Roosevelt and today's game (1 Viewer)

[Bri]

I was reading a couple articles and wanted to share them

How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football

Were it not for him, football would likely be confined to the dustbin of history.

www.politico.com

TR Center - Football

Collegiate football was less than a decade old in the United States when Theodore Roosevelt saw his very first game as a Harvard College undergraduate in 1876. This young sport soon came to be known for several troubling aspects, including excessive violence during play, fatalities on the field...

www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org

If you're so inclined to read (thanks) does this change any views about today's game or how people interpret the game or a rule as too rough or...anything?

 

[rockaction]

I'm familiar with this story and have thought about the aspects of it with respect to modern parallels.

I don't have much to offer. The story of an overreaching executive branch member becoming involved in football is the story from Roosevelt to Nixon to Donald Trump. All have used the bully pulpit to try and influence what the sport of football (at its most popular level) was -- or is -- doing.

I've given a lot of thought to football violence and concluded that in its current form, there's not as much as there once was, and that the current form is violent enough and more than palatable to me. I don't need to see to craziness in the hits, only tactical violence that comes from the inherent nature of tackle football.

And that's about it.

 

[Bri]

I'm familiar with this story and have thought about the aspects of it with respect to modern parallels.

I don't have much to offer. The story of an overreaching executive branch member becoming involved in football is the story from Roosevelt to Nixon to Donald Trump. All have used the bully pulpit to try and influence what the sport of football (at its most popular level) was -- or is -- doing.

But Roosevelt defended the sport and stopped them from banning it- some of which when he was just a citizen.
That's a different spin for me.
I always thought they were meddling, myob and ...usual.

Also, the wedge was banned what ten years ago from ST? I can't believe it started at Harvard Yale as locking arms and ultimately trampling people in a (bit much but) show of brotherhood n manhood. 140? Years it took to ban that play?

 

[rockaction]

But Roosevelt defended the sport and stopped them from banning it- some of which when he was just a citizen.

I get that part of it. It still strikes me as executive overreach. Yes, he saved football, but it took the use of his office and reputation to do so. I'm not sure leisure activities are really under the purview of the President, but I could be wrong. Perhaps football and higher education are definitely executive concerns now, but they certainly weren't likely considered so at the time.

Just a thought anyway. But he's in a long line of presidents that worried about sports and the fitness of the nation, so maybe I'm not quite on point here.

 

[menobrown]

Football is life. Thanks Ted.