Kurt Edward Kemper, author of the new book College Football and American Culture in the Cold War Era, was interviewed in today’s edition of Inside Higher Ed.

Q: At institutions like Louisiana State University and the University of Alabama, how did the pressures of being selected for a big bowl game help influence their eventual integration both on and off the field?

A: It became harder and harder, and eventually impossible in the early 1960s, for Southern teams to go to bowl games if they weren’t going to play integrated schools. … They really lost that capacity by the mid 1950s. There was no way schools were going to pull black players just to play Southern teams, and bowl games were not going to limit themselves to all-white teams because that was just too exclusive, particularly in the West, but also in the North when you look at places like Michigan State. That forced Southern schools to play integrated teams even when they didn’t want to. … In terms of integrating their own rosters, it also became important because it was increasingly apparent that Southern teams weren’t going to be able to compete once they had to play these teams with black players. They were not able to acquire the talent of these players themselves, so they had a hard time winning. It was crucial to forcing them to integrate.