'On The Road' To Fame: Jack Kerouac's Short-lived Columbia Football Career

Upper West Side NY

14 October, 2021

4:10 PM

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Columbia Daily Spectator BY HOLLY QU OCTOBER 12, 2021A prolific and celebrated writer of autobiographical fiction, Jack Kerouac is a familiar figure to most Columbia students. One of the University's most famous dropouts, Kerouac wrote his 1957 magnum opus "On the Road" in a feverish three weeks. The original manuscript was single-spaced with no paragraph breaks. He popularized a new brand of stream-of-consciousness prose that shaped the Beat Generation. But few know that his story began with Columbia football. A star athlete hailing from Lowell, Massachusetts, Kerouac attended Columbia on a football scholarship. The head coaches of Boston College and Columbia both offered him scholarships after witnessing a game-breaking touchdown Kerouac made against his high school's rival team. In the last game of that season, Kerouac made ball-carrying runs of 75, 60, and 40 yards. Within his first game on Columbia's 1940 first-year squad, Kerouac was recognized for his talent and, more importantly, for his speed. The holder of the Massachusetts record for the indoor low-hurdle, he had a fast getaway and was hard to stop. However, after an impressive opening kick-off return a few plays into the season's second game against St. Benedict's Prep, Kerouac suffered a serious leg injury that would sideline him for the remainder of the season. According to the unpublished memoir of Kerouac's friend C. Ogden Beresford, CC '43, in the weeks following Kerouac's injury, he isolated himself in his room and refused to take his final exams. "[Kerouac] bemoaned his fate, lay on his back in his sack all day, wouldn't attend classes, and just stared at the ceiling," Beresford wrote. "[Football Coach] Lou Little paid several visits, and finally took Jim and me aside, and said for Christ's sake, and for Columbia's sake, help this kid get over his pout, he's going to flunk out and there goes a good football player. […] It was a downer for everyone." Despite the broken leg, Kerouac still made headlines as one of the top up-and-coming players to watch for the next season. Little was training Kerouac to be a climax runner and a wingback, where his ability to run on both ends of the ball would have given the Light Blue a pivotal edge. However, Kerouac's passion for football soon faded. After a year-long break pursuing various jobs, he returned to football in the fall of 1942 before calling it quits. In his autobiographical novel "Visions of Cody," he wrote, "I said to myself 'Scrimmage my ass … I'm gonna sit here in this room and dig Beethoven, I'm gonna write noble words.'" After losing his scholarship, Kerouac soon dropped out of Columbia. He began to write and publish novels, starting with "The Town and the City" in 1950. Remaining in New York, he lived in close quarters with the literary giants who eventually comprised the Beat poets, including Allen Ginsberg, CC '48, who was a 17-year-old freshman at Columbia when he met Kerouac. Seven years after publishing his first novel, Kerouac published "On the Road," an iconic text in the post-war literary movement known as the Beat Generation. The movement came to be considered a celebration of what it means to be American and inspired the waves of counter-culture activism that reigned in the 1960s. Although Jack Kerouac's stream-of-consciousness writing never truly gained mainstream acceptance, his works were cited by writer and political activist Eldridge Cleaver as a "cultural turning point for white America." A New York Times review called him "the voice of a new generation." In his later life, Kerouac turned to Buddhism and, increasingly, toward alcohol. As he continued to write, publishing titles including "The Dharma Bums" and "The Subterraneans," he sported a cult following of free-spirited individuals who were attracted to his rejection of middle-class values and politics. But Kerouac was a man uncomfortable with his fame. Living with depression and alcoholism, he withdrew from society. On Oct. 21, 1969, Kerouac died from liver failure at St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was 47. In the end, Kerouac's legacy is for being nothing less than a natural—both on the field and at the typewriter. He had a freedom with movement and "with language" and that inspired those around him, whether it was at a college football game against Rutgers, or at the head of a literary movement. Staff writer Holly Qu can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow Spectator on Twitter @ColumbiaSpec. Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.