West Point, 1951 (Novato,
Calif.: Presidio Press, 1996); and Albert G. Figone, “Gambling and College Basketball: The Scandal of
1951,” Journal of Sport History 16 (1989): 44-61.
5
John A. Lucas and Ronald A. Smith, Saga of American Sport (Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1978),
392-393.
6
Telegram, Charles W. Eliot to Henry M. MacCracken, 26 November 1905, as quoted in the New
York Daily Tribune, 29 November 1905, p. 2.
7
See Ronald A. Smith, Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big-Time College Athletics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 134-146, 209-218.
8
For a number of reform efforts, some by presidents, including the Carnegie Report see John R.
Thelin, Games Colleges Play: Scandal and Reform in Intercollegiate Athletics (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1994). Thelin notes, “There are few university presidents in this pantheon of
college sports reformers” (p. 200). He never mentions governing boards, the policy makers in institutions of higher education, as potential reformers.
9
Howard J. Savage et al., American College Athletics (New York: The Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching, 1929), 265.
10
American Council on Education, “Responsibility in the Conduct of Collegiate Athletic Programs,”
Educational Record 60 (1979): 345-360. In 1974, George H. Hanford produced a report to the American Council on Education, “An Inquiry into the Need for a Feasibility of a National Study of Intercollegiate Athletics.” It raised the question: “Do college presidents have the power, individually or in concert,
to correct the ills associated with intercollegiate athletics?” (p. 142).
11
William C. Friday and Theodore M. Hesburgh, “Keeping Faith with the Student-Athlete: A New
Model for Intercollegiate Athletics,” Knight Foundation Report, March 1991, p. vii.
12
A 1987 member of the President’s Committee of the NCAA stated that presidents often have felt
the need for “silence” on athletic questions and that presidents have had “good reason to be cautious
about making public allegations against our employers.” Paul Hardin, president of Southern Methodist
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University, had spoken out a decade before about SMU’s breaking of NCAA rules and was fired. See Paul
Hardin, “University Presidents Must Speak Out,” New York Times, 22 March 1987, sec. S, p. 7.
13
"Interview with James W. Miller,” 21 January 1975, Oral History Collection, W&MA. Miller
began at William and Mary as a philosophy professor in 1935 and became acting-president in 1951.
14
Ibid. W. Melville Jones, an English professor at William and Mary from 1928 until he retired as
vice president emeritus, also said that big-time athletics began under Bryan and Voyles when athletic
grants were introduced sub rosa, and all-Americans resulted. See “Interview with W. Melville Jones,” 19
November 1974, Oral History Collection, W&MA.
15
Charles W. McCurdy to Vernon M. Geddy, 9 October 1942, folder 1, Charles W. McCurdy
Papers, W&MA.
16
Ibid.
17
"Report of the Alumni Athletic Association of the College of William and Mary,” read to the
Board of Visitors, April 1943, folder “Athletics—Men’s,” box 2, President Pomfret Papers, W&MA.
18
"Athletic Aids and Scholarships, 1942-43,” folder “Athletics—Men’s,” box 2, Pomfret Papers.
19
Faculty Committee on Athletics Minutes, 24 May 1943, folder “Athletics —Men’s, box 2, Pomfret
Papers.
20
Joseph E. Healty, Superintendent of the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind, to John E. Pomfret,
29 February 1944, folder “Athletics—Men’s,” box 2, Pomfret Papers.
21
A.P.S. Robernson, Norfolk, Va., to John E. Pomfret, 24 March 1944, folder “Athletics—Men’s,”
box 2, Pomfret Papers.
22
John E. Pomfret to the Athletic Committee of the Board of Visitors, 28 March 1944, folder
“Athletics—Men’s,” box 2, Pomfret Papers.
23
Ibid., 5 October 1944.
24
Ibid.
25
William and Mary Board of Visitors Minutes, 12 October 1946, W&MA. Emphasis is mine.
26
Ibid., 14 February 1948.
27
Proceedings of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, 1948, pp. 188-196.
28
William and Mary Board of Visitors Minutes, 4 June 1949, W&MA. The Board of Visitors at the
University of Virginia at this time proposed amending the Sanity Code by authorizing scholarships that
would include room, board, tuition, fees, and books (Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 2 December
1949, University of Virginia Archives, Charlottesville, Virginia). That same year, three Southern conferences—the Southern, Southeastern, and Southwest—had a joint meeting and considered withdrawing
from the NCAA over the subsidization of athletes (Folder “Correspondence-President SEC,” Athletic
Department Unprocessed Papers, University of Alabama Archives, Tuscaloosa, Alabama).
