A question for the CFB historians...

[Soonersincefitty]

I was wondering about something.

Before there was any controlling authority, IE, the NCAA and the transfer rule, that states that a D1 athlete must sit for a year after transferring from one D1 school to another... are there any documented cases where some programs were putting together monster teams on the down low before the rule was put into place?

I've scoured the interwebs and can't find diddly about it.
It had to have happened, human nature being what it is.

Thanks in advance for any responses.

(funny factoid...early in the OU program, there were occasions that we didn't have enough players and an assistant coach would suit up and play)

 

[owenfieldreams]

The only similar circumstance I can think of.....there may be others, is Jim Tatum's first year as HC @ OU. Using their connections to Iowa Pre-flight, the Sooners welcomed something like 300 candidates to try out for the team. Most if not all were vets returning from the war. Those who made it were an integral part of the first NC team.....a team Bud called his best.

 

[Soonersincefitty]

The only similar circumstance I can think of.....there may be others, is Jim Tatum's first year as HC @ OU. Using their connections to Iowa Pre-flight, the Sooners welcomed something like 300 candidates to try out for the team. Most if not all were vets returning from the war. Those who made it were an integral part of the first NC team.....a team Bud called his best.

Yep, I've heard tales of those guys Bud got returning from WW2.

Couldn't possibly be any tougher of a guy than one that had walked across Europe killing Nazis. Wow!

 

[Plainosooner]

There were waivers during the time immediately after the end of WWII.

The NCAA was created at the insistence of Teddy Roosevelt. The original football rules from over 100 years ago, were more than a little rugged. A runner wasn't down until he gave up. He could be on the ground and being beat up to encourage him to call himself down. Flying wedges and other physically dangerous fundamentals of the game made it very rough. It was common for teams to kick off after being scored on, because it was a way to gain field position, because moving the ball was tough.

Any NCAA rules come about because of politics and a consensus of members of the NCAA. There are transfer rules because it's the preference of the majority of members.

It would be difficult for teams to function if players were free to move from one school to another to play immediately. Another factor to consider is that for decades, almost all specific rules related to non sport specific rules were determined by the conferences, not the NCAA. Until the early 70s, each conference set their own rules about things like recruiting rules and recruiting class size limits.

Conferences like the SEC allowed multiple teams to go to bowl games. The Big Seven and the BIg Ten allowed only one, and had a no repeat rule. The Bowl often had a connection for a conference champ to go to a particular bowl, but otherwise, they could take pretty much whomever they wanted. Coaches, like Bear Bryant, were known to be able to influence the whole bowl slate because of political clout with certain bowls, which would then find dominoes falling to his advantage.

Conferences still have jurisdiction over transfer rules from one conference team to another. THe NCAA rules govern transfers otherwise. I know that in some past time, that some conferences had rules that you could never transfer directly to another conference school. I've watched college football for more than 55 years and there has always been a rule about sitting a year to transfer outside the conference. Texas high schools had the same rule for years. And if a guy transferred his senior year of high school, he could not play his senior year, no matter the reason for transfer.

And there are different rules for different sports.Less stringent for spring sports.

 

[Plainosooner]

I think you'll find this article interesting an informative, even if it doesn't answer all of your questions. But this shows several of the issues involved. Teams would commonly recruit players from other schools if there were no restrictions.

http://www.rockmnation.com/2010/11/21/1828767/the-1960-mu-ku-controversey