The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025


Episode #37： The Big Scrum with John Miller


Episode Stats


Summary

While it s now America s favorite pastime, football was actually on the verge of extinction as soon as the game was developing around the turn of the 20th century. As players used little or no protection when they played and the rules of the game encouraged ruthless play, many university presidents and other social leaders called for the game s prohibition. And they came really close to getting their way. That is until President Teddy Roosevelt stepped in.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast while it's now america's favorite pastime
00:00:22.160 football was actually on the verge of extinction as soon as the game was developing around the turn
00:00:26.700 of the 20th century severe injuries and even death were common in the early days of football as
00:00:31.140 players used little or no protection when they played and the rules of the game encouraged
00:00:35.960 ruthless play many university presidents and other social leaders called for the game's prohibition
00:00:41.040 and they came really close to getting their way that is until president teddy roosevelt stepped in
00:00:47.000 our guest today has written a book on how tr helped saved american football his name is john miller and
00:00:52.860 his book is called the big scrum how teddy roosevelt saved football well john welcome to the show
00:00:59.040 thanks glad to have you here so let's talk about the state of american football at the turn of the
00:01:05.380 20th century this is right when the very beginning of the sport when it's first developing um but right
00:01:11.020 from the get-go the game had its critics and there were people actually calling for its elimination
00:01:15.900 you know why were so many people why do so many people hate football at this time what was going on
00:01:21.700 football was an incredibly violent sport a century ago a little more than a century ago
00:01:27.860 we hear a lot about violence in football today with concussions and long-term health issues and so on
00:01:36.180 and so forth the problems of today are dwarfed by the problems football had in uh at the turn of the
00:01:44.420 century in 1905 18 people died playing football wow uh dropped dead from the college level to sandlot games
00:01:55.240 18 people died playing football and then of course there were there were all kinds of injuries on top of that
00:02:01.580 they had concussions back then too broken bones uh it was a really violent game it was more like rugby than the
00:02:07.880 game we know today a lot of pushing and shoving and big piles of men uh giving each other elbows and uh
00:02:13.960 and so on and so forth equipment was different but it was it was it was a it was a violent sport
00:02:18.740 and so this this prohibition movement springs up to outlaw football it's led by charles elliott
00:02:30.140 who's the president of harvard university one of the most important men in the history of higher
00:02:36.120 higher education it would when we think of harvard as a great american university maybe the great
00:02:40.860 american university it's really because of this guy who was president of harvard for 40 years
00:02:46.120 apart from anything he did in the classroom and and and and and with academics and so forth
00:02:53.240 he hated football he thought of the terrible sport the game not fit for gentlemen he was joined
00:03:00.540 in this anti-football prohibition effort by uh the nation magazine by muckraking journalists
00:03:09.880 uh by a number of others who who looked at these casualty figures the the and the fact that people
00:03:16.180 were dying playing the sport they compared it to gladiatorial combat in the roman amphitheater
00:03:22.620 and they wanted to outlaw football wow so a lot of these guys were part of the progressive movement
00:03:28.360 right yeah so this this was in many ways uh an early progressive movement cause uh and and we find
00:03:37.680 that it that it it's impulses are aggressive in the sense that it identified what it took to be a
00:03:43.920 social problem and its solution was simply to outlaw to ban it and uh uh that's what they tried to do
00:03:52.720 uh so you said that in one year alone 18 men died uh but during this time when football was kind of
00:03:59.940 up in the air i mean it was like from the late 18 late 1800s to like 19 whatever when the final
00:04:06.020 rule changes were made how many men actually died playing football well it's it's it's it's hard to get
00:04:11.920 a precise number but in in in the back of my book i have a i have a chart and i was you know 1905 was
00:04:19.440 18 people 1906 it was 11 so we're seeing we're seeing you know deaths of of a dozen being kind
00:04:26.240 of typical at this time and and it you know it ranged from from from big football programs like
00:04:33.600 georgia where there was a very prominent player death in in the late 1800s uh to sandlot games played
00:04:41.100 by kids um so the statistics are are we have something to throw some numbers around but the
00:04:48.440 bottom line is that guys were guys were dying playing this game and what's that compared to
00:04:53.480 like deaths with football today i mean well it still happens today yeah but these are more freak
