April 17, 2026 • 24 mins
In recent years the public has become increasingly aware of the long-term dangers posed by sports injuries -- but at the turn of the 20th century this wasn't the case. Football players didn't wear protective gear, and in 1905 alone more than 15 players died from game-related injuries. Universities were on the verge of banning football entirely. President Roosevelt, himself a life-long fan of the sport, knew something must be done. Listen in to learn how the 26th President of the US may just have saved modern football.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
And we have returned, fellow Ridiculous Historians with a classic
episode for you this week. This comes with a very
special shout out to our one of our number one guys,
nol our super producer, mister Max Williams, who will always
know more about sports than either you or me.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Agree, it's like a superpower, Max.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Do you?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Uh No, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
You hadn't quite joined the show yet, but you're familiar
with the idea of football, right, Uh?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I washed the game, or I've seen a game or
two in my day.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I know I got to stop sounding like an alien impersonating.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Football before and even kicked it once.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
You've touched some pig skin, right, did they did? Lucy
pull it out right at the last minute?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
It was football?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Kick him in the ball head? Oh no, too far?
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Rude?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Also, why is he the Lucy of our show? Anyway?
For this this episode is for fans of American football,
so not soccer, and fans of president's past. It turns
out that Teddy Roosevelt from earlier just may have been
the saving force of modern American football.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Let's just jump right anyway, what do you say?
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. The following episode
(01:59):
is going to be of you know, so it's going
to be about something ridiculous, but it's also going to
be a peak into US culture for a lot of
our fellow ridiculous historians listening outside of the United States.
We are today talking about football, American football, American football,
(02:21):
and there's going to necessarily be some roughness in this
episode that maybe necessary roughness.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
No, what was necessary rough It was just.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
A raunchy like nineties American football comedy.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I believe Who are you? Oh?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
I'm Noel and I am an aficionado of raunchy nineties
football based comedies.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yes, yes, yes, that's how we met. I did my
undergrad in that. Actually all facts. I am Ben, and
this is ridiculous history. But it would not be ridiculous
history without our super producer, Casey Pegreb.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
I just want to acknowledge that American football also a
great band.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
YEP, kind of a what is it? What would you
call them?
Speaker 4 (03:02):
This little emo emo, but way more on the tolerable
side as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
No, they're good.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
They're kind of jangling, they don't like, they don't wind scream. Yeah,
it's kind of a little more low key, and the
guitars are kind of jangly and arpeggioe, kind of I
dig it.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
And they have reunited after many years Dormance that was
a third album coming out.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
I will say this though, for some reason, the name
American Football, it's just very bland sounding. It sounds like
they'd be a very bland kind of vanilla band, and they.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Sort of are.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
I mean, it's an approachable emo. That's what I call it,
approachable emo.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Casey on the case.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Well, today's story actually has a pretty cool Atlanta connection,
which is where we find ourselves right now. Back in
eighteen ninety seven, there was a full back at the
University of Georgia named Richard von Gammon, and he was
playing with his team against the Virginia team, which is
(03:58):
a college team. And in those days, it was quite
common for players to be brutally injured, and this was
no exception. He was rushed and dogpiled on and was
at the bottom of this heap of humanity and he
started he received this hit and then began to vomit blood,
(04:22):
and they realized that he was dying on this football field.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Right They eventually realized what happened. The team doctor popped
the guy with a syringe full of morphine and then
noticed the blood was coming from Richard von Gammon's head.
Von Gammon, you see, had suffered a skull fracture and
a concussion. He was placed in a horse drawn carriage
(04:49):
headed for Grady Hospital and he died in the hospital overnight.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
In that scene that we're describing, a medic basically coming
out and stabbing up football player with a syringe full
of morphine sounds more like something akin to what you'd
see on a Vietnam battlefield, you know, I mean, this
is this is a college sport for fun.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Right right, He was not wearing headgear. Today, football is
still hazardous. According to CDC estimates here in the US,
one point six to three point eight million sports and
recreation related concussions occur each year in the US. Ten
percent of all contact sports athletes sustain concussions each year.
(05:35):
Brain injuries cause more deaths than any other sport injury,
and in American football, brain injuries count forget this, sixty
five to ninety five percent of all fatalities. And this
is with all the equipment that people have today.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Yeah, back in these days that we're talking about, they
didn't have helmets, they barely had any padding.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
A little later, there's a movie.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Called leather Head that starts a guy played gym in
the office in George Cleaney, where you can see the
relatively minor changes that were made in football by nineteen
twenty five, and there were some pretty small helmets, a
little bit more shoulder padding. But in these days, when
this event, this death of this young man, really polarized
the nation against the sport, very little protective measures were
(06:20):
put in place for these young men that were out there.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
I am delighted because we know a lot about each other.
