The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football

by John J. Miller

Overview

John J. Miller delivers the intriguing, never-before-told story of how Theodore Roosevelt saved American Football—a game that would become the nation’s most popular sport. Miller’s sweeping, novelistic retelling captures the violent, nearly lawless days of late 19^th century football and the public outcry that would have ended the great game but for a crucial Presidential intervention. Teddy Roosevelt’s championing of football led to the creation of the NCAA, the innovation of the forward pass, a vital collaboration between Walter Camp, Charles W. Eliot, John Heisman and others, and, ultimately, the creation of a new American pastime. Perfect for readers of Douglas Brinkley’s Wilderness Warrior, Michael Lewis’s The Blind Side, and Conn and Hal Iggulden’s The Dangerous Book for Boys, Miller’s The Big Scrum reclaims from the shadows of obscurity a remarkable story of one defining moment in our nation’s history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061744525
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/17/2012
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.61(d)

About the Author

John J. Miller is director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College, national correspondent for National Review, a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and the author of five books, including the novel The First Assassin.

Table of Contents

Introduction: America's Game ix

Chapter 1 The Killing Fields 1

Chapter 2 Creation Stories 19

Chapter 3 Game Time 47

Chapter 4 Camp Days 65

Chapter 5 The Capacity to Inflict Pain 91

Chapter 6 The Virile Virtues 111

Chapter 7 Let Them Be Men First 135

Chapter 8 Rough Riding. 155

Chapter 9 Football Is a Fight 175

Chapter 10 The Air War 205

Appendix 223

Acknowledgments 225

Notes 227

Index 247

What People are Saying About This

Tweed Roosevelt

“Football enthusiassts and Theodore Roosevelt admirers will both enjoy and learn from these little-known but important historic events that preserved from extinction one of America’s favorite sports.”

Candice Millard

“In Miller’s hands, the story of Theodore Roosevelt’s love for, and defense of, ‘the great game’ has as much vigor and passion as Roosevelt himself. It’s a fascinating and thoroughly American tale.”

Editorial Reviews

Football enthusiassts and Theodore Roosevelt admirers will both enjoy and learn from these little-known but important historic events that preserved from extinction one of America’s favorite sports.

Tweed Roosevelt

In Miller’s hands, the story of Theodore Roosevelt’s love for, and defense of, ‘the great game’ has as much vigor and passion as Roosevelt himself. It’s a fascinating and thoroughly American tale.

Candice Millard

[Miller] is on target with a necessarily selective biography highlighting Roosevelt’s lifelong affinity for sports and physical activity, thereby providing context for understanding why a president would devote valuable time to what was then a minor sport. [An] enjoyable history of a seldom-explored turning point in American sports history.

Booklist

[Miller] is on target with a necessarily selective biography highlighting Roosevelt’s lifelong affinity for sports and physical activity, thereby providing context for understanding why a president would devote valuable time to what was then a minor sport. [An] enjoyable history of a seldom-explored turning point in American sports history.

Booklist

Miller…provides a richly detailed history of football's founding, with occasional detours into how Roosevelt, who had been an asthmatic child, came to embrace "the strenuous life"…For those who know little about how football came to be—and how long the debate over player safety versus the appealing physicality of the game has gone on—The Big Scrum is a useful primer, introducing us to some of the sport's most famous pioneers.
—The New York Times

Judy Battista

Football enthusiassts and Theodore Roosevelt admirers will both enjoy and learn from these little-known but important historic events that preserved from extinction one of America’s favorite sports.” — Tweed Roosevelt, president of the Theodore Roosevelt Association

“In Miller’s hands, the story of Theodore Roosevelt’s love for, and defense of, ‘the great game’ has as much vigor and passion as Roosevelt himself. It’s a fascinating and thoroughly American tale.” — Candice Millard, author of The River of Doubt

“A worthy addendum to the story of football’s rise . . . [and] a good yarn.” — Kirkus Reviews

“[Miller] is on target with a necessarily selective biography highlighting Roosevelt’s lifelong affinity for sports and physical activity, thereby providing context for understanding why a president would devote valuable time to what was then a minor sport. [An] enjoyable history of a seldom-explored turning point in American sports history.” — Booklist

From the Publisher

The unlikely—and perhaps slightly overblown—tale of how Teddy Roosevelt flexed presidential muscle to save the fledgling game of football.

The story of football's rise from a haphazardly organized game dominated by Yale and Harvard to America's favorite sport is a fascinating one, requiring the contributions of many men—not the least of whom, writes National Review correspondent Miller (The First Assassin, 2010, etc.), was President Roosevelt. An advocate of the "strenuous life" that helped him overcome childhood asthma, the president admired those who sacrificed their bodies on the playing field and felt it was the job of America's universities to spend as much time molding young men's bodies as they did minds. Football's popularity grew in lockstep with Roosevelt's political success, though the game became increasingly controversial, the result of a style of play that led to numerous deaths and countless debilitating injuries. Trailblazing Harvard president Charles Eliot, himself a firm believer in exercise, crusaded against football as a dangerous endeavor that encouraged deception and cruelty, making him the perfect foil for Harvard grad Roosevelt. Even as Eliot led efforts to ban football, Roosevelt called the game's most influential coaches—including legendary Yale coach Walter Camp—to a White House summit to discuss the state of the game. Though the tangible results of that meeting—a joint statement by the coaches in which they promised to be more vigilant in upholding the rules of fair play—were minimal, the author contends that the meeting had a profound impact on the game's development and set Roosevelt up as a behind-the-scenes influencer who ensured the game's survival long enough for new rules (including the forward pass) to make it safer. It's a worthy addendum to the story of football's rise, even though the case for Roosevelt as a cornerstone of its development feels overstated.

A good yarn, but might have made a better chapter than a full-length monograph.

Kirkus Reviews