If not already, some Christian readers may react to columns that extol any virtues of college football whatsoever. Yes, it is dangerous;¹ yes, some of its athletes are reverse role-models; yes, it may distract from exclusively academic pursuits; yes, it is a big-money business; and yes, the transfer portal and NIL (Naming, Image, Likeness) agreements have commercialized the sport to new heights. Football was, and is, on trial.

Besides athleticism, most college football programs depend also on legend, history, and poetry. Put it this way: millions of fans fill stadiums every week in the fall.² What other activity, when little league, high school, and pro games are added in, draws so many people? Many attend games, tailgate excessively, belt out songs without due embarrassment—some make it a weekend retreat, minimizing or ignoring the Lord’s Day altogether—and most college traditions have their own apostolic succession. Those traditions are handed down from generation to generation in stadiums whose numbers perhaps rival those of sanctuaries. The substitute of worshiping something created instead of the Creator who is forever blest (Rom 1) is, indeed, more than a little troubling.

Yet, if one wishes to understand this cultural phenomenon, it would be naïve to think that it does not draw on a long genealogy—complete with heated controversy. Often a pedestrian knowledge of the history of a program or a sport can provide insight. One such fascinating history is John Miller’s The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football.³

Miller explains the triggering calamity: eighteen people died playing football in a single year (1905). The sport was so violent and unregulated that it nearly went the way of the duck-billed platypus. A crisis was averted, denying progressives a major cultural veto, by an asthmatic, non-football playing “Rough Rider.”

Love for college football can fuel enduring loyalty and fervor. Miller still gets “chills thinking about the sound of the marching band when it plays our fight song and the roar of the crowd when our squad runs onto the field. The sensation is a close cousin of patriotism. On brisk autumn afternoons, my three main allegiances are to God, family, and football.”⁴ Miller speculates that more Americans may know the name of their team’s favorite quarterback than that of their own congressman.

Miller, formerly of the National Review and now teaching at Hillsdale (where he surely seeks to convert sometimes Heidelblogian Darryl Hart from the tame game of baseball to football), extols “the careful choreography of a well-executed play involving eleven men, and the infantry combat of a rushing attack as well as the air war of a passing assault.”⁵ He adds: “There’s a strong intellectual dimension as well. Baseball may bask in its reputation as a cerebral pastime, but no sport demands more meticulous planning or quick calculation than football.”⁶

But the game—originally more like rugby until some 1905 rescue innovations such as the forward pass—nearly died an early death, except for the intervention of a politician. Its “very existence was in mortal peril as a collection of Progressive Era prohibitionists tried to ban the sport.”⁷ Casualties led the progressives to wish to crucify this upstart sport. Miller details how injuries were on the rise—back in the day with fifteen-man teams when the big games featured Harvard v. Yale or Suwanee v. Princeton, and some teams still played with a non-oblong ball. That was also a day when newspapers had no full sports sections, and the urban centers migrated from the erstwhile favorite sports of hunting and fishing to team sports, usually involving a ball. In short, there were few team sports prior to 1875 (the Cincinnati Redstockings started professional baseball in 1869).

Sadly, in 1905, there were eighteen deaths related to football injuries, and the outcry against barbarism was great.⁸ Prohibitionists would target equally the gridiron and the brewery. The “Rough Rider” president (who lived in an age that sported rifles, praised big hunt, and developed a love for parks and the outdoors) had to wrestle with both the temperance zealots as well as those who wanted more effete and clean sports.

One is tempted to agree with Miller’s characterization that “Conservatives view Progressivism as a quixotic effort based on an unfounded faith in human perfectibility that led directly to the rise of the welfare state and the erosion of individual freedom and personal responsibility.”⁹ But, of course, some liberals may stray from their orthodoxy and disloyally sneak around to enjoy football.

