Unit 15 · What a League Is

The oldest known written laws of cricket date from 1744. Gentlemen of several clubs agreed to them in London. Men were betting large sums on matches, and bets needed clear rules to settle them. The code fixed things such as the length of the pitch, 22 yards, which cricket still uses.

In 1787 a group of wealthy players founded the Marylebone Cricket Club, or MCC. It played at a ground laid out by Thomas Lord, a name kept by Lord’s Cricket Ground today. In 1788 the MCC issued its own revised laws. Other clubs began to follow them, so a private club became the game’s lawmaker.

No government gave the MCC this power. It gained authority, the accepted right to make rules, because clubs chose to copy its code. The MCC kept writing the Laws of Cricket for more than two centuries. It still holds the copyright to them, while the International Cricket Council runs world competitions.

Newmarket is a town in eastern England where horses have raced since the 1600s. King Charles II raced and watched there. Around 1750 a group of wealthy men who owned racehorses formed the Jockey Club. At first it was a social club for owners who met to dine and talk.

Owners had money riding on fair results. The club began to settle disputes over races at Newmarket. Over time other courses asked it to judge their disputes too. Its rules on races, the weights horses carried and the horses themselves spread across Britain.

The club’s strongest tool was the power to warn off. A person who was warned off was banned from racecourses under the club’s rules. For about two centuries the Jockey Club governed British racing. In 2006 a separate authority took over that job, now called the British Horseracing Authority.

By the 1880s English soccer clubs were paying players, and they needed steady crowds to pay wages. Many games were friendlies, arranged one at a time, and some were cancelled. In March 1888 William McGregor of Aston Villa wrote to other clubs. He proposed a fixed list of home and away matches each season.

Twelve clubs formed the Football League in 1888. Six came from Lancashire and six from the Midlands. The Football Association, founded in 1863, still wrote the Laws of the Game. The League was different: it ran a season-long competition as a business partnership of clubs.

In the 1890s the League added a Second Division. Clubs then moved up by promotion and down by relegation based on results. This made English soccer an open system, in which any club could climb. Most major American leagues instead became closed systems, where the same teams stay in no matter where they finish.

The Chicago White Sox lost the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. In 1920 a grand jury in Chicago looked into claims that gamblers paid White Sox players to lose. Eight players were charged. Newspapers soon called the disgraced team the Black Sox.

The owners feared fans would stop trusting the game. Until then baseball was run by a three-man National Commission. In November 1920 the owners chose Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a federal judge in Chicago, as the first commissioner. He took office in January 1921 and demanded nearly unchecked power as his price.

A Chicago jury found the eight players not guilty in August 1921. The next day Landis banned all eight from organized baseball for life anyway. His ruling showed that a league’s private power could reach further than a court. Shoeless Joe Jackson, one of the eight, was never allowed back while he lived.

The 1921 agreement that hired Landis gave the commissioner power to act on anything he judged harmful to the best interests of baseball. The phrase was not defined. Its vagueness was its strength, since it let the commissioner punish acts no rule had listed. Club owners even promised not to take the commissioner to court.

Pete Rose holds the record for the most hits in major league history. In 1989 an investigation found that he had bet on baseball games, including games of the Cincinnati Reds, the team he managed. In August 1989 Rose signed an agreement with Commissioner Bart Giamatti. It placed him on baseball’s permanently ineligible list.

In 1991 the Baseball Hall of Fame voted that people on that list could not be elected. So the league’s private ruling also kept Rose off the Hall of Fame ballot. In May 2025 Commissioner Rob Manfred ruled that a ban ends when a person dies. That decision took Rose, who died in 2024, and Joe Jackson off the list.

The American Professional Football Association formed in Canton, Ohio, in 1920. Its first president was Jim Thorpe, the Olympic champion and player for the Canton Bulldogs. Thorpe gave the league a famous name, but he ran it for only one year. In 1921 Joe Carr, an Ohio sports promoter, became president and served until his death in 1939.

