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Speaker 1: The super Bowl is dominating our weekend, as it does

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Speaker 1: every year at this time. But in its infancy, football

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Speaker 1: was a wildly violent game, way more than it is now,

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Speaker 1: where players kicked around a gruesome ball and suffered horrifying

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Speaker 1: injuries or even death. I'm Patty Steele. How inflated pig

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Speaker 1: bladders and gouged out eyes led us to the super Bowl?

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Speaker 1: That's next on the backstory? The backstory is back. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this weekend, it is time once again for the Super Bowl. Yes,

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Speaker 1: we've witnessed the collapse of network television. In nineteen seventy,

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Speaker 1: ninety five percent of all households in the US watched

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Speaker 1: network TV. As of last year, it was down to

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Speaker 1: just over eighteen percent. But despite those awful numbers, at

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Speaker 1: least for the network types, the Super Bowl on network

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Speaker 1: TV remains the most watched TV event of the.

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Speaker 2: Year every year.

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Speaker 1: In fact, last year's twenty twenty five Super Bowl had

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Speaker 1: the most viewers ever, with one hundred and twenty seven

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Speaker 1: point seven million people tuning in. But how did this

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Speaker 1: craze get started? I mean, where did football come from? Well,

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Speaker 1: funny enough, at one point, over one hundred years ago,

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Speaker 1: there was talk of banning it altogether, and some schools

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Speaker 1: and towns did why because it was so crazy violent.

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Speaker 1: Its start actually came in ancient Greece, where men played

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Speaker 1: a very similar sport called episciros, where they tried to

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Speaker 1: throw a ball over a scrimmage line while avoiding tackles.

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Speaker 1: Then in Europe a sport called mob football was played

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Speaker 1: until the end of the eighteenth century. There were games

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Speaker 1: between rival towns in which the players dragged a pig's

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Speaker 1: bladder from one end of the town to the other.

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Speaker 1: The only rule was that no one could be murdered.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure lots of beer was involved. The mob football

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Speaker 1: idea transferred to the United States in the early eighteen

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Speaker 1: hundreds when a Harvard tradition known as Bloody Monday began.

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Speaker 1: It was a mass ball game between the freshmen and

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Speaker 1: sophomore classes, but got so out of control that by

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Speaker 1: eighteen sixty it was banned for a dozen years, but

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Speaker 1: games continued to be played at schools like Princeton and

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Speaker 1: Rutgers University, New Jersey, then spread to the South. Those

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Speaker 1: early games were kind of based on association football aka soccer,

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Speaker 1: as well as rugby, and this is creepy the pig skin.

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Speaker 2: The early footballs.

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Speaker 1: Were rounder and a lot of times made from using

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Speaker 1: inflated pig bladders. There we go again with the pig bladders.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't until eighteen seventy four that they were redesigned

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Speaker 1: into a more rugby like elongated shape to make the

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Speaker 1: ball easier to pass. In those early days of the

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Speaker 1: late nineteenth century, the game looked very little like the

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Speaker 1: sport we know it today. It was violent and less regulated.

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Speaker 1: There were no helmets, of course, mouthpieces or protective padding.

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Speaker 1: The rules were almost nonexistent, with constant fights breaking out.

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Speaker 1: Players literally rely bit each other and gouged each other's

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Speaker 1: eyes out. On top of that, it was really hard

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Speaker 1: to find anybody willing to referee the games. I can

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Speaker 1: imagine the problem was. It was still a wildly chaotic

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Speaker 1: and violent sport. By the eighteen eighties, football left a

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Speaker 1: lot of players crippled, disfigured, or worse. In eighteen ninety seven,

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Speaker 1: a member of the Georgia football team died in a

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Speaker 1: game against Virginia, which almost led to the state of

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Speaker 1: Georgia banning football. Two weeks later, the newspaper The New

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Speaker 1: York World reported that at least eight people died playing

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Speaker 1: football that season, and it listed more than two hundred

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Speaker 1: more serious injuries that had occurred.

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Speaker 2: The list said, the paper is a.

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Speaker 1: Gory calendar of human anguish, an encyclopedia of broken bones,

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Speaker 1: torn ligaments, fractured skulls, twisted necks, shredded muscles, broken ribs,

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Speaker 1: gashed bodies, dislocated joints, backs and chests, crushed in scalps,

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Speaker 1: ripped off, and jaws mashed.

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Speaker 2: Yikes, sounds a little like boxing.

