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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nTheodore Roosevelt (1858 \u2013 1919), twenty-sixth president of the United States of America. Photo by Stock Montage\/Stock Montage\/Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n The US is the only country on earth where the word \u201cfootball\u201d refers to a different sport from the rest of the world. Where did American football come from, and why is it that the sport is virtually only played in the US? To answer that, Dave Zirin<\/a> takes us on a brief journey through history to the turn of the 20th century, when imperialists like President Theodore Roosevelt took up the cause of promoting football as a way to cultivate a \u201cmasterful nation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino Join thousands of others who rely on our journalism to navigate complex issues, uncover hidden truths, and challenge the status quo with our free newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox twice a week<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now some choice words. Okay. Look, the NFL season is underway and a big question always haunts me on Sunday afternoon when I sprint like Usain Bolt to my favorite part of my couch: Why is football only really popular in the United States? In the rest of the world, football is, of course, soccer, and our football is, at most, an afterthought \u2013 And please, don\u2019t argue with me by bringing up NFL games in London. I am convinced those stands are packed with study abroad students on their way to Amsterdam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So why is this the case? Why do other countries reject our football as a point of pride, especially when our other cultural products like music and movies or other sports like basketball tend to spread around the globe like wildfire? Now, I\u2019ve heard some explain this by saying, well, the USA is a violent country, so people love a violent game, and that\u2019s true. But while that sounds smart, as Jules Winfield said in Pulp Fiction, \u201cThat shit ain\u2019t the truth.\u201d There\u2019s violence across the world and yet that doesn\u2019t make people football fans. So what is it about this country that makes football our addiction of choice? Why are TV ratings, even in our fractured culture, always on the rise when it comes to football?<\/p>\n\n\n\n To understand why, you have to look at everyone\u2019s favorite subject in high school: history. So let\u2019s take a trip in the wayback machine and explain how football got baked into the cake of this country\u2019s psyche.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Football began to flourish here at the turn of the 20th century, not as a fun diversion for kids, but to aid a US foreign policy obsessed with dreams of a global empire. Those dreams existed side-by-side with the fear that the children of the wealthy, the ones supposed to lead this conquest, were too soft, too weak, too \u201cunmanly\u201d for the task of running the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, this is hard for us to envision today because football draws most of its players from poor and working-class backgrounds, and the majority of NFL players are Black. But football started as a sport for privileged white elites on Ivy League campuses as a way to toughen up this new generation to lead what was called the American Century. That\u2019s why this new game of football was embraced, not only as a sport, but as a training ground for war openly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not surprisingly, the ultimate imperial war hawk, President Theodore Roosevelt, was one of the earliest and most prominent promoters of the sport. In an 1893 piece called \u201cThe Value of Athletic Training,\u201d Roosevelt defended football, writing, \u201cAll of the masterful nations in history encouraged rugged sports.\u201d He believed that athletic training in football could build a new Anglo-Saxon super-race ready to stand to stride the world. So football was born intertwined alongside ideas about white nationalism and imperial expansion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These early games were so violent that dozens of young men died on the field of play. When newspapers started to report the shocking number of casualties and the grim reality that football had essentially become a death harvest, many prominent thinkers called for its elimination and even its abolition. The NCAA was actually formed initially to find a way to lower the body counts in the face of a torrent of criticism. In other words, my little rant here is not just hindsight, but people back then recoiled not just from the violence, but the ethos of the sport as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Charles Eliot, the president of Harvard, pushed for an abolition of football altogether, writing in 1915 that it was \u201cA fight whose strategy and ethics are those of war where the weaker man is considered the legitimate prey of the stronger, all of which sets up the wrong kind of hero.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Teddy Roosevelt and other defenders of the sport were not having any of this Ivy League, powderpuff moralism. The one-time rough rider blasted Eliot and Harvard for wanting to \u201cemasculate football.\u201d Roosevelt\u2019s belief that football was a necessary antidote to male effeminacy was so intense that he once wrote that he would disinherit his own sons if they didn\u2019t play, and would \u201crather see one of them die than have them grow up as weaklings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So why is football so baked into the cake of the United States? Here\u2019s the answer: its imperial ambitions and a ruling class fear of losing a masculine edge in a society where rich kids tend to grow up as soft as a duck feather pillow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, fast-forward to 2023, and it\u2019s amazing how little has changed. The GOP in particular has become the party of white male panic. Their platform is fear-based, fear of decline-ism, fear of the other, and fear that we won\u2019t be able to keep what has already been conquered. This is not to say that only right-wingers are football fans; far from it. But only in a country such as this one, only in the United States of anxiety, do people clutch this sport so firmly. And maybe we clutch it because we feel it all just slipping away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even more ways to give<\/a>\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>DAVE ZIRIN<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Dave Zirin is the sports editor of the Nation Magazine. He is the author of 11 books on the politics of sports, including most recently, The Kaepernick Effect Taking A Knee, Saving the World. He\u2019s appeared on ESPN, NBC News, CNN, Democracy Now, and numerous other outlets. Follow him at @EdgeofSports<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The origins of American football\u2019s popularity go back to the turn of the 20th century, when the elite of an expansionist USA searched for a sport that would instill rugged manliness in their sons. BY DAVE ZIRIN OCTOBER 5, 2023 (therealnews.com) Theodore Roosevelt (1858 \u2013 1919), twenty-sixth president of the United States… Continue reading ![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/omxoerryjaE\/maxresdefault.jpg\")
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Post-Production: Taylor Hebden
Audio Post-Production: David Hebden
Opening Sequence: Cameron Granadino
Music by: Eze Jackson & Carlos Guillen<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nTRANSCRIPT<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
EDGE OF SPORTS WITH DAVE ZIRIN<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nMICHAEL RAY RICHARDSON OPENS UP ON HOW THE DRUG WAR KILLED HIS NBA CAREER<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nDESANTIS IS USING SPORTS SCHOLARSHIPS TO \u2018PURGE\u2019 A FLORIDA COLLEGE<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
More stories from the intersection of sports and politics\u2026<\/a><\/h6>\n\n\n\n