How Teddy Roosevelt saved football

New York Post ^ | April 17, 2011 | JOHN J. MILLER

[presidio9]

We have a pretty good idea of what the NFL’s next play will look like, however. A kicker will boot the ball from the 35-yard line, most likely for a touchback. That’s because on March 22, the NFL changed the rules, moving kickoffs forward from the 30-yard line. It hopes to reduce the risk of injury during what is often the most harrowing play — enormous men colliding in an open field at full speed, like beat-up cars in a high-stakes demolition derby.

As a student, Roosevelt attended one of the first Harvard-Yale games. Football has fallen under intense scrutiny for its violence — not just for the immediate injuries that players can endure on the field,

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Horrified by the slaughter, a group of progressives crusaded to ban football. They formed a social and political movement whose ranks included the renowned Harvard President Charles W. Eliot, frontier scholar Frederick Jackson Turner, aging Confederate Gen. John Mosby and muckraking journalists.

The Nation magazine worried that colleges were becoming “huge training grounds for young gladiators, around whom as many spectators roar as roared in the [Roman] amphitheatre.” After watching a college game in 1903, one writer condemned what he saw: “The dirty players in football are the thugs of society, and the disgrace of the university that tolerates their presence on the team.” The New York Times fussed over football’s trend toward “mayhem and homicide.” About two weeks after printing these words, the Times ran a new editorial. The headline was “Two Curable Evils.” The first evil it addressed was the lynching of blacks. The second was football.

Yet the sport had at least one very important fan on its side — President Theodore Roosevelt.

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[BuckeyeTexan]

I detest Teddy, but I appreciate the article. Thanks for posting it.

[Southack]

Don’t confuse Rough-Rider Teddy with socialist FDR.

[BuckeyeTexan]

I’m not. I know exactly who Teddy was. He was a progressive Republican for big government.

[smokingfrog]

... one writer condemned what he saw: “The dirty players in football are the thugs of society, and the disgrace of the university that tolerates their presence on the team.” The New York Times fussed over football’s trend toward “mayhem and homicide.”

I think we still have some of that going on today.

[pnh102]

And what has the NFL devolved into? It is an economically useless private entity that lives off of the teat of the taxpayer. It is no better than NPR in my book. Both make products that I don’t use, but for which I must pay.

[DrC]

“He was a progressive Republican for big government.”

The first presidential candidate ever to run on a platform calling for national health insurance. That’s when he was the Progressive Party candidate (also known as the Bull Moose Party). He split the vote, leading to the election of another progressive Woodrow Wilson, over the more conservative Republican incumbent, William Taft.

[Impy]

Thanks for reminding me of the new kickoff BS. I had blissfully forgotten. ;p

[Leisler]

Ted was a leftist socialist too.