February 6, 2026 • 8 mins
As we get ready to party with the Super Bowl, we take a look at the wild rise of the sport of football. We’ll explore it’s gruesome beginnings and it’s glorious evolution into America’s most watched sporting event.
Feel free to DM me if you have a story you’d like me to cover . . on Facebook it’s Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The super Bowl is dominating our weekend, as it does
every year at this time. But in its infancy, football
was a wildly violent game, way more than it is now,
where players kicked around a gruesome ball and suffered horrifying
injuries or even death. I'm Patty Steele. How inflated pig
bladders and gouged out eyes led us to the super Bowl?
(00:22):
That's next on the backstory? The backstory is back. Yeah,
this weekend, it is time once again for the Super Bowl. Yes,
we've witnessed the collapse of network television. In nineteen seventy,
ninety five percent of all households in the US watched
network TV. As of last year, it was down to
(00:44):
just over eighteen percent. But despite those awful numbers, at
least for the network types, the Super Bowl on network
TV remains the most watched TV event of the.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Year every year.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
In fact, last year's twenty twenty five Super Bowl had
the most viewers ever, with one hundred and twenty seven
point seven million people tuning in. But how did this
craze get started? I mean, where did football come from? Well,
funny enough, at one point, over one hundred years ago,
there was talk of banning it altogether, and some schools
(01:17):
and towns did why because it was so crazy violent.
Its start actually came in ancient Greece, where men played
a very similar sport called episciros, where they tried to
throw a ball over a scrimmage line while avoiding tackles.
Then in Europe a sport called mob football was played
until the end of the eighteenth century. There were games
(01:38):
between rival towns in which the players dragged a pig's
bladder from one end of the town to the other.
The only rule was that no one could be murdered.
I'm sure lots of beer was involved. The mob football
idea transferred to the United States in the early eighteen
hundreds when a Harvard tradition known as Bloody Monday began.
It was a mass ball game between the freshmen and
(02:01):
sophomore classes, but got so out of control that by
eighteen sixty it was banned for a dozen years, but
games continued to be played at schools like Princeton and
Rutgers University, New Jersey, then spread to the South. Those
early games were kind of based on association football aka soccer,
as well as rugby, and this is creepy the pig skin.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
The early footballs.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Were rounder and a lot of times made from using
inflated pig bladders. There we go again with the pig bladders.
It wasn't until eighteen seventy four that they were redesigned
into a more rugby like elongated shape to make the
ball easier to pass. In those early days of the
late nineteenth century, the game looked very little like the
(02:46):
sport we know it today. It was violent and less regulated.
There were no helmets, of course, mouthpieces or protective padding.
The rules were almost nonexistent, with constant fights breaking out.
Players literally rely bit each other and gouged each other's
eyes out. On top of that, it was really hard
to find anybody willing to referee the games. I can
(03:08):
imagine the problem was. It was still a wildly chaotic
and violent sport. By the eighteen eighties, football left a
lot of players crippled, disfigured, or worse. In eighteen ninety seven,
a member of the Georgia football team died in a
game against Virginia, which almost led to the state of
Georgia banning football. Two weeks later, the newspaper The New
(03:30):
York World reported that at least eight people died playing
football that season, and it listed more than two hundred
more serious injuries that had occurred.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
The list said, the paper is a.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Gory calendar of human anguish, an encyclopedia of broken bones,
torn ligaments, fractured skulls, twisted necks, shredded muscles, broken ribs,
gashed bodies, dislocated joints, backs and chests, crushed in scalps,
ripped off, and jaws mashed.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yikes, sounds a little like boxing.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
From its earliest days as a mob game, football was
a very violent sport. The eighteen ninety four Harvard Yale
game ended with numerous broken bones and concussions, with one
player being carried off the field in a coma. It
was called the Massacre in Hamden or the Hampden Park
blood Bath, and the two schools didn't play each other
(04:22):
again until eighteen ninety seven. The annual Army Navy game
was suspended from eighteen ninety four to eighteen ninety eight
for the same sort of reasons. One of the major
problems was the popularity of mass formations like the flying Wedge,
in which a large number of offensive players charged as
a unit against a similarly arranged defensive unit. The resulting
(04:45):
collisions often led to serious injuries, and again, sometimes even
deaf people wanted it bann but it did have its supporters.