In Roosevelt’s appraisal, Miller claims, “The foes of football were wrongheaded idealists who simply refused to accept the risks that are attached to virtually any human endeavor. They threatened to feminize an entire generation.”¹⁰ Further, Miller reports, “Several academics have found evidence that kids who play sports stay in school longer. As adults, they vote more often and earn more money.”¹¹ The early challenge was to refine a sport to make it safe while also avoiding what Roosevelt called “mollycoddling.” A young man could benefit from testing, and team cooperation was valuable, thought the first American President of the twentieth century.

Overcoming some of his Dutch Calvinist suspicion about the value of sports, along with accepting the turn-of-the-century re-emphasis on physical fitness and discipline, Teddy Roosevelt came to respect athletic training. Miller’s discussion of “Muscular Christianity” probably should be read prior to the next Twitter battle on similar subjects among the keyboard class.¹²

Miller avers that James Garfield, prior to becoming president, suggested that human history is divisible into two main periods: “First, the fight to get leisure; and then the second fight of civilization—what shall we do with our leisure when we get it?”¹³ That anthropological analysis may still be accurate, and Christians like all others must eventually struggle to discuss the stewardship of leisure in a culture that has more free time than any other in history.

The story about Teddy Roosevelt’s rescue of football was, until Miller’s fine work, a little-known story. Not only does the story end well, but it illustrates similar cultural issues of our day.

Sport history meets political history meets character development in this commendable work. If your team has a bye-week, maybe download and peruse this for background to appreciate the remainder of the season. Moreover, in a presidential election year, this book could be a helpful review as well.¹⁴

Football was on trial, thought Teddy Roosevelt in 1905 when he summoned the top coaches from Yale (Walter Camp), Harvard, and Princeton to the White House to save football. John Miller thinks it is still on trial, and he may be correct. Then again, he is a Michigan fan, and I hope we can persuade him to update his work at some point.

As Miller points out, it was Sir Walter Scott who opined: “Life is itself but a game at football!”¹⁵ Here is Scott’s “Football Song” poem for public recitation at some tailgate.

Then strip, lads, and to it, though sharp be the weather,
And if, by mischance, you should happen to fall,
There are worse things in life than a tumble on heather,
And life is itself but a game at football.

And when it is over, we’ll drink a blithe measure
To each Laird and each Lady that witnessed our fun,
And to every blithe heart that took part in our pleasure,
To the lads that have lost and the lads that have won.

Chorus

Then up with the Banner, let forest winds fan her,
She has blazed over Ettrick eight ages and more;
In sport we’ll attend her, in battle defend her,
With heart and with hand, like our fathers before.¹⁶

Notes

1. See Jason Gay’s thoughtful piece on choosing family over fame in “Tua Tagovailoa Has a Life Decision to Make—Not a Football One,” The Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2024.
2. With about 60 games per week, and with 10 of those in stadiums averaging 100,000 fans each per week and the next ten averaging 50,000, weekly attendance at college stadiums easily surpasses two million.
3. John J. Miller, The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football (NYC: HarperCollins, 2011).
4. Miller, The Big Scrum, 7.
5. Miller, 7.
6. Miller, 7.
7. Miller, 8.
8. Miller, 20.
9. Miller, 22–23.
10. Miller, 24.
11. Miller, 24.
12. Miller, 48ff.
13. Miller, 55.
14. A fourteen-minute interview from the American Enterprise Institute introduces Miller’s fine history at The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football, Hey Miller.
15. Miller, The Big Scrum, 42.
16. Sir Walter Scott, “Football Song,” Poetry Nook.

©David Hall. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• David Hall

  

  Reverend David W. Hall is married to Ann, and they are parents of three grown children and grandparents of eight grandchildren. He has served as the Senior Pastor of Midway Presbyterian Church (PCA) since 2003. Previously, he served as Pastor of the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (1984–2003) and as Associate Pastor at the First Presbyterian Church in Rome, Georgia (1980–1984). He was ordained to pastoral ministry in 1980. He was educated at Covenant Theological Seminary and is the editor and author of several volumes.

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