Kaitlyn Warren Manliness on the Gridiron: Walter Camp and the Popularization of Football at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

In 1905, afer nineteen football players nationwide died from injuries sustained on the feld, public outcry against the brutality of the game forced President Roosevelt to hold a conference with representatives from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to discuss ways to reform and preserve the emerging sport. Despite the president’s urging, Walter Camp, the representative from Yale University, continued to resist any rule changes that might weaken what he called the manly spirit of football.1 For the remainder of his life, Camp would fght to mold the game of football into one thattraces would develop college-age men into leaders and gentlemen. For Camp, measures directed toward limiting the brutality of the sport impeded this goal.2 American football became popular across college campuses, particularly in the Northeast, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the “American way of life” was facing pervasive changes.

1 John S. Watterson, “Political Football: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and the Gridiron Reform Movement,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 25 (1995): 560. 2 Elliott Gorn and Warren Goldstein, A Brief History of American Sports (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 156. 166 Kaitlyn Warren

Women, immigrants, and minorities were fghting to improve their political and economic circumstances. As a result, upper-class white males faced a crisis of manhood as outsiders threatened to dismantle their privileged place in society. Many felt a need to prove themselves through displays of rugged strength and manly superiority.3 Te sport of football became an important means for furthering this goal. Players and fans alike believed that football prepared young men for the future by teaching them leadership, courage, and discipline.4 But football was more than that: it was also a way for men to demonstrate their masculinity through glory and toughness on the feld.

Football Addresses the Crisis of Masculinity During the Progressive Era, the United States was increasingly separated into various competing factions. Divisions were prominent between North and South, black and white, immigrant and native-born, and progressives and traditionalists, but minority groups in particular became a focal point for these divisions. Immigrants coming to the United States arrived to fnd better work and better salaries. Former slaves tried to fnd ways to assimilate and thrive in post-Civil War America, fghting to obtain rights and equality and to delegitimize the myth of white supremacy. Women also organized to demand the right to vote. Many joined the workforce, taking jobs in industry and retail. Te face of America changed as these groups found ways to assert infuence over the social structure and economy of the country.5 Tese historical shifs posed a problem for white male patriarchy, as many men perceived these new developments as a threat to their control. As the public sphere became less dominated by white males, they began to see the improved job prospects of racial and ethnic minorities as a challenge to their manhood. Te traditional Victorian idea of manhood became more difcult to maintain as the structure of society changed. Success in business, the mark of a proper man, no longer came so easily. At one time, becoming a businessman meant a man had achieved independence, leadership, and

3 Daniel A. Clark, Creating the College Man: American Mass Magazines and Middle-Class Manhood (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), 7-9. 4 Michael Oriard, Reading Football: How the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 23. 5 Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 4-7. 167 The UNC-Chapel Hill Journal of History

sufcient means to provide for his family, but by the end of the nineteenth century it was associated with being a subordinate employee.6 Men growing up between the Civil War and World War I could not demonstrate their manhood by fghting in a national or global military confict. Teir ancestors had proven their manhood on the battlefeld in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the American Civil War. Many young men had fathers who fought in the Civil War and had received heroic homecomings at the war’s end. Tese men felt the burden of living up to the accomplishments of their fathers, and the short-lived Spanish American War in 1898 was not an adequate venue for demonstrating manliness through military service.7 Many white American men searched for an alternative way to demonstrate masculine strength. Tey felt compelled to show that they were intelligent, capable, and understanding leaders but also that they were tough, rugged, and in tune with their primal instincts. Te importance of education also was growing rapidly during this time and college attendance was higher than it had ever been, growing from 1.6 percent of college-age men in 1870 to 5.1 percent by 1910.8 Education became a means to getting ahead in business, as companies recruited employees from the predominantly white college campuses, and magazines began featuring articles singing the praises of a college education. But while college helped to inculcate the gentlemanly demeanor that young men sought, many still wanted an avenue for displaying strength and power.9 Participation in sports allowed young men to develop and showcase their physical superiority. Sports began to enter mainstream American culture as a leisure activity in the mid-nineteenth century. Boxing, which was a largely underground sport popular among working-class men, had become a litmus test of manliness. Te faces and bodies of famous boxers such as John L. Sullivan and James Corbett were featured in newspapers across the country, creating exposure and admiration of the male body that had not been seen before in popular media. Baseball players also attracted fans who idolized strength and agility. But football ultimately proved to be