One Nashville newspaper editorial said football gave young men a
much needed way to work off steam, pointing out that
just a everything is dangerous. They said, if you set
your body in active motion to catch a train, jump
a fence, ride a horse, row a boat, shoot a gun,
(05:07):
coast down a hill, wait a stream, climb a mountain,
follow the hounds, that body frequently comes to grief. Let
mothers erect a pile of white sand on a sheet
in a parlor and let their boys run their hands
through it for sport. But then, oh no, they might
get some of it in their eyes. Snarky anyway. Finally,
(05:28):
a guy named Walter Camp, known as the father of football,
introduced most of the rules we know today, including the
line of scrimmage, eleven player teams, and the snap, moving
it away from how soccer was played. But the violence continued,
and sports historians say a major turning point occurred in
nineteen oh five, when in one season, nineteen players were
(05:51):
killed playing football. Hundreds were injured, including President Teddy Roosevelt's
son who got a broken nose. And you'll find out
why that was a very important broken nose. Anyway, by
that time, more than one hundred football players.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Had been killed playing the game in the US.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
So President Roosevelt then invited some college football coaches to
the White House and told them that if they didn't
clean up the sport, he would ban it all together
across the country where it is. That meeting led to
the introduction of the forward pass. Legalizing the pass transformed
the game, making it faster and importantly less dangerous.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
It also led to better coaching.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
As time passed, leather helmets and minimal pad in were
tossed out, and hard plastic helmets and advanced protective gear
was introduced, particularly after nineteen forty nine. In the end,
it was television that turned the sport into what we
see today. More people could access the games, and more
money poured in with TV advertising. The first Super Bowl,
(06:54):
then called the NFL AFL World Championship, was played on
January fifteenth, nineteen sixty seven, where the Green Bay Packers
beat the Kansas City Chiefs. Tickets cost between six and
twelve bucks and It was the only Super Bowl to
run on two networks at the same time, CBS and NBC,
(07:14):
With just over fifty one million viewers.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Football had come a.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Long way since Mob games with pig bladders. Hope you're
enjoying the game, and I hope you like the Backstory
with Patty Steele.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Please leave a review.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I would love it if you'd subscribe or follow for
free to get new episodes delivered automatically. Also feel free
to DM me if you have a story you'd like
me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on
Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstories a
production of iHeartMedia, Premier Networks, the Elvis Durand Group, and
(07:50):
Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer
Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
Feel free to reach out to me with comments and
even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and
on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the
Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't
(08:12):
know you needed to know
The super Bowl is dominating our weekend, as it does
every year at this time. But in its infancy, football
was a wildly violent game, way more than it is now,
where players kicked around a gruesome ball and suffered horrifying
injuries or even death. I'm Patty Steele. How inflated pig
bladders and gouged out eyes led us to the super Bowl?
(00:22):
That's next on the backstory? The backstory is back. Yeah,
this weekend, it is time once again for the Super Bowl. Yes,
we've witnessed the collapse of network television. In nineteen seventy,
ninety five percent of all households in the US watched
network TV. As of last year, it was down to
(00:44):
just over eighteen percent. But despite those awful numbers, at
least for the network types, the Super Bowl on network
TV remains the most watched TV event of the.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Year every year.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
In fact, last year's twenty twenty five Super Bowl had
the most viewers ever, with one hundred and twenty seven
point seven million people tuning in. But how did this
craze get started? I mean, where did football come from? Well,
funny enough, at one point, over one hundred years ago,
there was talk of banning it altogether, and some schools
(01:17):
and towns did why because it was so crazy violent.
Its start actually came in ancient Greece, where men played
a very similar sport called episciros, where they tried to
throw a ball over a scrimmage line while avoiding tackles.
Then in Europe a sport called mob football was played
until the end of the eighteenth century. There were games
(01:38):
between rival towns in which the players dragged a pig's
bladder from one end of the town to the other.
The only rule was that no one could be murdered.
I'm sure lots of beer was involved. The mob football
idea transferred to the United States in the early eighteen
hundreds when a Harvard tradition known as Bloody Monday began.
It was a mass ball game between the freshmen and
(02:01):
sophomore classes, but got so out of control that by
eighteen sixty it was banned for a dozen years, but
games continued to be played at schools like Princeton and
Rutgers University, New Jersey, then spread to the South. Those
early games were kind of based on association football aka soccer,
as well as rugby, and this is creepy the pig skin.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
The early footballs.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Were rounder and a lot of times made from using
inflated pig bladders. There we go again with the pig bladders.
