1907 The Jeanes Bequest

In 1907, Anna T. Jeanes bequeathed her coal lands and mineral rights in Pennsylvania - rumored to be worth $1 million, but later found to be worth much less - to Swarthmore on the condition it permanently give up all intercollegiate sports. The issue made news around the country, including an article in The Nation which stated that the College's choice came down to becoming a football school or an academic institution.

The Board ultimately decided to refuse the gift and stated in its report:

"Perhaps no Board of Managers of any college is more conservative than our own Board on this subject of intercollegiate athletics. We believe them liable to abuses, ...  [B]ut it would seem that if competitive games with other colleges are on the whole objectionable, they should be abolished for that reason, and not because of the tender of a sum of money."

President Joseph Swain, who in a letter to a Board member just two years earlier had said it was "better to have no football than dissension among us because of it," suspended play of the sport for a year. As he explained, it had become too encompassing of college life.