The 1929 Iowa Football Scandal: Paying Tribute to the Carnegie Report?

For much of the 1920s college football's future was at the heart of a serious struggle over control of intercollegiate sport between the academic and athletic factions of the university community. The Big Ten Conference was one of the most active organizations in considering its own athletic workings, ultimately resulting in the suspension of the University of Iowa from the conference. Using previously unutilized Big Ten archival material this paper offers an inside examination of the Big Ten's efforts at maintaining institutional control over its athletic programs during the 1920s, along with a consideration of whether or not Iowa was offered up to the reform movement as a scapegoat for other alleged transgressions within the conference.