6 Clark, 7-9. 7 Ibid., 1-4. 8 Ibid., 191. 9 Ibid., 9-11. 168 Kaitlyn Warren

the sport through which men could demonstrate courage and strength.10 Te sport developed slowly and under unique circumstances, incorporating along the way traits that were expected to refect positively upon the well- rounded man. Early football was a European import, combining elements of soccer and rugby. By the mid- to late-nineteenth century, most colleges in the Northeast favored a style of football more closely resembling soccer. Te notable exception was Harvard, which preferred a rugby style of game that allowed for tackling and running with the ball. Te frst intercollegiate game modeled on modern football was played in 1874, when Harvard defeated the Canadian McGill University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1875, Harvard and Yale played two games, one under Yale’s preferred soccer style rules and one under Harvard’s favored rugby style rules. Te rugby style prevailed and, in 1876, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia met to establish uniform rules and form the Intercollegiate Football Association.11 Because so few games had actually been played at this point, the original designers of the game had no way of knowing which rules would be successful when applied during real play. During the evolution of the game, new rules ofen were introduced in an efort to correct problems of the game, but they usually had unintended consequences that created other difculties. Te constant reinterpretation of the rules by players and coaches caused football to develop “as much by accident as by design.”12 For this reason, the rules of football changed ofen until 1912, when the sport began to take the form of the game as it exists today.

Walter Camp’s Role in Shaping Football While football was still in this period of trial and error, many of the early rules were proposed by Walter Camp, a man who came to be known as the “Father of Football” for his role in infuencing the game’s development.13 Born in 1859, Camp was coming of age just as colleges were establishing a uniform concept of football. Although best known for his contribution to

10 Gorn and Goldstein, 120. 11 Diana Star Helmer, The History of Football (New York: PowerKids Press, 2000), 4. 12 Oriard, 33. 13 Gorn and Goldstein, 155, 160. 169 The UNC-Chapel Hill Journal of History

football, Camp excelled at a variety of athletics at Yale, playing tennis, track, baseball, and crew, in addition to football. He served as captain of the freshmen baseball and football teams in his frst year and captain of the varsity football team during his junior and senior years. Camp also coached the Yale football team from 1888 to 1912 and served as chairman of the Intercollegiate Football Committee and the American Football Rules Committee. Ultimately, his passion for sports translated into a career as a writer, and he penned books about the proper technique and structure of football, Walter Camp during his senior year ftness tips, and athletics more generally. He at Yale. “Walter Camp, Captain of the Yale Football Team,” 1880. also wrote articles in several newspapers and (Photo courtesy of Yale University Manuscripts and Archives.) magazines, including a regular sports column for Collier’s Weekly. Camp’s contribution to football was great. He created new rules, designed plays, advised coaches and captains, and increased public interest in the game from his frst year at Yale until the end of his life. Camp began playing football in 1876 as a freshman at Yale University, and frst represented Yale at the annual intercollegiate rules convention in 1878, where he proposed his frst rule change, a reduction of the number of players on each team from ffeen to eleven.14 From its beginning, football was recognized as a sport involving brute physicality, but the original rules allowed for tackling only above the waist. In 1888, Camp helped implement a new rule that permitted tackling below the waist, making it easier to catch runners carrying the ball. Tis resulted in a shif in the ideal player body type, from small and slender to large and muscular. A focus on agility and speed gave way to brute strength and muscle. Several rules were established that were meant to protect the players from serious injury, but enforcement proved problematic. Even when rules were enforced, players were encouraged to fnd ways around them. Camp realized that there was no historical context in football within