It wasn't until eighteen seventy four that they were redesigned
into a more rugby like elongated shape to make the
ball easier to pass. In those early days of the
late nineteenth century, the game looked very little like the
(02:46):
sport we know it today. It was violent and less regulated.
There were no helmets, of course, mouthpieces or protective padding.
The rules were almost nonexistent, with constant fights breaking out.
Players literally rely bit each other and gouged each other's
eyes out. On top of that, it was really hard
to find anybody willing to referee the games. I can
(03:08):
imagine the problem was. It was still a wildly chaotic
and violent sport. By the eighteen eighties, football left a
lot of players crippled, disfigured, or worse. In eighteen ninety seven,
a member of the Georgia football team died in a
game against Virginia, which almost led to the state of
Georgia banning football. Two weeks later, the newspaper The New
(03:30):
York World reported that at least eight people died playing
football that season, and it listed more than two hundred
more serious injuries that had occurred.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
The list said, the paper is a.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Gory calendar of human anguish, an encyclopedia of broken bones,
torn ligaments, fractured skulls, twisted necks, shredded muscles, broken ribs,
gashed bodies, dislocated joints, backs and chests, crushed in scalps,
ripped off, and jaws mashed.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yikes, sounds a little like boxing.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
From its earliest days as a mob game, football was
a very violent sport. The eighteen ninety four Harvard Yale
game ended with numerous broken bones and concussions, with one
player being carried off the field in a coma. It
was called the Massacre in Hamden or the Hampden Park
blood Bath, and the two schools didn't play each other
(04:22):
again until eighteen ninety seven. The annual Army Navy game
was suspended from eighteen ninety four to eighteen ninety eight
for the same sort of reasons. One of the major
problems was the popularity of mass formations like the flying Wedge,
in which a large number of offensive players charged as
a unit against a similarly arranged defensive unit. The resulting
(04:45):
collisions often led to serious injuries, and again, sometimes even
deaf people wanted it bann but it did have its supporters.
One Nashville newspaper editorial said football gave young men a
much needed way to work off steam, pointing out that
just a everything is dangerous. They said, if you set
your body in active motion to catch a train, jump
a fence, ride a horse, row a boat, shoot a gun,
(05:07):
coast down a hill, wait a stream, climb a mountain,
follow the hounds, that body frequently comes to grief. Let
mothers erect a pile of white sand on a sheet
in a parlor and let their boys run their hands
through it for sport. But then, oh no, they might
get some of it in their eyes. Snarky anyway. Finally,
(05:28):
a guy named Walter Camp, known as the father of football,
introduced most of the rules we know today, including the
line of scrimmage, eleven player teams, and the snap, moving
it away from how soccer was played. But the violence continued,
and sports historians say a major turning point occurred in
nineteen oh five, when in one season, nineteen players were
(05:51):
killed playing football. Hundreds were injured, including President Teddy Roosevelt's
son who got a broken nose. And you'll find out
why that was a very important broken nose. Anyway, by
that time, more than one hundred football players.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Had been killed playing the game in the US.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
So President Roosevelt then invited some college football coaches to
the White House and told them that if they didn't
clean up the sport, he would ban it all together
across the country where it is. That meeting led to
the introduction of the forward pass. Legalizing the pass transformed
the game, making it faster and importantly less dangerous.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
It also led to better coaching.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
As time passed, leather helmets and minimal pad in were
tossed out, and hard plastic helmets and advanced protective gear
was introduced, particularly after nineteen forty nine. In the end,
it was television that turned the sport into what we
see today. More people could access the games, and more
money poured in with TV advertising. The first Super Bowl,
(06:54):
then called the NFL AFL World Championship, was played on
January fifteenth, nineteen sixty seven, where the Green Bay Packers
beat the Kansas City Chiefs. Tickets cost between six and
twelve bucks and It was the only Super Bowl to
run on two networks at the same time, CBS and NBC,
(07:14):
With just over fifty one million viewers.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Football had come a.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Long way since Mob games with pig bladders. Hope you're
enjoying the game, and I hope you like the Backstory
with Patty Steele.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Please leave a review.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I would love it if you'd subscribe or follow for
free to get new episodes delivered automatically. Also feel free
to DM me if you have a story you'd like
me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on
Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstories a
production of iHeartMedia, Premier Networks, the Elvis Durand Group, and
(07:50):
Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer
Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
Feel free to reach out to me with comments and
even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and
on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the
Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't
(08:12):
know you needed to know
Host
Patty Steele
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