The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football

Q and A with John J. Miller

A stalemate between owners and players that threatens the upcoming NFL season and the widening scandal that forced beloved Ohio State University coach Jim Tressel to resign in disgrace are only the most recent reminders that football has always provoked a huge amount of controversy.

In the early 20th century, football was a literal bloodsport, writes John J. Miller in his new book The Big Scrum. After a series of game-related deaths, President Teddy Roosevelt called together the presidents of the three biggest football colleges (Harvard, Yale, and Princeton - yes, a very different America) and jawboned them into cleaning up the game to stave off legislative attempts to ban it outright.

The result, says Miller, was the creation of the distinctively American game football featuring forward passes, quarterbacks, spread offenses, and more.

The author of several books including the historical novel The First Assassin, Miller writes for National Review and is the new director of the journalism program at Hillsdale College. For more information about Miller, including links to his popular podcast series, go here.

Miller sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie to talk about The Big Scrum, the scandal-ridden history of college football, and exactly what budding journalists need to learn in college (hint: it's not journalism).

About 6.31 minutes.

Shot by Jim Epstein, Meredith Bragg, and Josh Swain, who edited the piece.

Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions, and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube Channel to receive automatic notifications when new material goes live.

Comments

[Aresen]

How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football

One more reason to hate football.

[Pro Libertate]

Hey, I like football. Though I suppose this adds a statist component to it that I don't like, but I knew this tidbit already.

[Timon19]

Indeed, Aresen. Indeed.

[Pro Libertate]

Don't despair. I doubt the NCAA whip will hit you that hard. They have a tendency not to wipe out major programs.

[EDG reppin' LBC]

Pryor gone. Tressel gone. 5 game suspensions. Impending sanctions. How could this season get any worse? They're gonna' cancel the NFL too? Poop!

[rather]

video unavailable

[Pro Libertate]

Don't think I didn't notice you leaving out the "The." Your insults are subtle, yet devastating to the poor Central Ohioan. They'll be here shortly to attack your Ohioness.

TR is an enigma. As a historical figure, he's very interesting. As a president (and as a precedent), however, he broke too many rules and set the stage for further expansion of the federal government. No more Roosevelts, I say, until Chet runs.

[Aresen]

Nope, not even then.

Remember that FDR in 1932 ran on a pledge to end Hoover's meddling ways.

[Pro Libertate]

What, no Chet? But without Chet, the Americathon may never happen! Then we'll go totally broke!

[WizCoo]

they are ALL over paid, and over rated, enough is enough.

http://www.online-privacy.no.tc

[Aresen]

Politicians, definitely.

Football players, not so much.

[deified]

Football is slow-motion suicide. Google "chronic traumatic encephalopathy."

Whether or not it should be banned is a separate question.

But don't be under any illusions when you are enjoying your Sunday afternoon: you are watching grown men kill themselves for your amusement.

[Go Pats!]

[herve villechaize]

Nonsense.... Google: 'assclown'

[Pro Libertate]

It's okay. Not long from now, all players will be cyborgs. Problem solved!

[herve villechaize]

What is the process of becoming a cyborg called? Cyborg-ism... cyborg-ery?

[Pro Libertate]

Cybuggery.

[herve villechaize]

Yes, exactly

[Sparky]

That grown men are willing to be paid millions of dollars to slowly kill themselves affects me how?

Watching football is not the quality entertainment it used to be.

[CrackertyAssCracker]

Time is the fire in which we all burn.

[Robert]

Re the encephalopathy, the spotlight is now also on soccer because of heading the ball.

But they haven't banned boxing, so what are the odds they would do anything to American or soccer football? There are state boxing commissions that regulate the sport (as well as other martial arts competition), but only as professional sports; they have no jurisdiction over amateur boxing. And heck, you even have bull fighting in Mexico.

Dueling is illegal, but you'll notice that sports with great danger of death and dismemberment such as auto and horse racing are still legal across North America. And these were popular sports at that time too, so the idea that football was in serious danger of being banned is greatly exaggerated.

About the most that may have happened would've been that gov't schools would've dropped their support for football. Considering history one might get the misimpression that that would've been as good as a ban, given the overwhelming domination of the field (heh) for many years by varsity football, but that's a matter of the seen and the unseen. It would've developed independently of high schools and colleges, as baseball did.

It's not as if some college kids just invented the idea of "football" any more than they did baseball. Colleges first started playing extramurally the form of football that was popular with people in the New York City metropolitan area, just as they did with baseball. A few years later the colleges switched to a version (rugby) that'd been popularized in Canada via the British military establishment. It is inconceivable that both of these types of football would've just died out in North America if collegians hadn't taken them up.

[leviramsey]

The game played by the NY-area schools was much closer to soccer. American football is much closer to "The Boston Game", which Harvard combined with rugby [union, though there was no rugby league at that time] via McGill.

About the only real contribution of the NY folk football code (heavily based on the FA rules as they were before the full FA/RFU schism) is 11 a side.

Ultimately the Massachusetts rules dominated the NY rules (basically soccer) in football, though not to the extent that NY rules baseball dominated Massachusetts rules baseball...

[Al Wayswright]

Bah.

The problem with NFL and NCAA football has been the recruitment of ghetto players with ghetto mentalities (see James Harrison).

Ghettoites believe, falsely, of course, that it's macho, it's manly to "light up" guys with helmet-to-helmet hits.

All who grew up in suburbia playing competitive football were taught about head and neck safety.

Sportsmanship has been the emphasis for suburbia football.

[Normalcy]

Its very interesting to see the hostility over Roosevelt's actions as a concerned citizen and as well a sportsmen himself. Say what you may about his governmental policies but he was right to step in and warn about the potential threat that Congress and the public posed to the sport. Without his intervention Congress more than likely would have banned the sport and we would have lost an institution. Now I don't know about any of you, but by preventing this encroachment of state power into a sport via way of compromise I believe is far more preferable to having the sport be banned by Congress.

[Aresen]

I have to concede your point, here, with the caveat that TR could not be construed as just a "concerned citizen": He carried considerable clout in the Republican Party, despite his responsibility for getting Wilson elected in 1912, and would probably have pushed for regulation or banning if the Ivy Leaguers hadn't caved.

[Normalcy]

I do agree he was a major player in the Republican Party at the time and would have pushed for banning if the Ivy Leagues had not responded and I probably have made a mistake in my usage of the terminology "Concerned Citizen". I suppose what I was trying to state is that much like George H.W. Bush with his involvement in the game of golf it should be seen not as an instance of Government Encroachment but as more rather a personal interest into the development of the sport. I am a firm believer that all parties involved realised that it would be incredibly bad and most certainly detrimental for the Government to regulate or ban football.

[TR - propoent of unfairness]

Why didn't TR clean up hockey? Everybody already had a big stick I guess.

[Aresen]

Nah. In TR's time, hockey was only played by northern barbarians.

[Fuck Roosevelt]

If football retained its game-related deaths, we may never have been subjected to George Bush, Gerald Ford, Jack Kemp, or Alan Page.

[Robert]

Football should have gone underground or at least given up varsity status rather than conceding governance by school administration. It is doubtful that football would ever have been banned per se any more than boxing was. What the new college football establishment did was retard the development of professional football.

[iwedding dress]

If football retained its game-related deaths, we may never have been subjected to George Bush, Gerald Ford, Jack Kemp, or Alan Page.

[Christian Louboutin]

What the new college football establishment did was retard the development of professional football.

[Pandora UK]

What the new college football establishment did was retard the development of professional football.

[scarpe Nike Store]

is good

[nike air force 1]

is good

[goallen]

I am an aspiring architect and I am appalled