00:05:01.060 accident types of injuries you know there was there was the heat exhaustion death in the nfl a few years
00:05:06.240 ago uh you know i remember when i was uh younger mike utley from the detroit lions had his neck broken in
00:05:14.140 a game i was not a death but it was a pretty pretty serious injury you also have to recognize that that
00:05:20.120 that today millions and millions of people play football back then it was a popular sport it was it
00:05:28.480 was becoming extremely popular but there were very many fewer players yeah so you you had more people
00:05:36.920 dying and fewer players compared today where there's a lot more players and although there are still
00:05:41.920 freaking injuries um it's much less of a problem now okay so uh football at this time there was a lot
00:05:49.560 it could have been snuffed out uh there's a lot of criticism a lot of pressure on to you know to
00:05:54.880 prohibit it and this is when president theodore roosevelt steps in um why was football uh so
00:06:03.000 important to roosevelt i mean he was president why was this such a pressing national concern for him to
00:06:07.660 actually get involved and throw his hat in the arena and try to help it out well that's the story
00:06:12.700 of the book roosevelt attends his first football game in 1876 he was an 18 year old harvard freshman
00:06:21.840 he gets on a train in cambridge with a bunch of his friends they travel down to new haven connecticut
00:06:28.140 and they watch the second ever football game played between harvard and yale uh this is of course one
00:06:34.340 of the great story rivalries in in college athletics he he attends the second ever game first time he's
00:06:40.720 ever seen football and he likes it he likes this sport he's still learning a lot about it he's actually
00:06:46.360 he he he suffered the agony of defeat because harvard loses that day everyone thought they were
00:06:51.760 going to win i really thought they were the better team but but yale with this sort of upstart school
00:06:57.080 beats him that day and this frustrates roosevelt he writes a letter to his mother in which he expresses
00:07:02.680 his uh his frustration but he likes football he thinks this is a neat sport he doesn't play it himself
00:07:09.500 because he's too small he also wears glasses so he's not a he's not fit to play the game himself
00:07:15.060 he does other things but uh but he enjoys it as a spectator and he kind of grows up with the sport
00:07:22.500 in the 1880s 1890s a lot of colleges are starting to adopt the game more and more people are showing
00:07:29.180 up the thanksgiving the thanksgiving day football game is starting to become a tradition tens of
00:07:35.560 thousands of people turning out for big games between harvard and yale or yale and princeton or
00:07:40.620 or or what have you and in roosevelt is just just a part of this trend he loves the sport
00:07:47.100 he also knows that it it has a problem with violence but he says he says we need to recognize
00:07:55.720 that rough sports are good they're good for boys they help turn boys into men in fact he believes
00:08:01.240 in rough sports and and football so much that when he goes off to recruit the rough riders
00:08:07.620 in 1898 he he he leaves washington dc goes out to san antonio and we know the story where he
00:08:14.860 where he recruits cowboys and westerners and so forth to become the rough riders and and he does that
00:08:20.700 but if you read his memoir on that period just book simply entitled the rough riders he also points out
00:08:27.080 that he's looking for football players and he in fact recruits a number of them to become rough riders
00:08:32.440 with him and they go and into cuba and and have their have their great moment of victory there
00:08:38.120 roosevelt becomes a war hero elected governor of new york as a result and he gives a speech on the
00:08:45.740 strenuous life maybe the most famous speech he ever delivered uh in his life the strenuous life in which
00:08:52.600 he says it's important to lead a vigorous life an active life it's it's good for people but more
00:08:57.680 important it's good for america if it's made up of men who lead strenuous lives who don't shirk
00:09:03.440 responsibility who embrace challenges and lead a strenuous life this is very fake in the speech he
00:09:10.300 gives he delivers in chicago he then takes his speech and he translates it for children in a children's
00:09:17.420 magazine called called saint nicholas is a very popular children's magazine at the time
00:09:21.480 widely read and in in uh in that in that magazine when he's when he's giving the kids version of the
00:09:29.420 strenuous life he told boys he's go go play football he says it'll help make you great men
00:09:33.960 help you make make you great americans so he's a he's a true believer in football he likes it as a
00:09:39.860 as a fan he thinks it's good for america because it turns boys into into into men and it turns them
00:09:45.920 into good men who can fight wars who can defend their country make america great well when he's
00:09:52.600 president the problem of violence in football continues and this movement to ban it gains some
00:09:59.920 momentum so in 1905 he summons to the white house the three coaches from the biggest football programs
