Bewildering Stories discusses...
Football History
with Gary Inbinder
Douglas Young’s Is Football Worth All Its Health Problems? appears in this issue.
[Don Webb] The term “football” varies in meaning according to locality. Throughout most of the world, it refers to the game originally known in Britain as “soccer,” from the abbreviation “assoc.” in the formal term “association football.” Eventually, “soccer” came to be referred to as “football” everywhere except in North America. Walter Camp is alleged to have invented the game in the mid-19th century, but he really invented intercollegiate athletics. The game now known as “American football” actually originated in Canada.
[Gary Inbinder] The football injuries controversy goes back more than a century. On October 9, 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt — an avowed football fan — summoned coaches and athletic advisers from Harvard University, Yale University and Princeton University to the White House to discuss how to improve the game of football, "especially by reducing the element of brutality in play,” cf. The Washington Post of Oct. 10, 1905. The changes inspired in part by Roosevelt were the first steps in a long line of reforms to make football safer.
More on the discussion: How Teddy Roosevelt Helped Save Football.
[D.W.] Today’s readers may interpret “brutality” as intentionally inflicting grievous injury, but Teddy Roosevelt’s argument had a slightly different emphasis; it was based not on health but morality. He expected players to face courageously the prospect of injury, according to the violent nature of the game. But he would not abide intentional harm or rule-breaking. The White House conference is all the more signficant because — if what I’ve been told is true — he threatened to ask Congress to ban the sport if rule changes were not made.
Football took its initial form as organized mass conflict shortly after the Civil War in the U.S. and was soon streamlined as a team sport by adopting Canadian rules. It still functions as a form of war game accompanied by the fervour of its teams’ partisans. But players and fans must reckon with reality; Douglas Young’s essay reminds us that the game subjects its players to risks far greater than even Teddy Roosevelt knew of.