14 Ibid., 157. 170 Kaitlyn Warren

which to interpret what was allowed, as there was in rugby and soccer. Te only means of controlling the game was the written rules.15 As mass play replaced open feld running, injuries proliferated. Players began to require armor and padding. Long hair became a characteristic trait of football players because it could be used in lieu of headgear to protect Players with long hair, such as the player on the far right, were not required to the head during games. Allowing the wear a helmet. (Photo courtesy of Yale University Manuscripts and Archives.) ofense to block defenders in 1889 was intended to make the game safer, but many teams capitalized on the rule by creating new and dangerous plays, such as the fying wedge, in which blockers would charge toward stationary defenders with the ball carrier protected behind them. Players would frequently leave the game with broken collarbones, sprained knees, and twisted ankles.16 The Flying Wedge Formation, pictured As football grew in popularity, above, was devised to circumvent rules that so did criticisms that the game was were designed to make the game safer. Patch Brothers, “Unidentified Football too dangerous. Beginning in 1893, Game,” ca. 1890. (Photo courtesy of Yale headlines in newspapers across the University Manuscripts and Archives.) country denounced the sport for its violence.17 Many university professors and school administrators complained that the sport encouraged well-behaved young men to become unruly. Tey believed football undermined positive traits and behaviors that college was supposed to instill in its students. College students, they reasoned, should be honest, gentlemanly, and dignifed in their actions and comportment.

15 Oriard, 30, 33. 16 Ibid., 32. 17 Watterson, 556. 171 The UNC-Chapel Hill Journal of History

Te physicality of the sport seemed to represent the antithesis of this ideal.18 Indeed, many believed football contradicted the character of American society. An article in Life magazine in 1905 discussed an ex-football player who was sued for attacking a man during a fght, noting, “Te fable seems to teach that the conditions of action in real life are so diferent from those in football that the whole system of football education is misleading.” Te article concluded, “Real enforcement of the football rules against assault might do much to prevent misconceptions as to the privileges of muscle in real life.19 Several college administrators and many members of the general public also opposed teams’ recruiting practices, which they believed to be corrupt. In 1905, Henry Beach Needham wrote a series of articles for McClure’s Magazine detailing the bribery that Ivy League schools used to attract the most talented players, including compensating students with perks from the athletic association or donations from wealthy alumni.20 Tese detractors thought college football was simply becoming too commercialized. Indeed, although football was not originally intended to be a spectator sport, people across the country soon began regularly attending football games. Te Tanksgiving Day game between the two top schools in the Harvard, Yale, and Princeton rivalry, a tradition that began in 1876, attracted crowds of ten to ffeen thousand spectators in the mid-1880s and thirty to forty thousand by the early 1890s.21 In 1905, Harvard began construction on a state-of-the-art football stadium using alumni donations.22 Te president of Harvard, Charles Eliot, was adamantly opposed to the new stadium and the sport itself. He strongly disliked the design of the game, noting, “Coaching from the side-lines, ofside play, holding, and disabling opponents by kneeing and kicking, and by heavy blows on the head, and particularly about eyes, nose and jaw, are unquestionably proftable toward victory.” He lamented the fact, however, that “no means have been found of preventing these violations of rules by

