When football come back to the U of C

It was a chilly, gray day Nov. 8, 1963, as I headed one block from my Pierce Tower dorm to attend my first ever college football game pitting the Chicago Maroons against North Central College from Naperville. The event was memorable on several levels. The Maroons were not really a team but a "club" whose players were trained in a football "class". The game itself was billed merely as a scrimmage, representing baby steps by the U of C testing the football waters considering their last official game was 25 years earlier against mighty Illinois. Then Chancellor Robert Hutchins abolished football as antithetical to a vigorous intellectual life. The several hundred of us fans were soon thwarted by several dozen students who staged a sit-in on the 50 yard line to keep Hutchins vision intact. Administrators were called in negotiate including Jim Newman, one of my profs, who was completely discombobulated by the protest. Then several paddy wagons appeared and I still remember one of my dorm mates, Paul Aronson, barely 5 feet tall, being hustled into a squadrol by one of Chicago's pot bellied finest. Another student keep screaming "God Bless America" as the door closed on him. I had enough and left historic Stagg Field in disappointment. Reading about the protest recently, I discovered the game, or scrimmage, did occur but don't know the outcome. I imagine the Maroons faired a bit better than their November 25, 1939 swansong against the Illini. They lost that one 46-0, capping a 3 game Big Ten season in which they were outscored 192-0.