"... with one top official predicting it will happen within the year.... [Historians and sports experts have said [Theodore] Roosevelt played a crucial role by forcing a national conversation around football safety, rather than leaving it to factions that could not agree on next steps. Edward O’Keefe, the CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library pointed to some of the specific changes to football that resulted from Roosevelt’s interventions.
'He helped invent the forward pass,' said O'Keefe. 'He made some of the first safety measures that continue to make the game possible today.'"
I went looking in Edmund Morris's "Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" for some meatier material about TR and football. I found this on page 598:
“What matters a few broken bones to the glories of inter-collegiate sport?” he cried at a Harvard Club dinner. (Meanwhile, not far away in hospital, the latest victim of football savagery lay paralyzed for life.) He declared publicly that he would “disinherit” any son of his who refused to play college games. And in private, through clenched teeth: “I would rather one of them should die than have them grow up as weaklings.”
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Whoever decided to move the goalposts to the back of the endzone should be in the Hall of Fame.
For TR, that last statement is surprisingly moderate. I'd expect more of "I'd strangle them myself." He'd have done very well in settings with conquerors and a premium on martial courage in leadership.
People were pushing Rugby as an alternative to Football in the early 20th century. Students were actually getting killed in games, not because of foul play but because the way the rules and the game was structured. You have great wedges of players struggling to stop or advance the ball and boys were getting trampled.
TR was a big advocate of participating in sport. He was not a big advocate of watching sports. Or making them the center of life. He agreed with Kipling about the "flanneled fool at the wicket, and the muddled oaf at goal".
He was also for banning prize-fighting since it was crooked, encouraged gambling, and excited blood-lust in a bunch of onlookers with nothing at stake.
His son was playing football at Harvard and getting injured every week. A word from TR to the Army Air Service about parachutes might have saved another of his sons ... and countless others.
You must participate. It builds character. This was mandatory at my school. Everyone is a student-athlete.
To be fair, I have found physical exertion and sport to be be pleasing and supportive. Nothing like a good workout, or hard physical labor to lift up the soul!
One of the most admirable things about TR, is he never expected anyone to do something he wouldn't do. While Commander-in-Chief, he went in a submarine and up in an airplane. He tried to get to France and fight in 1917. To advocate for war while sitting home safe and sound seemed to him the the height of dishonor.
He had a horror of fat-asses sitting on their butts living vicariously through the real men fighting and struggling in the arena.
Today we're ruled by such people, and have been for a long time. FDR skipped military service in WW 1 but was the greatest war monger ever. LBJ conned everyone into thinking he went on a "dangerous" WW2 bombing raid, then went back to the safety of DC for the rest of the war.
By most counts, ca. 15 players died during the 1905 college football season. The modern game was borne of that season.
IIRC, Douglas MacArthur who revitalized and upgraded the athletics program at West Point when he was superintendent after WW1.
Rugby is safer than gridiron football, in part because of the lack of pads. When you're encapsulated in high-tech armor, you act like a human projectile. When you know your frail flesh will slam into the other guy's, you pay more attention to fundamentals like wrapping around the guy's legs. Also, rugby doesn't have blocking: generally you can only touch the guy with the ball. The exceptions to this take place at lower velocity, like scrums, rucks, and mauls. Fewer opportunities to injure people means fewer injuries. CC, JSM
The Trump administration has urged professional football’s leaders to induct Theodore Roosevelt into the sport’s hall of fame, with one top official predicting it will happen within the year.
But Teddy sought to change college football rules, not Pro Football rules. But the president influenced the adoption of rules to allow the forward pass and 10-yard first downs. Next came the formation of the NCAA - the National Collegiate Athletic Association,
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