Football--Rules

President Roosevelt is glad about what Endicott Peabody said about his son Archie Roosevelt’s enrollment at Groton. He thanks Peabody for his long letter regarding his opinion on football and a conversation with his son Ted Roosevelt. Roosevelt is glad that Peabody and his wife Fanny Peabody will attend Alice Roosevelt’s wedding, and hopes that they will have time to eat dinner with him. Roosevelt’s wife Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt is concerned about missing their son Kermit Roosevelt’s confirmation due to a scheduling conflict, and asks if they could move the confirmation earlier.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-02-02

President Roosevelt encloses for Paul Joseph Dashiell a letter that he sent to General Albert Leopold Mills regarding a football rules committee that is being established at West Point. Roosevelt hopes that Dashiell will work to amalgamate his committee and the West Point committee, because the Naval Academy and West Point should operate under the same set of rules. He adds that he believes that field officials should be appointed in such a way that they are not responsible to the players or coaches.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-01-10

Although President Roosevelt is glad that West Point has accepted the invitation to be a part of the new rules committee on football, he hopes that the new rules committee can be amalgamated with the “old rules committee,” because Annapolis is a member of that committee. Roosevelt strongly supports the preservation of football, and believes it is important that both West Point and Annapolis be a part of the same committee.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-01-10

President Roosevelt tells William T. Reid that he thinks the newly proposed rules for football are excellent. He will be glad to help as long as he can do so quietly and without appearing in print. He was glad to see Reid’s father the other day.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-01-11

President Roosevelt tells Paul Joseph Dashiell that the incident in the Harvard-Yale game between James J. Quill and Francis H. Burr has made many on the Harvard team believe that “foul play” is a benefit in the game. Roosevelt believes that action needs to be taken to alter the game, not to lessen injuries, but to increase the chance of detecting and punishing foul play.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-12-30

President Roosevelt says that everyone who has seen the play in question during the Harvard-Yale football game, officiated by Paul Joseph Dashiell, believes the action taken by James J. Quill against Francis H. Burr was deliberate. Roosevelt believes that this brutality on behalf of Yale secured them victory, and that brutality like this must be eliminated from the game.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-12-21

President Roosevelt believes the changes suggested by J. William White are good, although he is not an expert in the matter. He encloses a telegram from the Chicago Tribune that shows that radical changes are needed to save football and asks if White can contact Ira N. Hollis, Walter Camp, and others to see if they will join in some sort of action.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-11-27

President Roosevelt sends Nicholas Murray Butler the text of a memorandum drawn up by his guests in which they promise to “carry out in letter and in spirit the rules of the game of foot ball relating to roughness, holding and foul play.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-10-11

In his review of John J. Miller’s The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football, Duane G. Jundt notes that Theodore Roosevelt does not figure prominently in its discussion of the problems facing college football in the early twentieth century until relatively late in the book. Jundt praises Miller for providing a well-written examination of the place football occupied in American culture, but he contends that Miller relies too much on speculative language in describing a football summit organized by Roosevelt, and he also asserts that Miller overstates Roosevelt’s role in saving football from those who would have banned it. 

Photographs of the football coaches of Yale and Harvard and the front cover illustration from The Big Scrum supplement the text.

 

 

Brief notice about how Theodore Roosevelt helped create the National Collegiate Athletic Association by calling a White House conference in 1905 to address issues in college football. The article focuses on an annual award given by the Association, the Theodore Roosevelt Award or “Teddy,” to a distinguished citizen who was a college athlete. The  notice provides a list of award winners since 1967 and lists those who made up the prize committee in 1977. 

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal

Creation Date

1977