This is news to me, folks. I am delighted, Noel,
by your fascination with these these like turn of the
twentieth century football films, you know, nineties to early two
thousands is at your wheelhouse.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Totally, Dude, did my dissertation on varsity blues.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
You know, looking back at all makes sense in retrospect,
and that's something that we see today. You know, if
you've ever watched a US football game, you can see
the tremendous amount of damage these folks are dealing out
to one another, and then you can look back at
pictures of footballers of yesteryear and see that they were
(07:08):
doing the same thing with much less protection. This has
been an ongoing debate in this country. Was football a
proper pastime, people were asking in the wake of Von
Gammon's death, or was it as violent and deadly as
quote the gladiatorial combat of ancient Rome Ivy League. University
(07:32):
presidents argued about this, along with reformists, muckraking, journalists, and politicians.
As we learn through a great Smithsonian article called score
one for Roosevelt. President Theodore Roosevelt himself intervened because you see,
in addition to being president, he was a huge football fan.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
It had been from the start. And he even schooled
his young son who comes into play in this and
saying that the very thing that makes us love football
is the very thing that makes it so utterly brutal
and dangerous at the time. I'm not a football Okay,
now I'm showing I'm tipping my hand a little bit.
I am not an expert on the sport itself, just
(08:15):
more it's portrayal in cinema.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
But they didn't even have the forward pass. It was
all about the rush.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
It was all about having an individual holding the ball
rushing it physically, not throwing the ball and having it
intercept it. You had to actually physically hold it, and
that would open you up to much more potential to
be hit or dogpiled on. And that is how the
game was played in those days.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
And this put Roosevelt in an interesting position because he
loved the game ever since he was a kid. He
publicly presented himself as a fan, but there was a
little bit of what pr folks would call optics to
play here, because this bravado in his public presentation of
(09:00):
himself was meant to distract from his severe asthma, his
terrible eyesight, and the other physical challenges he had growing
up as a sickly child. He was too slender and
frail to play varsity football himself, but that did not
diminish his love for the sport. Roosevelt called American football
the greatest exercise of fine moral qualities such as resolution, courage, endurance,
(09:24):
and capacity to hold one's own and stand up under punishment.
He also wrote that in life, as in a football game,
the principle should be don't foul and don't shirk, but
hit the line hard. Furthermore, he said, I will disinherit
ady son who does not play college sports.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yeah, and this comes into play in just a little bit.
But he also was quoted as saying in a public
address in nineteen oh three that he didn't feel any
sympathy for people who got battered, even a great deal,
as long as it was not fatal. And the thing is,
these injuries that were happening, they didn't always result and death,
but they were gruesome and they had long lasting ramifications,
(10:05):
even if it wasn't clear right away. It was this
death in clear view of everyone basically that really changed
the conversation. But we are talking about punctured lungs from
ribs that are broken, We are talking about head injuries.
We are talking about wrenched spines, broken legs, all kinds
of stuff because of the lack of safeguards in this sport.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
And we also have to consider that at this point
in time, a lot of people were not aware of
the long term damage posed by concussions, you know what
I mean. They wouldn't notice something wrong necessarily until several
years had passed. Historians will tell us that by the
(10:55):
time Roosevelt entered the White House as president in nineteen
oh one, the grid iron had turned into a killing
field because of these harsh rules. One Princeton player explained
to the journalist Henry Beach need him that we're coach
to pick out the most dangerous man on the opposing
(11:16):
side and put him out in the first five minutes
of the game.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
In nineteen oh.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Five, the Chicago Tribune reported that nineteen people died playing college,
high school, and sandlot amateur football that year, and Roosevelt
was getting unsettled. He didn't like this. He's president, so
the press is always going to be, you know, at
least partially adversarial, right, And being a shrewd politician, he
(11:41):
saw trouble on the horizon, and he didn't like these
journalists talking bad, talking smack about football. He was determined
to save football somehow. He also knew on the on
the side of the Ivory Towers that several officials at
Harvard and other universities were determined to abolish the game altogether,
(12:06):
at least ban it from their campuses. Roosevelt referred to
this as the Baby Act. In that period that Ben
you were just describing.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
In the nineteen oh five football season, the Chicago Tribune
coined a pretty excellent expression for it.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
They called it the death Harvest. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, So we see Roosevelt at a crossroads, right, the
colleges want to end the game, the journalists are describing
the horrors of physical injury in lurid detail. Maybe now
we reintroduce his son, Theodore Roosevelt Junior.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
It was in that year of the Death Harvest that
Ted Roosevelt, as Theodore Roosevelt Junior was known, was playing
for his alma mater of Harvard against Yale, and that
was when he got an illegal hit that left him
with a broken nose and a pretty bloodied face, and
(13:02):
some conjecture that they this was done to him on
purpose because no one else had been seriously injured in
that game.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
And in that But here's the thing.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
In that same afternoon, another football player by the name
of Harold Moore, who played for a Union college, he
died of a cerebral hemorrhage when he was kicked in
the head while attempting to tackle an NYU player. And
this was all during that year, and it was kind
of an eye opening thing for President Roosevelt because he
(13:37):
wasn't he certainly didn't want to give his son special treatment,
But I think it opened his eyes to how there
needed to be some kind of change that wouldn't rob
the sport of what made it good, but also would
have some protections for these young men who were in
Ivy League schools and had bright careers ahead of them
outside of the sport.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
You know, they didn't want to.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
He didn't want them to have like brain injuries and
be so seriously injured that they couldn't pursue their dreams.
