The New South

Andrew Doyle argues that the meanings of Southern victories over Northern teams extended beyond the football field, serving “both as symbolic vengeance over historic enemies and as a plea for respect from those same enemies.” Some Southerners, especially members of the growing middle class, felt pride in seeing Southern schools master a sport that had originated at elite Northern universities. They connected these victories to a sense of collective identity based on their role as leaders of an emerging New South – an economically progressive, industrial region with strong ties to the rest of the nation that still retained many aspects of traditional Southern culture. Football fit in perfectly with this regional identity. It was seen as a modern, scientific sport because it required “discipline and organization” and “technique and strategy" more so than older sports such as boxing, which relied more on brute strength and bravery. However, football still drew on some of the values that had defined the antebellum South, such as white male virtue and strength. Southern business owners and entrepreneurs who embraced the idea of a New South were eager for greater connections with and respect from Northerners. They saw victories against Northern teams as a way to advertise the South’s economic, social, and educational progress and refute stereotypes of the South as a “bastion of backwardness.”