By Finding aid prepared by Chris Petersen and Megan Guerre.
Title: Intercollegiate Athletics Records, 1908-2013
Predominant Dates: 1934-2001
ID: RG 007
Primary Creator: Oregon State University. Office of Intercollegiate Athletics
Extent: 16.7 cubic feet. More info below.
Arrangement: The collection is arranged into fifteen series, which are themselves organized either chronologically or alphabetically, as appropriate. The collection's series are: 1. Intercollegiate Athletic Board Records, 1936-1985; 2. Athletic Advisory Committee Records, 1985-2001; 3. Department and Conference Meeting Minutes, 1985-1998; 4. Funding and Budgets, 1947-1992; 5. Facilities, 1952-1997; 6. Reports and Lists, 1941-2001; 7. Legal Issues, 1980-1987; 8. NCAA Certification, 1992-2000; 9. Title IX Compliance, 1975-2000; 10. Game and Event Programs, Scorecards, 1908-2013; 11. Press Releases, 1941-2001; 12. Publications, 1922-2013; 13. Subject Files, 1934-2013; 14. Scrapbooks, 1937-1962; 15. Audio-Visual and Ephemera, circa 1980s-2009.
Languages of Materials: English [eng]
The Intercollegiate Athletics Records document the operation, marketing and performance of the Oregon State University athletic department, as well as the pursuits of thousands of student athletes whose endeavors have been administered by the department. The collection, which is eclectic in its material types and sprawling in its topical strengths, provides particular insight into the unit's work in the 1930s-1950s and the 1970s-1990s. Multiple decades worth of meeting minutes and several hundred game and event programs stand out as highlights of this record group.
Access to legal files in Series 7 and the Office of Civil Rights Title IX Compliance Audit materials in Series 9 is restricted due to the presence of confidential information. For more information about access to restricted materials, please see our Guide to the Special Collections and Archives Research Center.
Items from this collection have been digitized and are available in Oregon Digital. The contents of Box-folder 4.4, 4.5, 6.7, 15.7, and 17.1 have been digitized and are available upon request.
The Intercollegiate Athletics Records provide detailed documentation of periods of activity and of specific events within the Oregon State University athletic department. The collection is particularly strong for the decades of the 1930s-1950s and the 1970s-1990s. It also provides granular insight into particular chapters in department history, including the implementation and unfolding of women's sports programs in the early 1970s following the passage of Title IX; a lawsuit filed against the department in the early 1990s by former softball coach Vickie Dugan; and various facilities remodeling and expansion projects, including efforts to improve the university's football complex in the 1980s and 1990s.
The records likewise include a large volume of game and event programs dating from 1908 to present day. These programs provide both a wealth of data concerning coaches, players and outcomes of various competitions, as well as a glimpse into artistic expression from past eras, as original artwork was often commissioned for a given game program.
A large volume of meeting minutes are held in the collection, including very thorough sets documenting decades of activity by the school's Intercollegiate Athletic Board - an important group that effectively ran the athletic department for much of its early history - as well as the Athletic Advisory Committee that succeeded the board in 1985. Minutes of meetings compiled by the Pacific-10 Conference also provide a glimpse into conference-level activities in the 1980s and 1990s.
Other topical strengths of the collection include the department's funding and chronic budget woes; the process by which OSU renewed its certification as a NCAA Division 1 athletic program in the mid-1990s; and the OSU football team's appearance in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl on New Years Day, 2001.
Additional material types held in the collection include lengthy runs of press releases, an array of publications, five scrapbooks and a handful of audio-visual formats, including reel-to-reel audio, audio cassette, VHS and CD-ROM.
Items from this collection have been digitized and are available in Oregon Digital. The contents of box-folders 4.4 - 4.5, 6.7, 15.7, and 17.1 have been digitized and are available upon request.
Oregon State athletics has experienced numerous successes in more than a century of competition. University teams won NCAA national championships in cross country (1961) and baseball (2006, 2007 and 2018), and individuals have claimed national titles in crew, gymnastics, golf, track and field, and wrestling. All-American honors likewise have been awarded to individuals in baseball, men's and women's basketball, football, gymnastics, men's swimming and wrestling. The highest individual awards granted in football and gymnastics, the Heisman trophy (Terry Baker, 1962) and American Award (Mary Ayotte, 1982) respectively, also have been received by OSU athletes.