29
William and Mary Faculty Committee on Athletics, Resolution to President Pomfret, 1 February
1950, as noted in Nelson Marshall, “Athletics—Football Scandal of 1951,” W&MA.
30
William and Mary Board of Visitors Minutes, 4 June 1949, and 11 February 1950, W&MA.
31
Jones interview.
32
"Interview with Harold L. Fowler,” 4 November 1974, Oral History Collection, W&MA.
33
"Interview with R. Wayne Kernodle,” 11 November 1975, Oral History Collection, W&MA.
34
"Interview with J. Wilfred Lambert,” 8 January 1975, Oral History Collection, W&MA; Fowler
interview, 4 November 1974; William and Mary Faculty Minutes, Appendix, 14 September 1951, W&MA;
William and Mary Board of Visitors Minutes, 8 September 1951, W&MA.
35
William and Mary Faculty Minutes, 14 September 1951, Appendix, W&MA.
36
Nelson Marshall, “Annual Report of the Dean of the College of William and Mary for the Academic Session 1949-50,” Exhibit A, “Athletics—Football Scandal of 1951,” W&MA.
37
William and Mary Faculty Minutes, 14 September 1951, Appendix, W&MA.
38
Kernodle interview.
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39
Ibid.
Lambert interview. The assistant coach was Alfred Vanderweghe. Vanderweghe helped blow the
lid off the scandal when in July of 1951 he confronted college officials including Marshall, Pomfret, and
McCray. It was agreed to write a letter exonerating him of any wrongdoing, an attempt to keep the
knowledge of the scandal from the public. See William and Mary Faculty Minutes, Appendix, 14 September 1951; and Marshall, “Athletics.”
41
Jones interview.
42
Marshall, “Annual Report.”
43
Newspaper clipping, 23 September 1951, in “Athletics—Football Scandal,” W&MA.
44
Nelson Marshall to John E. Pomfret, 20 April 1951, Appendix to Faculty Minutes, 14 September
1951, W&MA. Marshall apparently had only one other major conflict with Pomfret and that was over
the question of the construction of fraternities on campus with resulting cost over-runs and involving the
Bursar, Charles Duke, who at an earlier time chaired the Athletic Committee.
45
William and Mary Board of Visitors Minutes, 26 May 1951, W&MA.
46
Nelson Marshall to John E. Pomfret, 11 June 1951, in Faculty Minutes, 14 September 1951,
Appendix, W&MA.
47
The Committee consisted of Morton, Charles Anderson, Jess Jackson, W. Melville Jones, and
Stanley Williams. See Faculty Minutes, 3 July 1951, W&MA.
48
John E. Pomfret to R.N. McCray, 3 July 1951 and 4 July 1951, in Faculty Minutes, Appendix, 14
September 1951, W&MA.
49
Nelson Marshall, “To the Board of Visitors of the College of William and Mary for Presentation at
the Hearings to be Continued August 18, 1951,” in his “Athletics.”
50
"Special Faculty Committee, chaired by Richard L. Morton, to John E. Pomfret, 6 July 1951, in
Faculty Minutes, Appendix, 14 September 1951, W&MA.
51
Board of Visitors Minutes, 8 September 1951, W&MA. An investigation by the registrar, J. Wilfred
Lambert, gives a chronology of key events in the scandal.
52
Nelson Marshall to Alfred Vanderweghe, 6 July 1951, Board of Visitors Minutes, 15 August 1951,
in Marshall, “Athletics,”; “Interview with Nelson Marshall,” 14 April 1951, Oral History Collection,
W&MA.
53
Board of Visitors Minutes, 18 August 1951, W&MA.
54
"Interview with John Garland Pollard, Jr.,” 30 April 1975, Oral History Collection, W&MA.
Pollard had a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard and was a former Harvard Business School faculty
member, Phi Beta Kappa from William and Mary, and the son of a former William and Mary professor,
who was later a governor of Virginia.
55
Lambert interview.
56
Miller interview. Soon after resigning, Pomfret became head of the prestigious Henry Huntington
Library and Art Gallery in California. He had applied for the position prior to the scandal being made
public.
57
Marshall interview.
58
Nelson Marshall, “To the Board of Visitors.”
59
Board of Visitors Minutes, 30 September 1950, W&MA. In May of 1950, the Faculty Athletic
Committee had asked the president to clearly define the responsibilities of the Committee. An answer
never arrived. See “The College,” The Alumni Gazette 19 (1951): 3.
60
Oscar L. Shewmake to the William and Mary Faculty Athletic Committee, 16 August 1951, in
Board of Visitors Minutes, 18 August 1951, W&MA.
