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