18 Henry Beach Needham, “The College Athlete: How Commercialism is Making Him a Professional,” McClure’s Magazine, July, 1905. 19 “Football Ethics in Real Life,” Life, March 30, 1905. 20 Needham, “The College Athlete.” 21 Oriard, 34. 22 Thomas H. Pauly, Game Faces: Five Early American Champions and the Sports They Changed (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2012). 172 Kaitlyn Warren

both coaches and players.23 Eliot and administrators from several other Ivy League schools began discussing the prospect of outlawing football on college campuses. In the midst of this discussion and publication of critical articles by Needham and other journalists, football’s propensity for violence reached an all-time high. In 1905, a record nineteen players lost their lives playing football, and the media gradually began to view the sport more critically. Te public attention forced President Teodore Roosevelt himself to become involved. Although Roosevelt wrote to Walter Camp in 1895 declaring his support for the game as it was then played, he had come to realize that if the game were to continue, it would need to be modifed. Roosevelt was especially concerned about the strategy of intentionally injuring key players on the opposing team, which had become common practice in collegiate games.24 Needham detailed one such instance during a match between Dartmouth and Princeton. During the frst play of the game, Princeton players charged towards the only black player on the Dartmouth team, breaking his collarbone and taking him out of the game. When confronted with charges of racism, the Princeton quarterback countered, “We didn’t put him out because he is a black man. We’re coached to pick out the most dangerous man on the opposing team and put him out in the frst fve minutes of play.”25 On October 9, 1905, two representatives each from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton met with President Roosevelt in the White House to discuss what should be done to amend and preserve the sport. Te representatives drafed a statement pledging to abide by the rules of the game, but few tangible changes were made because Camp had no desire to sofen the sport, as Roosevelt was well aware. Te other schools followed his lead and implemented new rules that pleased the public, but had little efect on the game. Later, Roosevelt would lament that mediating the football confict proved more difcult than mediating the Russo-Japanese War.26

23 Needham, “The College Athlete.” 24 Watterson, 54-55. 25 Needham, “The College Athlete.” 26 Watterson, 55-56. 173 The UNC-Chapel Hill Journal of History

Manliness on the Gridiron While Camp was slow to encourage changes to the sport, he was quick to come to football’s defense when it was attacked. In response to early criticisms, Camp compiled Football Facts and Figures in 1894, a book containing statistics from the game as well as the opinions of school faculty and former players. Players and captains from Yale, Harvard, and Princeton expressed their love and dedication for football in this volume. It was clear that football was more than a sport to them. Alexander Mofat, once captain of the Princeton team, praised football’s ability to teach young men self-control. “He must learn to keep his temper, to control any propensity he may have for indulging in luxuries or dissipation of any kind,” Mofat wrote. “He must be able to submit himself to the severe discipline which the captain puts him under, and do so without a murmur. He must learn how to so train his mind as to make himself a part of a unifed team working for the attainment of the one object.27 Camp and others were passionate in their defense of the sport. As they saw it, eliminating the game or altering it beyond recognition would be removing a valuable and necessary means of cultivating young men into gentlemen and leaders. Football allowed players to develop two of the most important aspects of their manhood: rugged, primitive instincts and civilized honor. Even President Woodrow Wilson later stated that football developed “more moral qualities than any other game of athletics.”28 Support from prominent public fgures and the growing popularity of the game led Camp to feel justifed in his opposition to rule changes.29 He believed that the public desired a game “that may make the boys, when they become men of the world, good citizens.”30 Camp believed in the morality of the game and what it did for its players. He described his proudest moment as a Yale student as a time when, as captain of the football team, he had to make the difcult decision to make a player sit out a game for violating team rules. His decision, which initially met with protests from other players, was later commended by his teammates as the right and just action under

