American Football used to be even more, concussive.

Not content with merely reforming the railroads or meatpacking, Theodore Roosevelt engrossed himself in just about every issue he could. His critics contended that, eschewing alcohol, the president was drunk on power. “That fellow at the other end of the Avenue, said House Speaker Cannon in a moment of especial exasperation, wants everything, from the birth of Christ to the death of the devil. A topic of the day that was increasingly on Roosevelt’s radar was Football. His son, TR Jr., has sustained a grievous injury playing the sport in Groton back in 1901: “Blessed Ted, I was very sorry to learn that you had broken your collarbone; but I am glad you played right through the game, and that you seem to have minded it so little. With that being said, TR was an enthusiastic fan of Football. “I believe in rough games and in rough, manly sports. I do not feel any particular sympathy for the person who gets battered about a good deal so long as it is not fatal.” One [Charles William Eliot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_William_Eliot), the President of Harvard since 1869, was decidedly harsher on the sport. He decried Football as “more brutalizing than prizefighting, cockfighting or bullfighting,” and was strongly in favor of dropping it from his school after the 1905 season. Roosevelt, having previously summoned various football coaches in October of 1905 to reform the sport, was alarmed at Eliot’s rhetoric. I am perfectly willing to say I think Harvard will be doing the baby act if she takes any such foolish course as President Eliot advises! TR pushed for significant reform whilst jeering at such football abolitionists. I want to take up the football situation and try to get the game played on a thoroughly clean basis. Roosevelt didnt intend to eliminate the occasional broken nose or fractured arm; without a certain element of physical risk the game would lose its zest and character-building qualities. But the head and neck injuries that were literally killing dozens of players every year were hardly improving the physical or moral health of the nation. The end result of all of this were a slew of significant changes brought about during the [1906 Season](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1906_college_football_season). The White House session produced a resolution affirming the participants honorable obligation to eliminate foul play, and it set in motion changes in the nature and enforcement of football rules. Believe me I appreciate your action, Roosevelt cabled to Walter Camp, the Yale coach who was working on becoming a legend in the sport. I can not tell you how pleased I am at the way you have taken hold. The “New rules to save football” did just that, the Harvard Board of Overseers judged the changes to be sufficient, and kept the sport on the board. Source: T.R., The Last Romantic, pages 431, 552-554

Those 1906 rules began the modernization of the game into what we know it as today: - 10 yards instead of 5 for the first down - neutral zone between the offensive and defensive lines - full legalization of forward pass (but an incomplete was a 15 yard penalty!) - rules on where lineman could block - changes in scoring - TD 5, FG 4 These rules were designed to open up the field a little bit, and did just that. Only with the elimination of penalties for forward passes and the invention of the hash mark to move plays away from the sidelines, did the game begin to become recognizable to a football fan from today.

I wish we could add pictures, but look up the football wedge formation.

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