I mean, I think, what do you think made it
click for him Ben, Because he certainly didn't seem someone
that would pamper his son. He wanted him to, you know,
be in this rough environment and kind of learn and
you know, stand on his own two feet.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
There are multiple factors. We know that he was very
very close to his children, but he also expected a
lot out of them. We know that he wrote to
his son and said that the very things that make
it a good game make it a rough game, referring
to football, and even then he seemed a little divided.
(14:36):
He definitely wanted his children to play, but he was
also as any father would be, concerned. And then you know,
you have the media angle, and then you have the
inarguable fact that children are dying. They're dying preventable deaths,
and they're dying as a result of participating in this sport.
(14:59):
On October, Roosevelt convenes a football summit at the White House.
A lot of people are there, athletic directors, IVY League coaches,
Secretary of State Elihu Root and Roosevelt says football is
on trial because I believe in the game. I want
to do all I can to save it. And so
(15:19):
I have called you all down here to see whether
you won't all agree to abide by both the letter
and spirit of the rules, for that will help.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
And Ben, if I'm not mistaken, this summit, or this
intercollegiate collective a conference, I guess would ultimately become what
is now today known as the NC Double A.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, the National Collegiate Athletic Association. This happens. So he
makes this speech on nineteen oh five, same year as
the death Harvest. The next year, March nineteen oh six,
sixty two institutions become members of the NC DOUBLEA. And
this included a codified set of rules. I've engaged meant
(16:00):
much like any kind of international agreement between Nations on
what constitutes fair war tactics. I mean, this was very
much along those lines. They changed some of the rules.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Remember earlier I was talking about how they didn't allow
the forward pass. You had to run with the ball.
Now they allowed the forward pass, which would cut down
on the opportunities for runners to be tackled. And not
to mention, they changed some more specific things. Then you
might have a better grasp of this than me. I'm
going to do my best to explain it. They changed
they had a neutral zone between offense and defense, and
(16:34):
they actually so a neutral zone would be a zone
where you are less likely to get hit?
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Is that right? So?
Speaker 1 (16:42):
In American football, and I had to look this up.
In American football, the neutral zone is the length of
the football from one tip to the other when it
spotted placed on a certain spot on the field prior
to the snap of the ball during a scrimmage down.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Okay, so there's that again. I feel like you just
got woshed. I gotshed. They got wished big time. So
legalize the forward pass. That one I understand.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Neutral zone, and then they also doubled the This is
from a history dot com article about how Teddy Roosevelt
saved football. They doubled the first down distance to ten yards,
so I guess you didn't have to rush quite as far. Oh,
you know what, in the amount of time.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
That makes sense. Also, I was getting two in the weeds.
With that neutral zone definition. Let's just think of it
as an area where no members of either team can
go other than the person holding the ball.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
That makes sense.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
That makes a little more sense. We're unwooshing ourselves big time.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
And this didn't completely change the nature of the game,
which was by design. They wanted to keep it rough.