27 Walter Camp, Football Facts and Figures (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1894), 141. 28 Watterson, 556. 29 Pauly, 71. 30 Oriard, 31. 174 Kaitlyn Warren the circumstances. He wanted other players to gain this same sort of moral compass that he believed was the natural product of football.31 Moreover, Camp believed that football instilled a form of character that could not be replicated in any other popular sport. Baseball, for example, had become a hugely popular American sport shortly before football. Both sports were considered by most to be an appropriate and efective conduit for expressing manliness. But baseball’s popularity in the early 1900s had created problems that were not nearly as evident in football at the time. Baseball was one of the most commercialized sports of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Te frst professional baseball league formed in 1869 and the sport quickly became proftable for team owners and players alike. Te development of the professional league caused attendance to grow and revenues to increase, resulting in heated battles between players and owners, conficts similar to contemporary disagreements between industrial laborers and robber barons. People questioned the character of the sport as it became more pervasive in poor, urban, immigrant, and black communities.32 On the college level, many baseball players were seduced by the allure of money that the professional league ofered. Although it was against NCAA rules, players would play baseball professionally during the college ofseason and, if caught, received a slap on the wrist. Te debate over professionalism and its efect on college baseball, as well as the element of class confict, damaged the respectability of the sport.33 Football, on the other hand, avoided the stigma of class confict by remaining for so long a game of the upper classes. When the Intercollegiate Football Association formed in 1876, the only members were four elite universities: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia. Until 1894, the only other teams admitted were Wesleyan University and the University of Pennsylvania.34 Te game was under the full control of America’s most privileged institutions. Its isolation from the rest of society allowed football to develop in a way that would most beneft the players who created it. Most college football players did not have the opportunity to earn

31 “Personal Glimpses: The Strength and Tenderness of Walter Camp,” The Literary Digest, January 15, 1927, 60. 32 Gorn and Goldstein, 126-128. 33 Needham, “The College Athlete.” 34 Oriard, 30. 175 The UNC-Chapel Hill Journal of History

money from play except in the form of benefts from alumni.35 Indeed, the frst ofcial professional football league did not form until 1920.36 Because football remained an amateur sport for so long, and because most of the players were white men from elite universities, the game was thought to be more respectable than baseball. Supporters of football argued that the sport cultivated an honest, upright form of masculinity in its players, almost all of whom happened to be white, male undergraduates.37 Beyond baseball, boxing was another sport that created and sustained concepts of manliness. Following the American Civil War, boxing migrated from poor, urban communities into the realm of middle-class sports, proving to be the most efective way for white male athletes to display strength. Battling one another in front of a crowd of onlookers while wearing tight pants and, frequently, no shirt, boxers conveyed their strength while creating a provocative image that tested the contemporary boundaries of decency. While football was a physical and violent sport, even its harshest critics conceded that football served a better purpose than boxing. For example, one of the virtues of football that was absent from boxing was the element of teamwork. In boxing, athletes looked out only for themselves. Boxers had no teammates to support, and critics argued that boxers thus attacked at all costs in order to preserve their self-interest. In football, athletes could not aford this kind of selfsh behavior and had to work with others to achieve success.38 As football grew in popularity on college campuses, membership in fraternities and college clubs increased. Fraternities conveyed perceptions of manhood by forming a community of those who were considered the most gifed, dedicated, and successful men within a college.39 By organizing together, these men created a network that helped perpetuate their ideals of masculinity. Walter Camp was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity and the Skull and Bones Society at Yale. But as Camp realized over the course of his time at Yale, it was not his participation in these

35 Needham, “The College Athlete.” 36 Gorn and Goldstein, 168. 37 Ibid., 131. 38 Ibid., 119-120. 39 Clark, 83. 176 Kaitlyn Warren

organizations that gained him the most praise.40 As benefcial as participation in a fraternity was to a young man’s image, fraternal associations lacked qualities that sports, particularly football, embodied. Camp argued that football created for its players a brotherhood, a community of men united by their Walter Camp argued that football created a community of men who love of sport. Players connected with respected one another for sacrificing their bodies for the sake of the team. one another, relied on one another, “Football Game,” ca. 1900. (Photo courtesy of and respected one another for Yale University Manuscripts and Archives.) sacrifcing their bodies for the sake of the team. Until the 1890s, football was entirely run by students. Te team captains coached and disciplined their teams, while other students helped raise the funds necessary for the team to operate. Participating in football, whether as an athlete or an organizer, became a fxture of the social life in many Northeastern colleges.41 But being on the feld surrounded by one’s teammates was a unique experience that bonded men as few other experiences could. One player, responding to football’s growing criticism, remarked, “I regret the question has arisen that the game needs vindication. It can only arise with those who do not know it practically.” He concluded, “I am confdent that every old player, almost without exception, is ready to maintain that it is, of all the athletic sports, the most vigorous, manly, and benefcial.”42 Indeed, many players believed that their participation in the sport made them superior to their classmates. Football players were considered more resilient, courageous, perseverant, and disciplined. A former captain at Princeton noted that out in the real world, when the football player had “to battle with the stern realities of life,” football training would have taught him “not be dejected or discouraged by any misfortune that he may meet with, but, true to his early instructions upon the gridiron, he will look

