[laughter] thank you or i'll be performing all week at aei. let's talk about football and theodore roosevelt. i'd like to start a statistic. in 1905 come et people died playing football. in 1950, 18 people died playing football. here but the problem. confessions, head injuries, controversy about today. the challenge is to football faced a little more than a century ago. let's go back in time. theodore roosevelt determined his first football game. he was an 18-year-old freshman at harvard come university. he got on a trade with a bunch of friends and they went to new haven, connecticut with a watch the second never football game played between harvard and el. so in the history of college sports, there are a lot of great rivalry. michigan has ohio state, alabama has auburn. the heritage foundation at the brookings is duchenne. harvard has el. that's her number the ivy league isn't not let a conference. in 1876 to play their second never football game. the weather was lousy. there was cold. the ones were so strong that ships couldn't leave the harbor. roosevelt shivered on the sidelines that day. as he watched the game, the sport he saw was quite different from the one we know it today. there were no quarterbacks. there were no wide receivers. there were no forward passes. football was in its infancy. the captors from the two teams met to discuss the rules they would play by. what would count for his score, how many people would be on the field at the time. they're like schoolkids are precise, talking about whether sidelights would be, how to count blitzers, whether they played before that game. when it came to football, harvard was the teacher and he was the student. just a few years before that game in 1876, harvard idl and on gated golf because up until that point, the yield team had a practicing with a spherical ball, like a soccer ball. herbert said that the blog said this is what we're going to play with. it was it was shaped like a watermelon. they discuss fundamentals like he kicked his feet on the anger the middle. they just didn't know. before the game started, when captains met on the field, harvard's veterans agreed to a couple of proposals vl team put forward. the first would have a lasting impact on how football is played. that is 11 men per side. up until that point, 15 west custom. they had 11 men per side and of course that continues today. the second suggestion would not shape the future of the game, but it would affect the outcome that day. they decided that touchdowns would not count for points. but they do is give you an opportunity to score points. in other words coming to score touchdowns. you get no points, but you get extra points count. the kick after the bull. you have to sail over a rope on a pair of poles in the end zone. the game is underway in scarborough country at harvard scores a touchdown. the mass. no points at all. at halftime, the score was tied zero to zero. the second half stars. yale comes out in a drive into harvard territory. a lanky freshman named walter camp coming port name in the history of football on a player that day trying to make a lateral pass to a teammate. the ball bounced and it took one of those funny hops football can take an oliver thompson in the backfield, and other yale player decides to take a chance. he puts his foot to the ball from the cakes from 35 yards out as an improbable angle the ball sails over the rope. so yale scores. it is one to nothing ill. that is how the game ended one not saying he'll over harvard. harvard's loss frustrated roosevelt. in a letter to his mother the next day, he didn't say whether he enjoyed himself. the future president had no inkling of football's future popularity. he couldn't anticipate the critical role you're playing against future. but he did give voice to the frustration we all know, the agony of defeat. i'm sorry to say we were beaten he wrote to his mother principally because our opponents played very solid. in a moment, i'll talk more about teddy roosevelt, but i'd like to say a few things about my football matters to americans generally. i met my wife in a way to a football game in ann arbor who buy from my dorm across campus to michigan state. it's my first clear memory of her. we didn't start dating until basketballs and, but our bond was formed out of a mutual love. my romance with college football goes back further with my father teaching me to use paypal to the victors as a boy in our home we talked about the era more referring to a troubled presidency in the 1970s, we talk about a time when anthony carter worthing taubman and scored a touchdown of sainted memory. when i attended my football games at michigan, students along with my future brought in 100,000 of our closest friends come and gone on me that these games are not just pieces as mere entertainment. they are more than athletic competitions. they are cultural offense and keep significance. they can unite a diverse campus of english majors and engineering students. they can bring a state together. i'm am not an non-black-and-white, white-collar engineers and union lunchbucket guys. football brings them all together. conversations about the team are social icebreakers. they've got the rich rodriguez era is over. it can bring people together in the way few other things can. my marriage is not the only one that owes a debt to the game. for a college football team, whether the texas longhorns are they'll still chargers is almost tribal. in some cases such as mail, practically inherited. whatever its origin, it has the power to form my son loyalties and passions. when i hear the michigan fight song, i still get a chill down my spine. it's a close cousin to patriotism this feeling. in fact, a brisk autumn afternoon, my three main allegiance is our god, family and football. objectively speaking, football is an awesome sport. no other game has such a combination of force and grace with 99 yards for an end goal line stands. the crashing bodies of scrimmage in the cheerful choreography of well executed plays above the 11 men on the field. the infantry combat in the air war of a passing game. is a strong intellectual mention as well. baseball is a representation of cerebral part time, but no sport demands by meticulous planning for quick calculation and football. this is a pursuit not just for players and fans to cheer them on, but the coaches to second-guess every decision. little wonder football is becoming a popular sport in the united states. millions of kids