AAC Conference: My grad project!

[Josh]

Most of you already know me, but in the event you do not, I am a full time grad student seeking two masters. One an MSEd and the other a MA in History.

I have done three history research papers, for the most part, concerning Steubenville in some fashion. My first was on Fort Steuben proving there was in fact a real native threat. I dug into the letters between Harman and those in his command to tell my story. The second dealt with Dohrman James Sinclair and how he saved Steubenville. It was a different approach to his story than the one written by his daughter, memory is fuzzy, in the book A father and his town. The third dealt with the red light district, it was short, but Steubenville had found itself in Time Magazine and others for being a "bad" town. I have saved the rest of that to make a connection between Steubenville and Vegas because a lot of older people tell me there is one.

I am working on my new one for this semester and have decided to make a connection to the All American Conference and the communities in some fashion, have not decided what that connection will be yet but I will make one for the paper.

What I need is some of you more intelligent huddlers to email me if you would like to be involved through interviews or connecting me to certian people who would be knowledgeable in the topic such as old coaches and players. I may focus only on Steubenville, a paticular rivalry, or the conference as a whole. Depends on my resources.

Nevertheless, I ask that email me your real names and I can move on from there. I ask that you can tell me what you hope to give me in your information. It could be a fan perspective, athelte perspective, ect. I hope to write 40-50 pages but it could be as low as 15-20 if my resources are low.

Right now the only source I have for my project is The Illustrated History of the All-American Conference. It has no author or point of reference and looks like it came from a football game as their is a program sticker in the top right of the cover. If any of you could provide me with information on this paticular book - it would be great. I need concrete stuff in form of books, programs, and interviews with individuals.

You can post on here if you are willing to help but I do need your real names and why you are relevant to my project in the near future. You will be cited in my project and will be given proper credit.

My email addresses is: joshleasure@hotmail.com

I hope to hear from any of you but hope MoW, Ytown, and the elders of the forums help me out specifically. I need to get moving pretty fast on this in the next week or so in terms of resources in the event I change topic.

I posted this on JJhuddle a few days ago and seeking information from the Massillon faithful as well. If you can help or point me in any directions, please feel free to contact me at my email listed above.

Win or Lose, Massillon Always.

[TigerVic]

I don't know if the book you're referring to is the same one I have (falling apart from reading it so much over the years), but it stops at the end of the 1970 season (I guess once the author(s) saw our '70 squad, there wasn't much else to say!). There are also several errors - some obvious (e.g., in the '65 Massillon-McKinley game, it says something like "Once the Tigers tied the score at 14, there was no stopping them". We won that game 18-14. Perhaps we scored 2 safeties in the final minutes!).

From a broad historical perspective, the AAC was a continuation of rivalries that had been going on for years (The book thus chronicles the entire history of each team (up to '70)). The only real exception to this was Niles, who was added because they happened to be a power in the early 60s, but had no significant history with any of the others, except for Warren.

I think you really have to take the perspective of the deep football richness and coexistence that each program brought to the table in addition to the actual years the AAC existed.

I don't personally recall going to any games that I remember details of until 1970. However, at least from a Massillon perspective (which should end up being 90% of what you write about, of course!), the Booster Club website has the Evening Independent's articles on just about every game the Tigers have played from 1894 on (they're just now finishing the '20s, which was all they had left to do, I think). Thus, from '63-'79, you can get a story on all Massillon AAC games and there were many great and memorable ones! Go to http://www.massillontigers.com/pastgames.htm and enjoy!

Oh- I think there was a Master's Thesis on the AAC done at the University of Akron. You might check their library system for that.

Still, as TigerCarl always says, there is just no replacing actually sitting down with the people who lived and relished the AAC years themselves.

Good luck on your paper!

[Josh]

Thanks for the Univ of Akron comment. Our PhD's here at the University are checking into some "top secret database" of graduate work to see if our original work has already been done. I will check into that too to see what the author did.

[Submariner]

Hello Josh, my name is Chad. I support and follow Warren Harding, who was one of the teams in the old All American Conference. I graduated from the University of Dayton in 1992 with a B.A. in History. I still live in Warren, and hopefully I can either help you in your research or direct you to some people who can answer your questions and fill in some blanks. (For example: in Warren we have a ton of information from the Warren Hall of Fame) every year they induct players from decades ago and may have some connections to people like: Paul Warfield, my cousins Ross Browner etc.

Another team from the original A.A.C. is Niles McKinley. They are the next town over. If you want to private message me you can, I am on this website just about everyday. You can respond on this forum as well. Maybe you can get information and viewpoints from both Warren and Niles at the same time and kill two birds with one stone so to speak! Always glad to help another historian.....!!!!!!!

[warren1st]

I've been watching Warren Harding since 1951 and was part of the team in '58 and '59.

I don't have alot of time but feel free to PM me for more info.

Bob

PS - Junie Studer of Massillon is a walking encyclopedia of Massillon football.