61
"A Statement by the Faculty of the College of William and Mary,” 17 September 1951, in Executive Committee of the Board of Visitors Minutes, 18 September 1951; Nelson Marshall to Oscar L. Shewmake,
30 August 1951, in Marshall, “Athletics”; Marshall to Shewmake, Board of Visitors Minutes, 8 September
1951, W&MA.
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62
Faculty Minutes, 17 September 1951, W&MA.
Charles P. McCurdy to Charles T. Harrison, University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn., 22 March
1952, McCurdy Papers; Fowler interview, 9 December 1974; Jones interview.
64
Board of Visitors Minutes, 19 September 1951, W&MA.
65
"A Statement by the Faculty of the College of William and Mary,” 17 September 1951, in Executive Committee of the Board of Visitors Minutes, 18 September 1951, W&MA.
66
Charles P. McCurdy, Jr. to Ewell C. Ramsey, 10 August 1942, and Charles P. McCurdy to Channing
M. Hall, 19 July 1942, folder “Election of Pomfret,” McCurdy Papers.
67
Jones interview.
68
Pollard interview.
69
Nelson Marshall to Acting-President James W. Miller, 2:25 p.m., 11 October 1951, Faculty Minutes, Appendix, 13 November 1951, W&MA. Only the day before, the William and Mary faculty had
given Marshall a unanimous vote of confidence and a standing ovation.
70
The Alumni Gazette 19 (1951): 8-9.
71
Charles P. McCurdy to Edward N. Islin, Newport News, Va., 26 November 1951, folder 2, McCurdy
Papers; McCurdy to Jane Ann Segnitz, New York City, 5 February 1952, folder 3, McCurdy Papers;
Arthur B. Hanson, Board of Society of Alumni, Washington, D.C., to Carl Andrews, Editor of the
World-News, Roanoke, Va., 6 December 1951, folder 1, McCurdy Papers. McCurdy was looking for
another, higher-paying position when the scandal broke. In 1951, he took a fundraising position with
Harvard University, and in 1953, he became Executive Director of the State Universities Association.
72
See “Letters,” The Alumni Gazette 19 (1951): 2-3, 32.
73
Charles P. McCurdy to Louis D. Bailey, Norfolk Virginia-Pilot, Portsmouth, Va., 9 January 1952,
folder 1, McCurdy Papers.
74
Charles P. McCurdy to Charles M. Sullivan, 1 February 1952, folder 3, McCurdy Papers.
75
Faculty Minutes, 11 December 1951, W&MA.
76
Board of Visitors Minutes, 9 February 1952, W&MA.
77
"New Athletic Guidelines,” in Board of Visitors Minutes, 9 February 1952, W&MA.
78
Board of Visitors Minutes, 9 February 1952 and 30 May 1953, W&MA.
79
See The Alumni Gazette 19 (1951): 12; and 20 (September 1952): 11 for a comparison of gift
giving.
80
Dean Katharine R. Jeffers, Jackson College of Women, Tufts College, to Charles P. McCurdy,
Washington, D.C., 21 September 1955, folder “Professional Graduates Programs,” McCurdy Papers.
81
Miller interview.
82
Nelson interview.
83
William P. McCurdy, Jr. to Rector of the Board of Visitors, James M. Robertson, Norfolk, Va., 13
September 1955, folder “Professional Graduates Programs,” McCurdy Papers.
84
Charles P. McCurdy to M. Carl Andrews, Editor of Roanoke (Va.) World-News, 13 September
1951, McCurdy Papers.
85
Robert H. Land to John Battle, 18 September 1951, in Pollard interview file.
86
See for instance, Smith, Sports and Freedom.
87
On February 7, 2006, a “William and Mary Athletic Report” was released by the College. This
lengthy document of a large committee from within the College was quite laudatory toward the position
of athletics within its educational setting. It noted an 87 percent graduation rate among its athletes in
2004, one of the highest rates among American colleges and favorably compared to a 90 percent graduation rate of the entire College. It reported that there were 111 admission slots allowed for athletes to
attend the College in 2004-2005, a system used to bring athletes into the College who might not otherwise be admitted. Male athletes scored 199 points, and women athletes 137 points lower on the SAT
exams than the average student. But it notes that, unlike a number of other colleges and universities, the
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average athlete at William and Mary does not under perform in the classroom, restrict him/herself to a
“jock subculture,” or graduate in the lower ranges of the class. William and Mary competes primarily in
Division I-AAA, and Division I-AA in football. The Board of Visitors still has a subcommittee on
athletic policy, but it no longer requires that its football team wins more than it loses, though it regularly
does. See <www.tribeathletics.com/wmatf.pdf> [4 December 2006].
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