Intercollegiate athletics began at Oregon Agricultural College in 1893 under the administration of President John Bloss. The first team sport, football, played its inaugural game against Albany College in November of that year. Since then, OSU's football team has participated in seventeen bowl games, including three Rose Bowls (1942, 1957, and 1965) and the 2001 Fiesta Bowl, and has also been the source of a number of notable upsets. In 1915, OAC traveled away from the West Coast for the first time to take on the top-ranked Michigan Aggies (now Michigan State), leaving East Lansing with a 20-0 win. In 1933, eleven OSC men playing both offense and defense for the entire game held defending national champion USC to a scoreless tie. They are now referred to as the OSC "Iron Men." The 1967 team again stunned the West Coast with two wins and a tie against three previously undefeated teams (USC, Purdue, and UCLA), earning the nickname, the "Giant Killers."
OSU quarterback and Heisman trophy recipient, Terry Baker, led the 1962 football team to a Liberty Bowl win. He was also a member of the 1963 men's basketball team, which made the second Final Four appearance in school history - the first was in 1949 - at the NCAA championship that year. Other men's sports teams, including tennis, swimming, polo, crew, and golf, were established during the 1920s. The first men's soccer team was fielded in 1988.
Prior to the start of the 20th century, OAC track and field, baseball, and women's basketball were formed, though women's basketball was not instituted as a formal varsity sport until 1976. With the implementation of Title IX legislation in 1973, women's varsity athletics expanded greatly, providing a significant increase in opportunities for female athletes. Women's crew, golf, gymnastics, soccer, softball, swimming, and volleyball were all formed between 1967 and 1988. Pat Ingram (1973-1975) served as the first Director of what was then known as the Women's Intercollegiate Athletic Department.
The school's athletic directors have included James Arbuthnot (1906-1910) who also coached the wrestling team (first fielded in 1909), Edward J. Stewart (1912-ca. 1915), Richard B. Rutherford (1920-1924), William A. Kerns (1924-1928), Paul J. Schissler (ca. 1929-1933), Carl Lodell (1933-1937), Percy Locey (1937-1947), Roy S. "Spec" Keene (1947-1964), Amory T. "Slats" Gill (1964-1966), James Barratt (1966-1976), Dee Andros (1976-1985), Sylvia Moore (interim, 1985), Lynn Snyder (1985-1990), Dutch Baughman (1990-1997), Lee Schroeder (interim, 1997-1998), Mitch Barnhart (1998-2002), and Bob De Carolis (2002-present). From 1936 to 1985, the university's athletic director was a member of the executive committee of the Intercollegiate Athletics Board. Created by OSC President George Peavy to oversee Intercollegiate Athletics, the Board effectively ran the athletic department for several decades. It was disbanded in 1985 and replaced by an Athletic Advisory Committee. The Committee functions to advise the athletic director of department policy and is meant to represent the views of students, faculty, and alumni.
The Aggies/Beavers were members of the Northwest Intercollegiate Association from 1902-1914, and competed in the Pacific Coast Conference from 1915 to its disbanding in 1959. From 1959 to 1964, Oregon State had no conference affiliation. In 1964 OSU joined the Pacific-8 Conference which expanded to the Pacific-10 in 1978 and, in 2011, to the Pacific-12.
Accruals: Additions to the collection are expected.
More Extent Information: 3 sound recordings, 1 video cassette and 1 CD-ROM; 25 boxes, including 6 oversize boxes, and 2 map folders; 1 microfilm reel
Statement on Access: Access to legal files in Series 7 and the Office of Civil Rights Title IX Compliance Audit materials in Series 9 is restricted due to the presence of confidential information. For more information about access to restricted materials, please see our Guide to the Special Collections and Archives Research Center. All other materials in this collection are open for research.
Acquisition Note: The records held in this collection were transferred to the University Archives and the Special Collections & Archives Research Center through dozens of accessions over multiple decades. Two publications, Fighting Aggies (formerly PUB 10-22x) and Athletics Brochures (formerly PUB 53), were removed from the Publications Groups and transferred to RG 007 in 2014.