In 1922 the association renamed itself the National Football League. Carr worked to stop teams from signing college players before their classes graduated. He also pushed teams to settle in larger cities. Small-town clubs from places such as Canton and Decatur, Illinois, gave way to city teams.

The Decatur Staleys, a founding team, moved to Chicago in 1921 and became the Chicago Bears in 1922. In 1941 the owners created the title of commissioner, following baseball’s example. Elmer Layden, a former Notre Dame star and coach, was the first to hold it. The title said the league now wanted one strong executive over its clubs.

In the 1890s many rugby players in northern England worked in mills and mines. A Saturday match could cost them a day’s pay. Northern clubs asked to pay players for this lost time, called broken time. The Rugby Football Union, based in the south and led by men of wealth, refused.

On August 29, 1895, twenty-two clubs met at the George Hotel in Huddersfield. They formed the Northern Rugby Football Union. It allowed broken-time payments. The Rugby Football Union then treated anyone who joined the northern body as a professional and banned them.

The northern game changed its own rules over the years and in 1922 took the name rugby league. The older game became known as rugby union. The split shows amateurism as a belief about social class. Men who did not need wages could afford the rule that no one should be paid.

For decades the major tennis championships, such as Wimbledon, admitted only amateurs. Top players who turned professional joined touring shows and were barred from the majors. Meanwhile some amateurs quietly took large expense payments. Critics called this hidden pay shamateurism.

In 1967 the All England Club, which runs Wimbledon, said it would open the tournament to professionals. The International Lawn Tennis Federation agreed in March 1968. In April 1968 the British Hard Court Championships in Bournemouth became the first open tournament. Wimbledon held its first open championship that summer.

The Open Era followed. Rod Laver, who had been barred from the majors as a professional, won the Grand Slam of all four major titles in 1969. Prize money became public and grew. The change ended a rule that had pushed paid players out of sight rather than out of the sport.

Rugby union stayed officially amateur for most of the 1900s. Players who joined rugby league were often banned from union for life. By the 1990s top union players were earning money through jobs, gifts and sponsors arranged around the rule. The first Rugby World Cup in 1987 and television deals brought in large sums.

In 1995 South Africa hosted the Rugby World Cup. Media companies were offering to set up a paid competition. The International Rugby Football Board, the game’s world governing body, met in Paris. On August 26, 1995, it declared rugby union an open game, in which players could be paid.

The date came almost exactly one hundred years after the Huddersfield meeting of 1895. The amateur rule that had split the sport was gone. Some older clubs struggled to pay wages, and professional franchises and club leagues grew. The world body later renamed itself World Rugby, in 2014.

In the early 1930s rich NFL teams signed the best college players, and weak teams stayed weak. Bert Bell owned the Philadelphia Eagles, one of the struggling clubs. In 1935 he proposed a draft. Teams would take turns choosing college players, with the worst team choosing first.

The owners approved the plan, and the first draft was held in February 1936 in Philadelphia. The first pick was Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago, who had won the first Heisman Trophy. Berwanger never played in the NFL. He took a job in business instead of accepting the pay that was offered.

The draft helped competitive balance, the idea that any team might win. It also meant a player could negotiate with only one team. The owners voted it in; the players had no vote. Other leagues later adopted drafts, and players’ unions would bargain over them for decades.

Major League Soccer was founded in 1995 and played its first season in 1996. It was built as a single entity. The league itself signed player contracts, and investors ran teams inside one company. Its founders hoped this would control costs after earlier American soccer leagues had failed.

In 1997 MLS players sued, claiming the design let the league hold down pay unfairly. A federal jury decided in 2000 that the players had not proved their case. The design survived. It shows that a league’s structure is a choice written into its founding papers.

The NFL wanted similar protection. Its teams had given one company, Reebok, the sole right to make their caps. A cap maker called American Needle sued under antitrust law. In 2010 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that NFL teams are separate businesses when they sell their logos, so antitrust law applies to them.

In 1943 many male baseball players were serving in World War II. Philip K. Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs and of the Wrigley chewing gum company, started a professional league for women. It became the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Teams played in Midwestern cities such as Rockford, Illinois, and Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The league had written rules about more than the game. Players wore short-skirted uniforms. They attended a charm school for lessons on makeup and manners. Rules banned short haircuts, and each team had chaperones who watched players off the field.

