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.