play under friday night lights. millions more philips demands and watch on television. americans are more likely to know the name of their favorite quarterback demiurge note the name of their congressmen. it's a good case to be made that they have their priorities straight. so football occupies the central place in our lives, yet there was a moment when thought -- a time when its existence is in mortal peril because the collection of progressive era prohibitionist tried to be in the game. they objected to his parents in their favor solution is to smother a newborn sport. had the enemies of football gotten away, they might ever race one of america's great pastimes from our culture. it's a remarkable effort of theodore roosevelt, one of america's most extraordinary man to support them. as i mentioned, modern controversies over football silencer with it. "time" magazine put a deflated football on its cover with the headline, too dangerous for its own good. then there's that statistic i shared earlier. 18 people died playing football. the sad thing is this is not unusual. in fact, every year this kind of thing was going on. a dozen or more people would die. even more suffered grievous injuries. a lot of the casualties for kids. but this also affected big-time college football. the biggest gains were college football games. layers at the university of georgia, university of virginia, army, navy, union college died playing football. football isn't a contact sport. a collision court. this is especially children's early years. this is especially true back then. that will compress the game's action through a small area rather than it across the field. the game looked more like rugby than what we know today. it's almost a series of goal line stands at the 50-yard line. over and over again as masses of bodies clash to graveled without the benefit of protect his dear. the era of letterheads lay in the future. nobody wear helmets, facemask, shoulder pads. that was all coming into practice. hidden from the view of referees, players would wrestle for advantage by throwing punches and jabbing elbows. the most unsporting participants would try and catch eyes. bruises, sprains and other minor injuries were taken for granted. or serious impairment such as crack stones and knock heads are causes for greater concern. generally accepted as unfortunate byproducts of an entertaining and demanding pastime. the deaths were the worst. they weren't just freak accidents as much as the inevitable toll of an activity that occurs strongmen to crash into each other over and over the course of an afternoon. a life-threatening calamity in the hard thrusting me cresting nebo ballcarrier hits the head of a guy trying to tackle them. they slaughter her fighter group who crusaded against football. they wanted to not remove violence from the support, that ban it altogether. at the dawn of the progressive era, the prohibition of football became a social and political movement whose most outspoken proponents included the renowned harvard president charles city elliott, frontier scholar and university of wisconsin professor. muckraking journalist and even the aging confederate general john mosby. the new york evening post attacked the sport. so did the nation, an influential magazine of news and opinion about which word the colleges are becoming quote huge training grounds for you by the hitters around him as many spectators roared as word of the roman amphitheater. the media times bemoaned the football chat with mayhem and homicide. two weeks after those words come in the times ran an editorial. the headline was too curable evils. the first evil was so much he of blacks in the south. the second evil was football. the main figure in this movement was charles elliott, president of harvard. he was probably the single most important person in history the history of higher education united states. to think of harvard is a great american university. a lot of that goes back to charles elliott of what he did over the 40 years when he was president of the college. he went to harvard but at former wives to the heritage foundation you might say. he was president for 40 years longer than anybody before or since any radically rearrange the harvard educates young people. he introduced elective courses, start a professional schools, eliminated compulsory worship. he also hated team sports. what bothered him most as competition and how it debated players to conduct themselves in ways he considered unbecoming of gentlemen. if baseball and football were honorable pastimes, why did they require umpires and referees? again that needs to be watched is not fit for genuine sport. eliot thought that if baseball pitcher who throws a curveball engaged in the active deception, which was treacherous. football distress him even more. it is improper for a running back to attack part of an opponent at the opposing team's line. to protect the strongest part. that's what a gentleman would do. she liked him as nothing the game. most of all, he defied violence. time and again, he can and football as evil. one of its main adversaries as walter camp, the guy who played. camp is a pretty good football player. he made his mark as a coaching roles manager. he's the closest things for bar fights regarding father. the concept of possession down and the line of scrimmage information, the way the game is scored on virtually every aspect of the all left his mark in the 1880s and 1890s. he was also a great sales to support. he wrote books and newspaper articles to promote the game and make it popular. he and a journalist collaborated to invent the idea of the all-americans term that is familiar now, the ones that didn't exist before then. won his primary motivations was to encourage controversy of his job yellow american. he helped make football a great game, he also made it a great team to discuss, to debate. and the rivalry between elliot and kim, we see one of the ongoing conflicts in american politics on display. a fight between the progressives and their dreams of world without risk and the resistance to this agenda. eliot is a progressive identified a genuine problem with football, but their preferred solution was radical. they believe participants were not capable of making the adjustment. instead, elise woodward the players of the burden of choosing to play or not to play. they retake greater freedom to plan b in the sport. into the struggles since theodore roosevelt, one of the most remarkable man