The league lasted until 1954 and gave hundreds of women paid careers in baseball. It did not sign Black players, even after Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. The 1992 film A League of Their Own, about the Rockford Peaches, brought the league wider fame. Its rule book shows a league governing players’ lives as well as their play.

Wellesley and Needham are neighboring towns west of Boston. Their high school football teams first played each other in 1882. The game moved to Thanksgiving and is often called the oldest public high school Thanksgiving rivalry in the country. Families plan the holiday around it.

In the late 1800s, college football games on Thanksgiving drew large crowds in New York and other cities. High schools copied the custom. A holiday game gave a whole town a reason to gather. Alumni came home, and the game became part of local identity.

A ritual like this is civic: it belongs to the community, not only to the players. Towns paid for fields and stands, and newspapers printed the scores. The game was public in two senses. It was open to everyone, and it was paid for partly with public money.

Early high school games were played on Saturday or holiday afternoons. Electric field lighting became practical and affordable for many towns in the 1920s and 1930s. With lights, a game could start after the workday ended. Working parents could now come to watch.

The Great Depression began in 1929. In 1935 the federal government created the Works Progress Administration, or WPA. It hired unemployed workers to build public projects. Among many roads, schools and parks, WPA crews built athletic fields and stadiums for towns and schools across the country.

Many of these stadiums still stand. They were built with federal money, on public land, for public schools. That history matters for the money question today. A Friday night game uses a public asset, something owned by the community, even when a booster club pays for new lights.

Soldier Field opened on Chicago’s lakefront in the 1920s. It was built by the city’s South Park Commission as a memorial to soldiers. For decades it hosted the Prep Bowl. This game matched the champion of the Chicago Public League against the champion of the Catholic League.

In November 1937, Austin High School of the Public League played Leo High School of the Catholic League there. The crowd is often reported at more than 100,000 people. Many sources call it the largest crowd for any high school football game in American history. The game was played for charity.

The Prep Bowl joined public and private schools in one city ritual. It also showed that a school game could draw a crowd the size of a college or professional game. Large crowds meant large gate receipts, the money from ticket sales. The question of who controls such money has followed school sport ever since.

Homecoming is a fall weekend when graduates return to see a football game. Several colleges claim to have held the first one. Baylor University in Texas points to 1909. The University of Illinois points to October 1910. The University of Missouri points to 1911.

The Illinois claim rests on a student-organized event built around a game against the University of Chicago. It included a parade and a pep rally. Historians note that each claim uses a different definition of homecoming. The honest answer is that the custom grew at several schools at about the same time.

High schools soon copied homecoming, adding parades, dances and a homecoming court. The weekend became a ritual that tied graduates to their old school. It also became a time for fundraising. Many alumni gifts and booster drives are still timed to homecoming weekend.

In the 1990s the Santa Fe Independent School District in Texas had a policy for home football games. Students voted to choose one classmate to deliver a message or invocation before each game. The message was spoken over the stadium loudspeaker. Families of some students sued, and they were allowed to use the name Doe to protect their privacy.

The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In June 2000 the Court ruled 6 to 3 against the district. The Court said the policy broke the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. That clause bars government from establishing or endorsing religion.

The Court reasoned that the game was a school event on school property. The loudspeaker was school equipment, and the school set up the vote. So the prayer carried the school’s approval. The case shows that a Friday night game is a government event under the Constitution, not just a local party.

Joseph Kennedy was an assistant football coach at Bremerton High School in Washington State. For years he knelt at midfield after games to pray. Players and others sometimes joined him. In 2015 the school district told him to stop praying where students could join, and it later placed him on leave.

Kennedy sued. In June 2022 the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 in his favor. The majority said his short, quiet prayer was private speech protected by the First Amendment’s free speech and free exercise clauses. It also set aside an older test courts had used to judge whether government seemed to endorse religion.