They didn't want to like I mean, it's a little
bit of a pejorative, I mean very much as but
Roosevelt said, they didn't want to make the game be
played quote on two ladies like a basis. So it
certainly wasn't become It certainly wasn't becoming touch football or
flag football or something. But fatalities declined to eleven per
(18:10):
year instead of the nineteen that we saw in that
death harvest year, which.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
To me isn't quite good enough.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Still progress, I guess you could say that Harvard's football
coach at the time, William Reid, said that Roosevelt had
helped save the game. A ban against the sport by
colleges and universities would have prevented most likely would have
prevented the development of professional football. And although this ends
(18:38):
the main branch of our tail, and it is true
that if you are a football fan, you should ardently
thank President Theodore Roosevelt. I have to say there is
one thing about football that always trips me out. More
and more recently, it's the Super Bowl halftime show. Man, Yeah,
which is its own bag of Badgers, its own ball
(19:00):
wax or weird string, or just a ball of lip
sync abbreviated performances totally.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
We have these Super Bowl in Atlanta this last game,
and people were talking more about the halftime show than
they were about the game. Apparently it was a bit
of a snooze fest. But it was funny when there
were things that happened as part of the game the telecast,
I could go outside and hear like the Blue Angel
Jets flying overhead. That was funny to be able to
experience those things in real time.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yeah, you know, I know that there are amazing Super
Bowl halftime performances, and I know that there are people
who just tune in to watch that, But I gotta
say I the last one didn't really didn't really move me,
you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Who was that Maroon five?
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Maroon five Adam Levine with his Adam Levine and his
TACKI tattoos.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I heard the bigger controversy was him showing a nipple
and not getting nipples and not getting in trouble with
multiple multiple nipples, yeah, for just the one.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah, it's definitely a bizarre double standard.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
So let us know what you think of American football.
I'd especially love to hear what you think if you
are not from this country, because here in the US
football is tremendously popular. It's a billion dollar industry, and
for outsiders looking in, the rules of football can seem
(20:21):
as inscrutable as the rules of cricket.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Do you know the rules of cricket? Absolutely not. Don't
bad neither do I.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
I know the bat's called the wicket right No?
Speaker 1 (20:32):
No, sorry man, No, no, it's I don't know the
name of the bat in cricket, but the wicket is
one of the two sets of three stumps at either
end of the pitch, like no, like a wicket in croquete.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
So what's a sticky wicket.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Sticky wicket. If I'm just speculating, here is a wicket
where it's tough to knock down the horizontal parts the bales.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Okay, I give up, don't give all right, I won't
give up. I'll send you.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
I'm gonna send you a great sketch from Mitchell and
Webb by friends about cricket.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
I would really love that, Ben, because I love mitchellin
Webb and I apparently am completely ignorant on the rules
of cricket and American football because you know what, Ben,
they don't really talked about the rules in the movies,
the football movies.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
They just assume that you already know. And it's mainly
about the Oscar moment. Speeches right to.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Me, it's about the Oscar moment. It's about it's about
like Rudy is a good one. I like Rudy, you know,
the underdog story. I really like at mainstream for you.
I know, I know, I usually go for the deeper cuts,
but it's it's an important one.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Remember the Titans, do you remember them? Remember those Titans?
Speaker 1 (21:39):
I don't remember those Titans. I know the name of
the film, but I haven't watched it.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
It's a very very inspiring tale of underdoggedness.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
I'm more into weird presidential history and trivia, and I
think this episode qualifies for that.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
I think this episode is the beautiful ven diagram between
those two disciplines.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Ben right, right.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
I agree with you, Noel, and this ends our story today. Yeah,
let us know if American football is popular outside of
the US, it's probably never going to be as popular
as soccer or you know what the rest of the
world calls football. Furthermore, let us know what you think
(22:23):
of the concussion controversy. A few years back, we got
together at work and did what I think is a
pretty stand up video, a documentary on concussions.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Do you remember that, Casey.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
I do remember that we went to or I didn't go,
but somebody went to like a conference or something about it, right, Yeah, yeah,
Football Hall of Fame or something like that.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Maybe we can post that on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians.
It's an excellent way to learn a little bit more
about the current science combating concussions today. While you are
on the internet, feel free to check us out on Twitter.
You can also find us on Instagram, and you can
(23:07):
check out some more of knowles. I'm a certain deep
dive research into nineties era football films on his own Instagram.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Yep, you can that is at Embryonic Insider, where you
know I'll post pictures and video clips of me at
various nineties pop culture conferences and you know symposiums, symposiums
and talks and you know Ted talks all the different
kinds of talks.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
And you can find me at Ben Bolin, where I
am your faithful correspondent providing a visual travelogue of the
various strange countries that I that I get kicked into
and kicked out of.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
North Korea. I'm looking at you. Here's looking at you,
North Korea. I like that, Ben, I really got to go.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Thanks to super producer Casey Pegrim as always, Alex Williams,
who composed our theme, Search associate Gabe Lozier, and Ben you.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Thanks Nolan and Hey, and thank you to thanks to
Theodore Roosevelt for introducing us to the term rough riders,
for being president, for making football a little less lethal
and allowing the game to continue for its millions of
fans across the country and the world. And thanks for listening.