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Speaker 1: From its earliest days as a mob game, football was

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Speaker 1: a very violent sport. The eighteen ninety four Harvard Yale

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Speaker 1: game ended with numerous broken bones and concussions, with one

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Speaker 1: player being carried off the field in a coma. It

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Speaker 1: was called the Massacre in Hamden or the Hampden Park

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Speaker 1: blood Bath, and the two schools didn't play each other

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Speaker 1: again until eighteen ninety seven. The annual Army Navy game

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Speaker 1: was suspended from eighteen ninety four to eighteen ninety eight

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Speaker 1: for the same sort of reasons. One of the major

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Speaker 1: problems was the popularity of mass formations like the flying Wedge,

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Speaker 1: in which a large number of offensive players charged as

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Speaker 1: a unit against a similarly arranged defensive unit. The resulting

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Speaker 1: collisions often led to serious injuries, and again, sometimes even

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Speaker 1: deaf people wanted it bann but it did have its supporters.

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Speaker 1: One Nashville newspaper editorial said football gave young men a

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Speaker 1: much needed way to work off steam, pointing out that

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Speaker 1: just a everything is dangerous. They said, if you set

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Speaker 1: your body in active motion to catch a train, jump

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Speaker 1: a fence, ride a horse, row a boat, shoot a gun,

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Speaker 1: coast down a hill, wait a stream, climb a mountain,

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Speaker 1: follow the hounds, that body frequently comes to grief. Let

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Speaker 1: mothers erect a pile of white sand on a sheet

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Speaker 1: in a parlor and let their boys run their hands

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Speaker 1: through it for sport. But then, oh no, they might

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Speaker 1: get some of it in their eyes. Snarky anyway. Finally,

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Speaker 1: a guy named Walter Camp, known as the father of football,

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Speaker 1: introduced most of the rules we know today, including the

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Speaker 1: line of scrimmage, eleven player teams, and the snap, moving

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Speaker 1: it away from how soccer was played. But the violence continued,

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Speaker 1: and sports historians say a major turning point occurred in

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Speaker 1: nineteen oh five, when in one season, nineteen players were

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Speaker 1: killed playing football. Hundreds were injured, including President Teddy Roosevelt's

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Speaker 1: son who got a broken nose. And you'll find out

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Speaker 1: why that was a very important broken nose. Anyway, by

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Speaker 1: that time, more than one hundred football players.

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Speaker 2: Had been killed playing the game in the US.

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Speaker 1: So President Roosevelt then invited some college football coaches to

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Speaker 1: the White House and told them that if they didn't

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Speaker 1: clean up the sport, he would ban it all together

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Speaker 1: across the country where it is. That meeting led to

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Speaker 1: the introduction of the forward pass. Legalizing the pass transformed

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Speaker 1: the game, making it faster and importantly less dangerous.

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Speaker 2: It also led to better coaching.

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Speaker 1: As time passed, leather helmets and minimal pad in were

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Speaker 1: tossed out, and hard plastic helmets and advanced protective gear

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Speaker 1: was introduced, particularly after nineteen forty nine. In the end,

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Speaker 1: it was television that turned the sport into what we

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Speaker 1: see today. More people could access the games, and more

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Speaker 1: money poured in with TV advertising. The first Super Bowl,

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Speaker 1: then called the NFL AFL World Championship, was played on

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Speaker 1: January fifteenth, nineteen sixty seven, where the Green Bay Packers

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Speaker 1: beat the Kansas City Chiefs. Tickets cost between six and

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Speaker 1: twelve bucks and It was the only Super Bowl to

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Speaker 1: run on two networks at the same time, CBS and NBC,

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Speaker 1: With just over fifty one million viewers.

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Speaker 2: Football had come a.

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Speaker 1: Long way since Mob games with pig bladders. Hope you're

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Speaker 1: enjoying the game, and I hope you like the Backstory

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Speaker 1: with Patty Steele.

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Speaker 2: Please leave a review.

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Speaker 1: to DM me if you have a story you'd like

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Speaker 1: me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on

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Speaker 1: Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstories a

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Speaker 1: production of iHeartMedia, Premier Networks, the Elvis Durand Group, and

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Speaker 1: Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer

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Speaker 1: Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.

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Speaker 1: Feel free to reach out to me with comments and

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Speaker 1: even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and

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Speaker 1: on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the

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Speaker 1: Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't

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Speaker 1: know you needed to know