The dissent argued that a coach at midfield holds power over players. It said students could feel pressure to join. Read together, the 2000 and 2022 cases show a field where the Constitution applies. The courts drew the line between a school’s speech and a person’s speech in different places.

In 1903 Luther Halsey Gulick Jr. was director of physical training for New York City’s public schools. He helped found the Public Schools Athletic League, or PSAL. It organized contests among the city’s schools. Wealthy donors gave money to get the league started.

The PSAL’s founders wanted sport to build health and loyalty among city boys, many from immigrant families. In 1905 a Girls’ Branch was added. It favored folk dancing and games over public competition, reflecting ideas of the time about girls and sport.

The PSAL showed a pattern that later spread widely. A public school system ran the league, but private money helped pay for it. That mix of public control and private funding still shapes high school sport. It is one reason questions about who sees the books can be hard to answer.

The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association, or TSSAA, governs high school sport in Tennessee. It is a private nonprofit group, but most of its members are public schools. Public school officials sit on its board. In the late 1990s it punished Brentwood Academy, a private school, for breaking a recruiting rule.

Brentwood Academy sued, saying the association had violated its constitutional rights. The key question was whether the TSSAA was a state actor. The Constitution limits what government does, not what private clubs do. In 2001 the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that the association was a state actor.

The Court said the association was so tied to public schools and officials that it acted as the state. This matters for accountability, the duty to explain and answer for decisions. A body that acts as the state must follow constitutional limits. Many state associations, including the IHSA, are built from public school members in a similar way.

In 1978 California voters passed Proposition 13, which sharply limited property taxes. Property taxes paid for much of California’s public schools. Budgets tightened. In 1980 the Santa Barbara High School District began charging students fees to join sports teams, bands and other activities.

A parent, Barbara Hartzell, sued. In 1984 the California Supreme Court ruled against the fees. It held that school activities are part of the free public education the state constitution promises. Charging fees, the court said, shut out students whose families could not pay.

Many other states have no such ruling, and pay-to-play fees are common in some of them. The Hartzell case framed school sport as part of education, not an extra to be sold. That view shapes the argument about profit. If sport is education, its money is public money.

In 2009 voters in the Allen Independent School District, north of Dallas, approved a large bond. A bond lets a public body borrow money and repay it over years from taxes. Part of the money built a new high school football stadium. It cost about $60 million and held about 18,000 people.

Eagle Stadium opened in 2012. In 2013 engineers found serious cracks in its concrete, and the district closed it. Games moved elsewhere while the district argued with the builders over who should pay. After repairs, the stadium reopened for games in 2014.

The Allen case drew national attention because it showed how big school sport spending had grown in parts of Texas. Because the bond needed voters’ approval, the cost was public from the start. The case shows why transparency, openness about money and decisions, matters when public borrowing pays for sport.

In 1957 Illinois passed the Open Meetings Act. It requires public bodies, including school boards, to hold their meetings in public with advance notice. Boards must post an agenda. They may close a meeting only for certain listed reasons, such as some personnel matters.

In 1984 Illinois passed its Freedom of Information Act. It lets any person ask a public body for its records. School district budgets, contracts and payments are public records unless a specific exception applies. The law was strengthened in 2010 to make it harder for public bodies to refuse requests.

These laws cover the school district, but a booster club is usually a separate private nonprofit. Its own books may not be public records. Money it gives to the school, once the board accepts it, enters district records. The line between the two is often where debates over Friday night money begin.

In 1994 Congress passed the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act, often called EADA. It applies to colleges that take part in federal student aid and have athletic programs. Each year they must report the number of athletes on men’s and women’s teams. They must also report coaches’ pay, revenues and expenses by team.

The U.S. Department of Education makes these reports public. Reporters, researchers and families use them to compare colleges. The law was meant to show whether schools were treating men’s and women’s sports fairly under Title IX. It uses disclosure, making information public, rather than new rules about spending.

No federal law requires the same reports from high schools. Bills to require them have been proposed in Congress but have not passed. Some states and districts publish athletic budgets on their own. So whether the public sees Friday night revenue often depends on a local choice.