I have one last question and squeezing. One last question
(24:26):
for everybody, what's the weirdest sport you know about?
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Yeah, let us know, folks. Talk to you soon.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
And we have returned, fellow Ridiculous Historians with a classic
episode for you this week. This comes with a very
special shout out to our one of our number one guys,
nol our super producer, mister Max Williams, who will always
know more about sports than either you or me.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Agree, it's like a superpower, Max.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Do you?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Uh No, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
You hadn't quite joined the show yet, but you're familiar
with the idea of football, right, Uh?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I washed the game, or I've seen a game or
two in my day.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I know I got to stop sounding like an alien impersonating.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Football before and even kicked it once.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
You've touched some pig skin, right, did they did? Lucy
pull it out right at the last minute?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
It was football?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Kick him in the ball head? Oh no, too far?
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Rude?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Also, why is he the Lucy of our show? Anyway?
For this this episode is for fans of American football,
so not soccer, and fans of president's past. It turns
out that Teddy Roosevelt from earlier just may have been
the saving force of modern American football.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Let's just jump right anyway, what do you say?
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. The following episode
(01:59):
is going to be of you know, so it's going
to be about something ridiculous, but it's also going to
be a peak into US culture for a lot of
our fellow ridiculous historians listening outside of the United States.
We are today talking about football, American football, American football,
(02:21):
and there's going to necessarily be some roughness in this
episode that maybe necessary roughness.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
No, what was necessary rough It was just.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
A raunchy like nineties American football comedy.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
I believe Who are you? Oh?
Speaker 3 (02:35):
I'm Noel and I am an aficionado of raunchy nineties
football based comedies.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yes, yes, yes, that's how we met. I did my
undergrad in that. Actually all facts. I am Ben, and
this is ridiculous history. But it would not be ridiculous
history without our super producer, Casey Pegreb.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
I just want to acknowledge that American football also a
great band.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
YEP, kind of a what is it? What would you
call them?
Speaker 4 (03:02):
This little emo emo, but way more on the tolerable
side as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
No, they're good.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
They're kind of jangling, they don't like, they don't wind scream. Yeah,
it's kind of a little more low key, and the
guitars are kind of jangly and arpeggioe, kind of I
dig it.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
And they have reunited after many years Dormance that was
a third album coming out.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
I will say this though, for some reason, the name
American Football, it's just very bland sounding. It sounds like
they'd be a very bland kind of vanilla band, and they.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Sort of are.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
I mean, it's an approachable emo. That's what I call it,
approachable emo.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Casey on the case.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Well, today's story actually has a pretty cool Atlanta connection,
which is where we find ourselves right now. Back in
eighteen ninety seven, there was a full back at the
University of Georgia named Richard von Gammon, and he was
playing with his team against the Virginia team, which is
(03:58):
a college team. And in those days, it was quite
common for players to be brutally injured, and this was
no exception. He was rushed and dogpiled on and was
at the bottom of this heap of humanity and he
started he received this hit and then began to vomit blood,
(04:22):
and they realized that he was dying on this football field.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Right They eventually realized what happened. The team doctor popped
the guy with a syringe full of morphine and then
noticed the blood was coming from Richard von Gammon's head.
Von Gammon, you see, had suffered a skull fracture and
a concussion. He was placed in a horse drawn carriage
(04:49):
headed for Grady Hospital and he died in the hospital overnight.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
In that scene that we're describing, a medic basically coming
out and stabbing up football player with a syringe full
of morphine sounds more like something akin to what you'd
see on a Vietnam battlefield, you know, I mean, this
is this is a college sport for fun.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Right right, He was not wearing headgear. Today, football is
still hazardous. According to CDC estimates here in the US,
one point six to three point eight million sports and
recreation related concussions occur each year in the US. Ten
percent of all contact sports athletes sustain concussions each year.
(05:35):
Brain injuries cause more deaths than any other sport injury,
and in American football, brain injuries count forget this, sixty
five to ninety five percent of all fatalities. And this
is with all the equipment that people have today.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Yeah, back in these days that we're talking about, they
didn't have helmets, they barely had any padding.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
A little later, there's a movie.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Called leather Head that starts a guy played gym in
the office in George Cleaney, where you can see the
relatively minor changes that were made in football by nineteen
twenty five, and there were some pretty small helmets, a
little bit more shoulder padding. But in these days, when
this event, this death of this young man, really polarized
the nation against the sport, very little protective measures were
(06:20):
put in place for these young men that were out there.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
I am delighted because we know a lot about each other.
