The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football

This is a new book by John J. Miller, and it is very interesting so far. Roosevelt’s perspective is not unlike our own today, as he loved football but understood its dangerous. His interventions in the game were to save it from its fiercest critics. And the debate reached the highest levels, as the great Judy Battista observes in her review in this past weekend’s New York Times book Review:

[Roosevelt] convened a White House summit with football’s leading coaches and thinkers; even Elihu Root, the secretary of state, attended. Miller argues that this was the moment when Roosevelt put his stamp on the sport by imploring the men to crack down on dirty play and reform the way the game was coached. With Roosevelt’s encouragement, Miller says, a series of rules changes was set in motion — among them, increasing the number of referees and strengthening penalties for unsportsmanlike conduct — that ultimately quieted the critics enough to allow the colleges to play on.