The William & Mary scandal of 1951 occurred during a time in American college history that was unique among all other periods. Colleges across the United States were starting to feel pressures to succeed on the field (or court) as well as in the classroom. William & Mary's was not the first academic-athletic scandal to surface; for example, the United States Military Academy (Army) football team had been involved in academic cheating and some of the players, including the coach's son, were forced to leave the school. The emphasis on athletics over academics had now become a major point of discussion among college and university governing bodies. William & Mary, which was the first college in the nation to establish an honor code, was an especially apt example of the pressures that universities faced when dealing with their athletics programs. These scandals had brought to light the issues at hand, and a refocus on academics, not athletics, had resulted.