This is news to me, folks. I am delighted, Noel,
by your fascination with these these like turn of the
twentieth century football films, you know, nineties to early two
thousands is at your wheelhouse.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Totally, Dude, did my dissertation on varsity blues.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
You know, looking back at all makes sense in retrospect,
and that's something that we see today. You know, if
you've ever watched a US football game, you can see
the tremendous amount of damage these folks are dealing out
to one another, and then you can look back at
pictures of footballers of yesteryear and see that they were
(07:08):
doing the same thing with much less protection. This has
been an ongoing debate in this country. Was football a
proper pastime, people were asking in the wake of Von
Gammon's death, or was it as violent and deadly as
quote the gladiatorial combat of ancient Rome Ivy League. University
(07:32):
presidents argued about this, along with reformists, muckraking, journalists, and politicians.
As we learn through a great Smithsonian article called score
one for Roosevelt. President Theodore Roosevelt himself intervened because you see,
in addition to being president, he was a huge football fan.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
It had been from the start. And he even schooled
his young son who comes into play in this and
saying that the very thing that makes us love football
is the very thing that makes it so utterly brutal
and dangerous at the time. I'm not a football Okay,
now I'm showing I'm tipping my hand a little bit.
I am not an expert on the sport itself, just
(08:15):
more it's portrayal in cinema.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
But they didn't even have the forward pass. It was
all about the rush.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
It was all about having an individual holding the ball
rushing it physically, not throwing the ball and having it
intercept it. You had to actually physically hold it, and
that would open you up to much more potential to
be hit or dogpiled on. And that is how the
game was played in those days.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
And this put Roosevelt in an interesting position because he
loved the game ever since he was a kid. He
publicly presented himself as a fan, but there was a
little bit of what pr folks would call optics to
play here, because this bravado in his public presentation of
(09:00):
himself was meant to distract from his severe asthma, his
terrible eyesight, and the other physical challenges he had growing
up as a sickly child. He was too slender and
frail to play varsity football himself, but that did not
diminish his love for the sport. Roosevelt called American football
the greatest exercise of fine moral qualities such as resolution, courage, endurance,
(09:24):
and capacity to hold one's own and stand up under punishment.
He also wrote that in life, as in a football game,
the principle should be don't foul and don't shirk, but
hit the line hard. Furthermore, he said, I will disinherit
ady son who does not play college sports.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yeah, and this comes into play in just a little bit.
But he also was quoted as saying in a public
address in nineteen oh three that he didn't feel any
sympathy for people who got battered, even a great deal,
as long as it was not fatal. And the thing is,
these injuries that were happening, they didn't always result and death,
but they were gruesome and they had long lasting ramifications,
(10:05):
even if it wasn't clear right away. It was this
death in clear view of everyone basically that really changed
the conversation. But we are talking about punctured lungs from
ribs that are broken, We are talking about head injuries.
We are talking about wrenched spines, broken legs, all kinds
of stuff because of the lack of safeguards in this sport.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
And we also have to consider that at this point
in time, a lot of people were not aware of
the long term damage posed by concussions, you know what
I mean. They wouldn't notice something wrong necessarily until several
years had passed. Historians will tell us that by the
(10:55):
time Roosevelt entered the White House as president in nineteen
oh one, the grid iron had turned into a killing
field because of these harsh rules. One Princeton player explained
to the journalist Henry Beach need him that we're coach
to pick out the most dangerous man on the opposing
(11:16):
side and put him out in the first five minutes
of the game.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
In nineteen oh.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Five, the Chicago Tribune reported that nineteen people died playing college,
high school, and sandlot amateur football that year, and Roosevelt
was getting unsettled. He didn't like this. He's president, so
the press is always going to be, you know, at
least partially adversarial, right, And being a shrewd politician, he
(11:41):
saw trouble on the horizon, and he didn't like these
journalists talking bad, talking smack about football. He was determined
to save football somehow. He also knew on the on
the side of the Ivory Towers that several officials at
Harvard and other universities were determined to abolish the game altogether,
(12:06):
at least ban it from their campuses. Roosevelt referred to
this as the Baby Act. In that period that Ben
you were just describing.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
In the nineteen oh five football season, the Chicago Tribune
coined a pretty excellent expression for it.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
They called it the death Harvest. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, So we see Roosevelt at a crossroads, right, the
colleges want to end the game, the journalists are describing
the horrors of physical injury in lurid detail. Maybe now
we reintroduce his son, Theodore Roosevelt Junior.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
It was in that year of the Death Harvest that
Ted Roosevelt, as Theodore Roosevelt Junior was known, was playing
for his alma mater of Harvard against Yale, and that
was when he got an illegal hit that left him
with a broken nose and a pretty bloodied face, and
(13:02):
some conjecture that they this was done to him on
purpose because no one else had been seriously injured in
that game.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
And in that But here's the thing.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
In that same afternoon, another football player by the name
of Harold Moore, who played for a Union college, he
died of a cerebral hemorrhage when he was kicked in
the head while attempting to tackle an NYU player. And
this was all during that year, and it was kind
of an eye opening thing for President Roosevelt because he
(13:37):
wasn't he certainly didn't want to give his son special treatment,
But I think it opened his eyes to how there
needed to be some kind of change that wouldn't rob
the sport of what made it good, but also would
have some protections for these young men who were in
Ivy League schools and had bright careers ahead of them
outside of the sport.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
You know, they didn't want to.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
He didn't want them to have like brain injuries and
be so seriously injured that they couldn't pursue their dreams.