00:10:10.600 in america at that point uh yale harvard and princeton the coach of yale was walter camp the
00:10:16.140 legendary walter camp who is the the sort of the founding father of football the abner double day of
00:10:21.660 the game in some ways um so walter camp is at this white house meeting the other coaches are there as well
00:10:28.440 and and roosevelt says football is on trial and he says to these coaches you guys need to do something
00:10:34.460 to save it he doesn't tell them exactly what to do but they leave the white house they agree that
00:10:42.300 they're going to try something or other they weren't entirely sure what the season continues this meeting
00:10:47.500 was in october of 1905 they they finish out the season that winter they create the organization that
00:10:54.420 becomes the ncaa and they pass a series of rule changes the most important which is the forward pass
00:11:01.980 up to that point quarterbacks couldn't throw the ball downfield to receivers that was an illegal play
00:11:08.900 you could you could toss it laterally backwards to it to a running back but you could not throw it
00:11:13.480 down the field there was no such thing as a wide receiver well this changed the game it transformed it
00:11:18.520 it it transformed it from a sport that that that looked like rugby into the modern game that americans
00:11:27.320 know and love today and there was roosevelt at the center of it making it possible we're going to
00:11:31.960 take a quick break for a word from our sponsors and now back to the show and were any equipment
00:11:38.960 changes that that start taking place around this time as well because before they really didn't wear
00:11:43.600 they just like wore bandanas on their head and maybe some leather that's right yeah i mean did they
00:11:47.640 the the era of the leather heads was a little bit in the future but this was a transitional period and
00:11:55.600 and football originally nobody wore any kind of protection then you started getting players who would
00:12:01.880 grow their hair extra long because it was a little bit extra padding or they would do you know
00:12:07.500 little things to their jerseys and and and and you know what one one one one team had had had it had
00:12:15.980 its players so um handled from from suitcases onto onto their jerseys so they could grab each other and pull
00:12:26.080 each other forward through lines i mean there were all these innovations and and there was actually a
00:12:30.680 little little while where where we're spalding the uh uh the equipment company started making nose
00:12:37.180 guards they were kind of like shoe horns on your nose that's sort of ridiculous and there's a there's
00:12:41.900 there's a picture of one of these in in the book um and and sort of face mask and helmet but but there
00:12:48.560 was there was a there's a bit of a stigma attached to players who would put on these things right they
00:12:53.300 would they they weren't man enough to to play without without this equipment but but over time
00:12:59.140 this became more and more accepted and and and pads were introduced but but in the era we're talking
00:13:04.340 about we're moving from basically no equipment no gear no protection to uh to to modest forms of it
00:13:11.360 and uh um over time their football players began to look like the the players we see on tv today
00:13:19.420 something i thought was really interesting too is that roosevelt wasn't the only u.s president that
00:13:24.200 kind of had a hand in helping football along uh the other one was woodrow wilson which was kind of
00:13:30.740 surprising because you know when we a lot of people when they think of woodrow wilson they kind of
00:13:33.780 think of him as this pencil pushing nerd uh kind of pacifist right um but he he like he was a fan of
00:13:39.820 the game as well um exactly i was really surprised to learn that when i started working on this book
00:13:45.480 i knew that roosevelt would be at the center of a great advocate of football that i knew he'd be the
00:13:49.640 main character of the book and i i knew the contours of the story that i was going to tell but as i did
00:13:54.240 my research i discovered that woodrow wilson was a huge football fan he went to princeton as we know
00:14:01.420 a school that had a had a vigorous football program an ambitious football program it wanted to be the
00:14:08.720 best in the country and as people criticized football there was woodrow wilson in the 1870s
00:14:18.000 writing editorials in the student newspaper about why football was great and and and this was actually
00:14:26.520 a major he didn't just write one editorial he wrote a bunch of them defending football from its critics
00:14:32.840 and he continued to do that he graduated from princeton became a professor
00:14:36.600 and when he went to different schools he was he was affiliated with with the football club he would
00:14:43.120 he would uh help out the team he'd show up at the games he'd cheer for them uh he eventually when he
00:14:49.800 went back to prince as a professor and and we know it came of him um he began to disengage from that a
00:14:55.740 little bit just because he was getting so busy but he was a he was a public defender of football he
00:15:01.160 would engage in in debates in front of city clubs and they you know they they would have groups would
