'College would be a dead old dump without it' : East Tennessee intercollegiate athletics during the depression

In the late 1920s and early 1930s Carson-Newman College, Maryville College, East Tennessee State Teacher's College, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the University of Chattanooga all followed national trends and abolished their women's intercollegiate programs, replacing them with extensive intramural programs designed to deter competitiveness and promote feminine virtues. The University of the South had women's programs to discontinue.

Similarly, these six East Tennessee schools maintained their men's intercollegiate athletic programs despite facing staggering financial stresses throughout the 1930s. Influenced by a culture celebrating sports heroes, these six schools' leaders expected similar benefits from their athletic offerings and used the same general justifications for keeping them. The administrators expected the men's intercollegiate programs to attract, entertain, and inspire students, generate true student athletes, and link alumni and townspeople more directly with the schools, all the while paying for themselves. The administrators set themselves up for disappointment, and several of them felt it.

The intramural programs did not curb the women's competitive urges, and while the men's intercollegiate programs did help in all of the designated areas, they did not solve the many problems facing the colleges and universities during the Depression. Despite their expensive and recognizably modern athletic programs, these six colleges still had problems with unstable enrollments, athletes underachieving academically, and alumni interested only in the athletic programs.