I mean, I think, what do you think made it
click for him Ben, Because he certainly didn't seem someone
that would pamper his son. He wanted him to, you know,
be in this rough environment and kind of learn and
you know, stand on his own two feet.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
There are multiple factors. We know that he was very
very close to his children, but he also expected a
lot out of them. We know that he wrote to
his son and said that the very things that make
it a good game make it a rough game, referring
to football, and even then he seemed a little divided.
(14:36):
He definitely wanted his children to play, but he was
also as any father would be, concerned. And then you know,
you have the media angle, and then you have the
inarguable fact that children are dying. They're dying preventable deaths,
and they're dying as a result of participating in this sport.
(14:59):
On October, Roosevelt convenes a football summit at the White House.
A lot of people are there, athletic directors, IVY League coaches,
Secretary of State Elihu Root and Roosevelt says football is
on trial because I believe in the game. I want
to do all I can to save it. And so
(15:19):
I have called you all down here to see whether
you won't all agree to abide by both the letter
and spirit of the rules, for that will help.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
And Ben, if I'm not mistaken, this summit, or this
intercollegiate collective a conference, I guess would ultimately become what
is now today known as the NC Double A.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, the National Collegiate Athletic Association. This happens. So he
makes this speech on nineteen oh five, same year as
the death Harvest. The next year, March nineteen oh six,
sixty two institutions become members of the NC DOUBLEA. And
this included a codified set of rules. I've engaged meant
(16:00):
much like any kind of international agreement between Nations on
what constitutes fair war tactics. I mean, this was very
much along those lines. They changed some of the rules.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Remember earlier I was talking about how they didn't allow
the forward pass. You had to run with the ball.
Now they allowed the forward pass, which would cut down
on the opportunities for runners to be tackled. And not
to mention, they changed some more specific things. Then you
might have a better grasp of this than me. I'm
going to do my best to explain it. They changed
they had a neutral zone between offense and defense, and
(16:34):
they actually so a neutral zone would be a zone
where you are less likely to get hit?
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Is that right? So?
Speaker 1 (16:42):
In American football, and I had to look this up.
In American football, the neutral zone is the length of
the football from one tip to the other when it
spotted placed on a certain spot on the field prior
to the snap of the ball during a scrimmage down.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Okay, so there's that again. I feel like you just
got woshed. I gotshed. They got wished big time. So
legalize the forward pass. That one I understand.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Neutral zone, and then they also doubled the This is
from a history dot com article about how Teddy Roosevelt
saved football. They doubled the first down distance to ten yards,
so I guess you didn't have to rush quite as far. Oh,
you know what, in the amount of time.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
That makes sense. Also, I was getting two in the weeds.
With that neutral zone definition. Let's just think of it
as an area where no members of either team can
go other than the person holding the ball.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
That makes sense.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
That makes a little more sense. We're unwooshing ourselves big time.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
And this didn't completely change the nature of the game,
which was by design. They wanted to keep it rough.
They didn't want to like I mean, it's a little
bit of a pejorative, I mean very much as but
Roosevelt said, they didn't want to make the game be
played quote on two ladies like a basis. So it
certainly wasn't become It certainly wasn't becoming touch football or
flag football or something. But fatalities declined to eleven per
(18:10):
year instead of the nineteen that we saw in that
death harvest year, which.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
To me isn't quite good enough.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Still progress, I guess you could say that Harvard's football
coach at the time, William Reid, said that Roosevelt had
helped save the game. A ban against the sport by
colleges and universities would have prevented most likely would have
prevented the development of professional football. And although this ends
(18:38):
the main branch of our tail, and it is true
that if you are a football fan, you should ardently
thank President Theodore Roosevelt. I have to say there is
one thing about football that always trips me out. More
and more recently, it's the Super Bowl halftime show. Man, Yeah,
which is its own bag of Badgers, its own ball
(19:00):
wax or weird string, or just a ball of lip
sync abbreviated performances totally.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
We have these Super Bowl in Atlanta this last game,
and people were talking more about the halftime show than
they were about the game. Apparently it was a bit
of a snooze fest. But it was funny when there
were things that happened as part of the game the telecast,
I could go outside and hear like the Blue Angel
Jets flying overhead. That was funny to be able to
experience those things in real time.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yeah, you know, I know that there are amazing Super
Bowl halftime performances, and I know that there are people
who just tune in to watch that, But I gotta
say I the last one didn't really didn't really move me,
you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Who was that Maroon five?
