Gadzooks! It is called... 
perfect timing--
Posted on 10/24/2013 6:24:33 AM PDT by knarf
I do not give a snap for a good man who can’t fight and hold his own in the world. A citizen has got to be decent of course. That is the first requisite; but the second, and just as important, is that he shall be efficient, and he can’t be efficient unless he is manly. Nothing has impressed me more in meeting college graduates during the fifteen years I have been out of college than the fact that on the average the men who have counted most have been those who had sound bodies.
The article is excellent, but what caught my eye was Teddy's comment about being a man and and an American
It is the missing element in America these days
Wow ... how opportune is THAT ... sitting on top of an NFL thread ... ?
Gadzooks! It is called... perfect timing--
Thanx, Bender2
Attributed to General George C. Marshall during WW II: “I want an officer
for a secret and dangerous mission. I want a West Point football player.”
Commemorated on a plaque at the Cadets' field, Michie stadium.
MacArthur on athletics:
“Upon fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that upon other fields, on other days, will bear the fruits of victory.”
Why does it not surprise me that the current CinC has a differing view?
In 1895, shortly before he became president of the New York City police commission, he wrote a letter to Walter Camp that read as follows:
I am very glad to have a chance of expressing to you the obligation which I feel all Americans are under to you for your championship of athletics. The man on the farm and in the workshop here, as in other countries, is apt to get enough physical work; but we were tending steadily in America to produce . . . sedentary classes . . . and from this the athletic spirit has saved us. Of all games I personally like foot ball the best, and I would rather see my boys play it than see them play any other. I have no patience with the people who declaim against it because it necessitates rough play and occasional injuries. The rough play, if confined within manly and honorable limits, is an advantage. It is a good thing to have the personal contact about which the New York Evening Post snarls so much, and no fellow is worth his salt if he minds an occasional bruise or cut. Being near-sighted I was not able to play foot ball in college, and I never cared for rowing or base ball, so that I did all my work in boxing and wrestling. They are both good exercises, but they are not up to foot ball . . . .
I am utterly disgusted with the attitude of President Eliot and the Harvard faculty about foot ball . . . .
I do not give a snap for a good man who can’t fight and hold his own in the world. A citizen has got to be decent of course. That is the first requisite; but the second, and just as important, is that he shall be efficient, and he can’t be efficient unless he is manly. Nothing has impressed me more in meeting college graduates during the fifteen years I have been out of college than the fact that on the average the men who have counted most have been those who had sound bodies.
Interesting perspective, but I’d make the case that there is a huge difference between football as an athletic competition in days gone by and football (professional and college football, but then I repeat myself) as the center of an enormous industry built around the vicarious entertainment of people.
Imprimus is a free publication from Hillsdale and well worth having it in the bathroom ... I mean, library.
I'm somewhat stuck in the past anyway. Much of what I read here, I react/respond with my Norman Rockwell mentality.
And football is, for all practical purposes .. the modern day gladiatorial ring.
Gadzooks-- isn't it a shame that Teddy has to looking on... 
as The Obamanation craps all over the Constitution?
Yeah, Bendy, it is enough to drive a good man... 
to drink!
Right on, Ulysses! And his Obamacare website... 
is screwing up MY internet!
My answer is that Americans love that kind of direct action a lot more than other people. The only other people who love American-style football about as much as Americans are Canadians who have their own rules. And the national sport of Canada is hockey which is another rough game where players are allowed to smash into other players. Canadians (although many will hate the comparison) are the foreign people most similar to Americans in temperament. Is our love of football one big difference between Americans and foreigners? Maybe. Direct action, with a bit of occasional skill and trickery, as compared to games with more evasive action mixed with subtlety and skill?
Athletic competition in HS and college is the left’s worst enemy. Look for a lot more of this to come.
I don't know about other nations, but our technology allowed television to the country long before other nations .. and I had the Friday Night Fights with my dad and of course .. wrestling (with Killer Kowalsky, the Claw Hold and Haystack Calhoun and ... )
Football IS legal Gladiator matches.
I didn't post this IMPRIMUS article to compare/contrast football and ... rather .. the mindset of a man that at least had a healthy sense of what a man is.
Wasn't it under or because of .. TR that we got The Boy Scouts ?
Part of it is that football is perfectly structured for TV. One of the basic rules for writing TV drama is “tell them what they’re about to see, show them, tell them what they just saw”. Owing to the defined play nature of football that’s exactly what happens, the commentators tell you what they think the next play will be (”look for a down field play on this on”, “this is the field position where a lot of coaches like trick plays” etc), then the play happens, then they dissect the play until teams break the huddle. Thanks to the one game a week structure it even works that way in the macro sense, Thursday through Sunday morning they talk about what’s going to happen in the games, then the games happen, then Monday through Wednesday the discussion is what happened in the games. That structure makes football instantly familiar to us even if we haven’t seen the game before, we’ve been entertained by that structure most of our lives, it’s comfortable.
On a side note soccer isn’t always football, in countries where it’s not the most popular sport it’s soccer. A friend of mine from England pointed this out, in most countries the most popular game is called football, in Australia “football” is Ausie rules, in New Zealand “football” is rugby, even in Canada where hockey is king “football” is CFL and the game with the black and white ball is soccer. Which brings up an interesting question on why the human mind likes the word “football” (translated to the appropriate language) so much.
Athletic competition in HS and college is the left’s worst enemy. Look for a lot more of this to come.
...I would stipulate, as I have often done on this forum, that the progressive elites, who run American education, are steeped in a vituperative feminist worldview...though these elites might attempt not to hate boys, they can’t help themselves...they do hate them...
...such being the case, athletic competition is not their worst enemy...boys only competition is...if we were to allow girls to play football, and sanitize the game so as not to maim them, our progressive scholars would have no problem whatsoever with football...
There's also Canadian Football, Gaelic Football, Australian Football, two different kinds of Rugby (popular in New Zealand and at one time in South Africa). Cricket is more popular in the West Indies and on the Indian Subcontinent.
I don't know why American football is so popular in the US, but it looks like the English had great skill developing games that were more interesting than soccer -- which most of the rest of the world adopted as their favorite sport.
1. Whatever he said in 1895, I think TR once threatened to work to ban college football because of the high mortality rate among players.
2. When you talk about Canadians and Americans and rough sports, don't forget that the Brits invented and the other Anglo-Saxon nations play rugby. (Of course, so do the French.)
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