00:15:07.340 have debates and you know it's football too violent should it be banned and and and wilson would show
00:15:12.960 up and he would he would he would argue no it's a great sport and we need it but you're right it's it
00:15:18.120 plays against type this is this is not what you would expect of of the woodrow wilson we know of
00:15:25.080 primarily from his presidency i thought it was a little interesting too that it took the you know two i guess
00:15:30.600 big progressive leaders at the time roosevelt and wilson they're the ones who were defending
00:15:35.820 football from the other progressives really that's right now wilson was not as directly involved in
00:15:41.460 in the sports uh salvation he was a he was a fan of it and in you know he he did cheerlead and he
00:15:49.060 engaged in debates it was it was roosevelt who really played played the key role here and say what
00:15:55.580 you will about roosevelt's politics we give a long debate about that and his progressiveness
00:16:00.580 and so forth the the roosevelt who defends and and and football is is is is this great manly
00:16:12.000 character this this red-blooded american and you can just you know it's everything we love about
00:16:17.640 roosevelt uh his praise of rough sports his belief in outdoor life the vigor of life the need to lead a
00:16:25.680 drain you his life it's it's completely consistent with um with his beliefs yeah so let's fast forward
00:16:32.680 to today 100 years later it seems like it's deja vu um we're having the same conversation about
00:16:39.440 football whether it's too dangerous and if we need to make changes to the rules um both this happened
00:16:45.320 both in the nfl and in the ncaa and what do you think after doing writing this book and kind of getting
00:16:52.540 um acquainted with roosevelt and his view of football how do you think tr what what would
00:16:59.040 you think tr would think of this conversation we're having about football today he would think
00:17:04.100 for one thing it's got nothing on the controversy he was dealing with football's problem today is
00:17:11.660 nothing like the problem it was 100 years ago um you know football has a problem i suppose with
00:17:18.200 concussions and and so forth and and and there may be some there may be a debate worth having about
00:17:24.000 this but but he would he would fundamentally say football's a rough sport and we cannot eliminate
00:17:29.360 all risk from our lives and that and that it is the risk that you take in playing the sport that is an
00:17:35.420 essential part of what it is and and we cannot ever lose sight of that um we cannot make it totally 100
00:17:42.380 safe for everybody who plays and this is just a part of living it's true when you walk across the
00:17:48.520 street you can't be completely guaranteed of your safety when you walk across the street but yet we
00:17:53.120 need to do that from time to time in our lives and and football teaches great things to kids all sports do
00:17:59.920 really um it teaches them teamwork it teaches them uh uh how how to put up with adversity it teaches
00:18:08.760 them how to deal with defeat teaches them all kinds of things in fact we know things today that that
00:18:14.640 roosevelt didn't know back then modern research teaches us that kids who play sports in high school
00:18:25.060 earn more as adults they're more likely to vote as citizens later on in life there are a series of
00:18:32.400 benefits that that that are that are that are that that that that social scientists can track back to
00:18:37.940 participation in sports when when as a parent when we talk you know i have i have kids who play a bunch
00:18:44.880 of different sports and we talk about why do we have them do it i often say that you know the reasons
00:18:52.560 are easy well there's physical fitness that's good for them we also talk about these intangible
00:18:56.580 characteristics you know we think it makes them better people they learn about teamwork they learn
00:19:01.180 all kinds of sports teaches them all kinds of things that they can't learn in a book and here's the
00:19:06.140 evidence that actually there is a payoff later on you earn more money as an adult why is that because
00:19:11.460 maybe they're maybe maybe they learn how to compete and in america it's important to learn how to
00:19:16.320 compete i don't know i don't know what the reasons are but but we have we have data that actually
00:19:20.840 suggests this is this is good for kids and roosevelt knew that intuitively as the way i think we all
00:19:25.860 kind of know intuitively that sports can be can be great for kids and it teaches life lessons all right
00:19:31.700 well john we're at the end of our our time but thank you very much it's really fascinating
00:19:35.920 um john's book is called the big scrum how teddy roosevelt saved football and i'm guessing it's
00:19:41.940 going to be available april 12th it is available april 12th everywhere everywhere so go out and get it
00:19:48.580 well john thanks again for your time it's been a pleasure thank you very much
00:19:52.640 that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:20:00.920 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and until next time stay manly
00:20:22.640 you