40 “Obituary Records of Yale Graduates, 1924-1925,” Bulletin of Yale University, August 1, 1925. 41 Gorn and Goldstein, 131. 42 Camp, Football Facts and Figures, 150-151. 177 The UNC-Chapel Hill Journal of History

hopefully to the future, expecting better results from better work.43 Football players respected one another. If a man had survived four years on the football feld, enduring tackles, injuries, and the elements, he had proven that he had a toughness and grit that few others could claim. Te design of football was such that only the mentally and physical strong could survive, and struggling through the pain and agony that ofen came with the sport showed teammates that they could rely on each other in life just as they did in the game.44 Football’s structure and organization was ofen compared to the workings of industry. One of the frst to make this connection was Walter Camp, who noted the similarities between his clock manufacturing business and coaching football. As an admirer of Frederick Winslow Taylor, one of the frst to apply science to industry and methods of production, Camp modeled his approach to the game afer the popular approach to industry. Taylor believed that companies should employ each worker in the job that he performed most efectively and efciently in order to optimize production.45 Camp, too, tried to ensure that each position on the feld was flled by the player who would be most productive there. American industry at the turn of the century was moving increasingly towards the assembly-line model, in which workers specialized in one area of production rather than assembling an entire product from start to fnish.46 In much the same way, football players specialized in their positions. Te efort of each player culminated in a team working as one unit towards the fnished product, victory. Manliness was strongly correlated with economic success during Camp’s time. Claiming that football had “come to be recognized as the best school for instilling into the young man those attributes which business desires and demands,” Camp placed great emphasis on preparing men with the mental and physical strength required in the fast-changing business world of the early twentieth century.47 With the era of the self-made man behind them, men had to fnd new ways to succeed. Te football felds of colleges across the Northeast provided a logical place to search for the

43 Ibid., 156. 44 Oriard, 38. 45 Gorn and Goldstein, 161. 46 Clark, 7. 47 Gorn and Goldstein, 160. 178 Kaitlyn Warren

future business leaders of the country. Te players were college-educated, most coming from a respectable middle- or upper-class background and, most importantly, though usually not explicitly stated, they were white. Coaches, fathers, and concerned men across the country realized it was becoming increasingly difcult to succeed in business, and they viewed football as a means of giving young men an advantage by teaching them the skills necessary to navigate the business world.48 Many former players attributed their career success to their time spent on the football feld. Albert Holden, captain of the Harvard team in 1887, said that football “teaches cool action in a crisis and concentration of purpose, both of which, even in my short business career, I have found to be valuable traits in practical life.” Another player, Irving Ziegler, said, “I consider football a manly game, and in my profession energy and vitality are required, both of which in my estimation I acquired in the game.”49 Camp himself was a highly successful businessman. In 1883, a year afer dropping out of Yale Medical School because he could not stand the sight of blood, he began working for the New Haven Clock Company, starting as a member of the sales staf and eventually working his way up to president of the company in 1903. He retired in 1923 and became chairman of the board of directors. He did all of this even as he dedicated himself to Yale football as a coach. When opponents of football complained that football was harmful to the development of men’s characters, Camp’s own success and dedication to his work served as an example of the good that could come from the sport.50 Players were preparing themselves for the harsh realities of the business world and developing the determination and perseverance that men required to succeed. Camp also argued that football was a suitable substitute for warfare, giving young men the courage and strength previous generations had accrued from battlefeld experience. Young men wanted an arena where they could demonstrate that their strength of mind and body was equal to that of veterans of war. Since the three-month-long Spanish-American War failed to provide that opportunity, men coming of age at the turn of the twentieth century found that they could escape the shadows of their heroic

