Political Football: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and the Gridiron Reform Movement Author(s): John S. Watterson III Source: Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 3, Civil Rights and Presidential Leadership (Summer, 1995), pp. 555-564 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27551467 . Accessed: 05/11/2013 20:04 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Wiley and Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Presidential Studies Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:04:56 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Political Football: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and the Gridiron Reform Movement JOHN S. WATTERSON III* Adjunct Professor ofHistory Madison and fames University University of Virginia Abstract In the early stages of Progressive reform, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson took an intense interest in over the controversy the reform of college football. In the 1890s and a torrent over early 1900s, college football faced of criticism injuries and the role athletics in Roosevelt and Harvard and of college life. Wilson, loyal followers of Princeton, haddefended football in the 1890s. In thefall of 1905, however,President Theodore Roosevelt called a eastern at the White House to discuss and conference of football experts brutality unsportsmanlike conduct. During the controversies thatfollowed, Roosevelt worked behind the scenes to to ensure bring about sufficient reform preserve football and that itwould continue to be at Harvard. In an played 1909-10, when college football again faced injury crisis, President Woodrow Wilson Princeton of University worked with the other presidents of the eastern Three" to make reasonable In their "Big reforms. styles of promoting football reform, both Roosevelt and Wilson showed approaches that coincided with their strategies for political while in the American In the on change serving presidency. years thatfollowed the reforms the evolved into "attractive" gridiron, football rapidly the game that Wilson had advocated and a less brutal to far game than the unruly spectacle that Roosevelt had tried control. Few as a would regard college football essential for presidential job descrip tion. Yet Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan andGerald Ford all played college football, and Ford in 1934was voted theUniversity most never of Michigan's valuable player. Though he took to the field, Herbert as Hoover served business manager for Stanford University's first team collecting at gate receipts the first Stanford-University of California game in 1892. came an Two presidents who to office in the Progressive Era also had intense interest in college football. Though Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson never or participated in scrub varsity games, they had opportunities to influence the direction of football. Roosevelt in 1905 summoned eastern football experts to an was informal White House conference and Wilson president of Princeton when football faced challenges to its survival. Their pragmatic and at times emotional to as a commitment football game worth saving reflected the late nineteenth century were to conviction that athletics and especially football essential building character; 555 This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:04:56 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES 556 j QUARTERLY so yet each's differing way of approaching political situations, obvious in their presi dencies, also showed up in their response to football. Not surprisingly, since both men admired football and wanted to preserve football, their reactions to the criticism of football parallel their approaches toward broader social and economic problems. as to Just they sought find middle-of-the-road reforms to allay criticisms of the so capitalist system, they also favored pragmatic reforms that would not jeopardize college football.1 to From the 1880s the early 1900s, football grew enormously in popularity. a From its origins in British rugby, the sport had assumed distinctly American a character. With few officials and often unenforceable rules, it also gained sometime unsavory reputation. Members of the Harvard committee investigating football in were 1884 appalled by its brutality. One player after unfairly knocking his opponent as out of bounds hit his opponent again he was getting up and stole the ball from him. From the spectators they heard cries of "kill him" and "break his neck." In 1885, the Harvard faculty banned football, but its popularity among students and alumni led to its reinstatement season. In la the following 1893, Harper's Weekly over one mented: "Looking the reports of the games, there is scarcely to be found not or account that does contain, either in the rulings of the umpire the running some of the game, evidence of foul play."2 The most influential figure in college football from the early 1880s until 1910 was a same Walter Camp, former player who had graduated from Yale in 1880, the as as an year Theodore Roosevelt did from Harvard. Camp served ad hoc coach for the Yale team and secretary of the influential football rules committee. Through as as his prestige well skill in football diplomacy, Camp maneuvered through the as a football conventions and committees crucial changes such the rule allowing team to a was retain possession after player tackled and its counterpart, the yards and downs rule, that distanced American football from the old rugby game. In in 1888, under Camp's tutelage, the rules' convention legalized blocking front of a career in the ball carrier and tackling below the knees. While pursuing business a team won 14 12 New Haven, Camp "advised" Yale that 285, lost only and tied from 1883 to 1910.3 was The rugby game that to evolve into American football had barely been eastern adopted by colleges when Theodore Roosevelt (Harvard '80) and Woodrow were an Roose Wilson (Princeton '79) undergraduates. Though enthusiastic athlete, not velt did play football, perhaps because of his nearsightedness. While he developed on an intense interest in the sport, Wilson also remained the sidelines because of at Later health problems he had earlier suffered Davidson College. Wilson would some as a served as apply of the expertise he had gained student-observer when he a at Princeton an assistant coach to the team atWesleyan. When he became professor as of the in 1891, he closely followed Princeton's athletic fortunes chairman faculty on committee outdoor sports.4 In speaking to Princeton alumni clubs in the 1890s, to is in the wide for he appealed their interest in football. "Princeton noted world once an three things," he told alumni group, "football, baseball, and collegiate instruction. I suppose the first of these is what you want to hear about."5 Despite This content downloaded from 35.8.11.3 on Tue, 5 Nov 2013 20:04:56 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions POLITICALFOOTBALL | 557 was his apparent ranking of football above intellectual pursuits, Wilson sometimes to was appalled by the student preoccupation with athletics the exclusion of what happening in national life.6 Both men defended football in the 1890s when it came under attack as a violent and dangerous activity inappropriate for college students. The first round of criticism as was to male erupted in early 1893 football spreading every campus with enough a team. a was students to field Such crisis perhaps inevitable in the midst of growing As numbers playing the game with inadequate protection for heads and necks. crowds at to more the big games in New York surged than 30,000, serious injuries gained wider notoriety. In the 1894 Yale-Harvard game, the Yale captain Frank Hinkey an even made a "late hit" on the Harvard ball carrier breaking his collarbone.7 In more violent Thanksgiving contest in Washington D.C., Georgetown halfback was at George "Shorty" Bahen fatally injured by the beating he took the hands of the semi-professional Columbia Athletic Club.8 a a As a supporter of football, and debater, Woodrow Wilson engaged in one-on-one debate with Cornell professor of anatomy, Burt Wilder, who called for the abolition of all college athletics. The topic was, "Should football Be Encouraged," more andWilson took the affirmative. "I believe," Wilson said, "it develops moral qualities than any other game of athletics."9 Wilson also claimed that it encouraged as valuable qualities such precision, decision, presence of mind and endurance. He to were in argued that colleges opposed football those who had been unsuccessful a amateurs. man an making it game of An older who had played earlier version of were a football forty years before, Wilder responded that if football moral game, an an to why did ex-football captain recently admit that it took umpire keep order on the field?10 One outspoken critic of football who dismayed both Roosevelt and Wilson was was Charles Eliot, the educational reformer who president of Roosevelt's alma mater, Harvard. In his annual report of March 1894, Eliot launched an attack on on went college athletics, particularly football, and those criticisms beyond the furor over on to were injuries.