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Maroon five Adam Levine with his Adam Levine and his
TACKI tattoos.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
I heard the bigger controversy was him showing a nipple
and not getting nipples and not getting in trouble with
multiple multiple nipples, yeah, for just the one.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah, it's definitely a bizarre double standard.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
So let us know what you think of American football.
I'd especially love to hear what you think if you
are not from this country, because here in the US
football is tremendously popular. It's a billion dollar industry, and
for outsiders looking in, the rules of football can seem
(20:21):
as inscrutable as the rules of cricket.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Do you know the rules of cricket? Absolutely not. Don't
bad neither do I.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
I know the bat's called the wicket right No?
Speaker 1 (20:32):
No, sorry man, No, no, it's I don't know the
name of the bat in cricket, but the wicket is
one of the two sets of three stumps at either
end of the pitch, like no, like a wicket in croquete.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
So what's a sticky wicket.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Sticky wicket. If I'm just speculating, here is a wicket
where it's tough to knock down the horizontal parts the bales.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Okay, I give up, don't give all right, I won't
give up. I'll send you.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
I'm gonna send you a great sketch from Mitchell and
Webb by friends about cricket.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
I would really love that, Ben, because I love mitchellin
Webb and I apparently am completely ignorant on the rules
of cricket and American football because you know what, Ben,
they don't really talked about the rules in the movies,
the football movies.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
They just assume that you already know. And it's mainly
about the Oscar moment. Speeches right to.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Me, it's about the Oscar moment. It's about it's about
like Rudy is a good one. I like Rudy, you know,
the underdog story. I really like at mainstream for you.
I know, I know, I usually go for the deeper cuts,
but it's it's an important one.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Remember the Titans, do you remember them? Remember those Titans?
Speaker 1 (21:39):
I don't remember those Titans. I know the name of
the film, but I haven't watched it.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
It's a very very inspiring tale of underdoggedness.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
I'm more into weird presidential history and trivia, and I
think this episode qualifies for that.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
I think this episode is the beautiful ven diagram between
those two disciplines.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Ben right, right.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
I agree with you, Noel, and this ends our story today. Yeah,
let us know if American football is popular outside of
the US, it's probably never going to be as popular
as soccer or you know what the rest of the
world calls football. Furthermore, let us know what you think
(22:23):
of the concussion controversy. A few years back, we got
together at work and did what I think is a
pretty stand up video, a documentary on concussions.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Do you remember that, Casey.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
I do remember that we went to or I didn't go,
but somebody went to like a conference or something about it, right, Yeah, yeah,
Football Hall of Fame or something like that.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Maybe we can post that on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians.
It's an excellent way to learn a little bit more
about the current science combating concussions today. While you are
on the internet, feel free to check us out on Twitter.
You can also find us on Instagram, and you can
(23:07):
check out some more of knowles. I'm a certain deep
dive research into nineties era football films on his own Instagram.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Yep, you can that is at Embryonic Insider, where you
know I'll post pictures and video clips of me at
various nineties pop culture conferences and you know symposiums, symposiums
and talks and you know Ted talks all the different
kinds of talks.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
And you can find me at Ben Bolin, where I
am your faithful correspondent providing a visual travelogue of the
various strange countries that I that I get kicked into
and kicked out of.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
North Korea. I'm looking at you. Here's looking at you,
North Korea. I like that, Ben, I really got to go.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Thanks to super producer Casey Pegrim as always, Alex Williams,
who composed our theme, Search associate Gabe Lozier, and Ben you.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Thanks Nolan and Hey, and thank you to thanks to
Theodore Roosevelt for introducing us to the term rough riders,
for being president, for making football a little less lethal
and allowing the game to continue for its millions of
fans across the country and the world. And thanks for listening.
I have one last question and squeezing. One last question
(24:26):
for everybody, what's the weirdest sport you know about?
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Yeah, let us know, folks. Talk to you soon.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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