48 Clark, 23-24. 49 Camp, Football Facts and Figures, 144-145, 172-173. 50 “Obituary Records of Yale Graduates, 1924-1925.” 179 The UNC-Chapel Hill Journal of History

Civil War fathers by becoming heroes of sport.51 And there were many parallels between football and warfare. Camp structured his training and coaching of the Yale team around military practices. In his book American Football, he outlined proper training techniques for captains and coaches Camp structured his training around military practices. to use to develop good players. Tese “Walter Camp and W.F. Knox,” 1906. techniques included a daily exercise (Photo courtesy of Yale University Manuscripts and Archives.) regimen and recommended diet. His practices emphasized structure and discipline, as did military training.52 Camp would eventually create his own ftness program called the Daily Dozen, designed to increase men’s strength and agility and condition men for strenuous activity, which the Navy adopted during World War I.53 Many football players believed that the game prepared them for life in the same way that the military did. One man remarked, “We know that we can take any of our well-trained football men, and order them to do anything on earth, and they will do it, without thinking twice, to the best of their ability.”54 Players believed that football set them apart from their contemporaries by giving them the skillset of their war-fghting ancestors.

Football Today: Still Violent and Dangerous In recent years, football has overtaken baseball to become the most popular sport in the country. In the last decade the sport also has come under close scrutiny. Recent controversies are not much diferent from the early disputes over the game, and many of the problems still result from the violent culture of football. Despite years of research and rule changes to make the game safer, players continue to sustain signifcant and sometimes life-threatening

51 Clark, 7. 52 Walter Camp, American Football (New York: Arno Press, 1974), 140-142. 53 “Brief Reviews,” review of Walter Camp: The Father of American Football, by Harford Powel, New York Times, January 30, 1927. 54 Camp, Football Facts and Figures, 144. 180 Kaitlyn Warren

injuries on the feld. Te regulators of the game continue to struggle to balance safety and aggressive play. In 2011, afer the National Football League outlawed helmet-to-helmet tackles, fans and players alike spoke out in opposition to the new rule, complaining that it weakened the game. Concussions are a common outcome of football, but many players feel pressure to play through concussive injuries for fear that they may be derided by coaches or teammates if they ask to be removed from the game. Meanwhile, aggression is still encouraged.55 Coaches in both the NFL and youth football leagues have been accused of paying players to injure opponents on the feld.56 Also, women continue to be absent from the game. While women have been accepted in every other sport once dominated by men, football remains a “man’s sport.” Football will likely continue to draw both positive and negative attention, praised on the one hand as a sport where men can display their talent and toughness and, on the other hand, criticized as a game that creates lasting injuries and causes an unhealthy atmosphere that discourages players from seeking help or displaying emotions. Understanding the development of football, the ideals of men like Walter Camp who played and supported it, and the mentality of the male sports tradition in the early twentieth century gives us a better framework for interpreting and critiquing the current dialogue between masculinity and sport in America. Indeed, the direction in which the present-day culture of manhood leads the country is still being decided, in business, in education, and on the football feld.

55 Michael David Smith, “NFL Attempts to Clarify the Defenseless Player Rules,” NBC Sports, accessed December 2, 2012, http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/12/27/ nfl-attempts-to-clarify-the-defenseless-player-rules. 56 “Appeal Seeks Roger Goodell Recusal,” ESPN, accessed December 2, 2012, http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/8493998/bounty-scandal-jonathan-vilma-others- appeal-seeks-roger-goodell-recusal-sources-say; “Bounties in Pop Warner Football,” ESPN, accessed December 2, 2012, http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=8694645. 181