Related Materials:
OSU's Department of Intercollegiate Athletics maintains its own archive consisting of approximately 200 cubic feet of paper materials, photographs, film reels, videotapes and ephemera. A general inventory of these materials is available upon request of the Special Collections and Archives Research Center (SCARC), but access to the contents is by permission only of the OSU Department of Athletic Communications.
Numerous collections within SCARC document Oregon State's athletic enterprise over the course of school history. Collections of interest include the Sports Media Guides (PUB 054), the Intercollegiate Athletics Photographic Collection (P 031), and the Intercollegiate Athletics Moving Images (FV 031), and the Athletic Union of Oregon Agricultural College Records (RG 041). Dozens of photograph collections depict OSU's past sporting exploits, including the Baseball Photographs (P 007), Basketball Photographs (P 006), Rowing (Crew) Photograph Collection (P 015), Football Photograph Collection (P 004), Track and Field Photograph Collection (P 010) and Women's Athletics Photograph Collection (P 009).
SCARC also houses a multitude of scrapbook collections devoted to athletics, including two focusing on OSC's participation in the 1942 Rose Bowl (the RoseBowl Football Game Scrapbooks (MSS RoseBowl) and the Rose Bowl Game Scrapbook (MSS RoseBowlPanagis)), the Oregon State College - New York University Football Game Scrapbook (MSS OSCNYUFootball), the Dale Story Scrapbook (MSS Story), the Berny Wagner Scrapbook (MSS Wagner) and the Oregon State University Women's Basketball and Field Hockey Scrapbooks (MSS WomenBBHockey).
The OSU Memorabilia Collection (MSS MC) contains additional information about notable sports teams, individuals and events. Additional moving images collections containing substantive content related to OSU athletics include the Alumni Association Motion Picture Films and Videotapes (FV 017) and the News and Communication Services Motion Picture Films and Videotapes (FV 057). Photo collections not specifically devoted to athletics but containing a large number of relevant images include Harriet's Photograph Collection (P HC), Alumni Relations Photographs (P 017), News and Communication Services Photograph Collection (P 057) and the Oregon Stater Photograph Collection (P 195).
See also: Oregon State Baseball: 100 Years to a National Championship, the story of OSU baseball, beginning with its first win in 1907 through its back-to-back national championships one hundred years later.
Preferred Citation: Intercollegiate Athletics Records (RG 007), Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Corvallis, Oregon.
Processing Information:
We acknowledge that materials in SCARC collections and the language that describes them may be harmful. We are actively working to address our descriptive practices; for more information please see our SCARC Anti-Racist Actions Statement online.
The archivist-prepared description of this collection uses the phrase “Civil War” to refer to the long-standing athletic rivalry between Oregon State University and the University of Oregon. A history of this athletic rivalry, and use of the phrase “Civil War” to describe it, is available online in The Origins of the "Civil War" Football Game blog post.
In June 2020, Oregon State University President Edward J. Ray announced that the term “Civil War” will no longer be used by either university because it “represents a connection to a war fought to perpetuate slavery.”
We acknowledge the racism represented by the use of this phrase and the harm it may cause our users. In order to provide historical context and to enable standardized searching and access across our collections, we have retained the use of this phrase in the collection description.
[Date of acknowledgement: November 2021]
Oregon State University. Office of Intercollegiate Athletics
Oregon State College. Athletic Department
Oregon State University. Athletics.
Baker, Terry, 1941-
Basketball--Oregon--Corvallis.
Baughman, Dutch
College students--Oregon--Corvallis.
Dugan, Vickie
Football--Oregon--Corvallis.
National Collegiate Athletic Association
Oregon State College--Baseball.
Oregon State College--Basketball.
Oregon State College--Football.
Oregon State College--Track and field.
Oregon State University--Baseball.
Oregon State University--Basketball.
Oregon State University--Football.
Oregon State University--Sports.
Oregon State University--Track and field.
Oregon State University. Office of Intercollegiate Athletics
Pacific-10 Conference
Rose Bowl (Football game) (1942 : Durham, N.C.)
Rose Bowl (Football game) (1957 : Pasadena, Calif.)
Track and field athletes--Oregon--Corvallis.
United States. Education Amendments of 1972. Title IX
University History
Audiocassettes.
Born digital.
Compact discs.
Printed ephemera.
Programs (documents).
Scrapbooks.
Tape reels.
Video recordings (physical artifacts)