to walk across a stage of american politics. as a boy he had a terrible handicap. he was so sick that many of his relatives wondered if he survived to adulthood at a time not uncommon. his parents are so desperate to cures asthma, they tried everything they could think of, resorting into quiet cheers like having four kids smoke cigars and nothing worked. eventually, his folks concluded that katie would have to overcome a disability. there's a story in which the father summoned the boy. at the door he says, you have the mind, do you have body and without the help of the body, the mind cannot go as far as it should. upon hearing this, teddy drew back his head, slashed and several make my body. about 11 years old when that happened. soon after he began to exercise in the gym. later on he took acting lessons and hunted. he really did make his body. the asthma was stay for years, but eventually would slip away to the asthma often does. by the time he was an adult was largely gone. for roosevelt, the lesson is a commitment to physical fitness could take a scrawny boy and turn them into a vigorous young man. as roosevelt was coming to believe this company was also becoming a fan of football as for so many other americans. roosevelt remained a fantasy graduated from harvard, enter politics, branched out last and became an increasingly visible public figure. in 1895, shortly before he became president of the new york city police commission, he wrote a letter to walter camp. it's a great letter and i will read 300 it. i am very glad to have a chance of expressing the obligation i feel all americans are under to you for your champion of athletics. the man on the farm and in the workshop. as in other countries is apt to get enough physical work. we are attending steadily to produce sedentary classes, all is like too much game watching and from the theocratic spirit spirit has saved us. a ball games, i like football the best and i would rather see my boys play any other. no patience at the people who claim against it because it necessitates rough play if combined with a manly honorable limit is an advantage. is a good thing to the personal contact about which the new york evening post are also much. it reminds an occasional berserk. i was not able to play football in college and i never cared for rowing or baseball. i did all my work in boxing and wrestling. they're both good exercises, but not to football. i am utterly disgusted with the faculty about football. i do not give a snap for a good man who can't fight and hold his own in the world. a citizen has got to be decent of course. the second in importance he shall be efficient and it can be efficiently see is manly. nothing has impressed me more in meeting college graduates are in the 15 years have been out of college than the fact that on average the man who has counted most i than those who have found bodies. so roosevelt saw football is more than the diversion. he's not as a positive social good and he believes so much that in 1898 when he was recruiting the roughriders coming when out to san antonio and sang of a bunch of of cowboys and westerners to join the roughriders. if you read his memoirs, that's all true. he did want that, but he also wants college football players and he signed them up. he thought it would give them the experience of athletics in college and the staff it would take to win a war. the duke of wellington reportedly once said the battle of waterloo was won on the playing field of eden. roosevelt never said anything quite so picky about the battle of seeing one, but when he emerged in the spanish-american wars, the national hero, one who is talked about as possibly presidential timber knew how much she owed not just to the roughriders, but to the culture of mns and risk-taking that shaped them. like roosevelt, our society value sports, but we don't always think about why or why we shared. my kids to play football, baseball, hockey, soccer, lacrosse. as a family, where phillies arts oriented. this first need to think about a question parents ask at one time or another. why do we want our kids to play sports? why not let them spend my time in front of the tv are studying ancient greek literature. a lot of parents will reply with the obvious fact the sports are for fitness. they'll also discussed the intangible benefits of learning about teamwork, building there, things like that. it turns out there's really something to bloggers. empirical research shows us that kids who play sports stand school longer. they earn more money explaining why this is true is trickier, but it's something that has to do with a competitive in the four achievement. roosevelt was probably correct in believing sports influence the arab nations. americans have much but likely than europeans to play sports. are also more likely to attribute economic success to hard work is supposed to luck. it may be the sports are a manifestation or possibly even a source of american exceptionalism. in 1899, roosevelt with a kids version of his famous speech on the strenuous life, probably the most famous speech he ever gave. he was a kids version per se necklace. he described how a kid can turn american menace of america can be really proud. for roosevelt the great growth in the love of athletics sports have maximum effect and increased manliness. he singled out the rust spores to the development of endurance and physical fitness. he concluded with a direct reference to what may be regarded as the roughest sport of all. ensure, in life as in the football game, the principal hit the line hard, don't follow, but hit the line hard. i was his advice for kids. roosevelt became one of the hardest city chief executives ever to occupy the white house. his overall political legacy is mixed, but he was unfailingly colorful. as roosevelt presided in washington, football remained controversial. harvard elliot continued history save for prohibition. in 1805, roosevelt was persuaded to act. he invited walter camp appeal to the white house and also the coaches from harvard and princeton. these are the three biggest college football programs at the time. a lot has changed since then, but those are the three biggest at the time. invite them to the white house for a football summit. football is on trial said roosevelt because i believe in a game i want to do all i can to save it. encourage coaches to eliminate brutality and promised it would. whether they really meant to is another matter. walter camp didn't see anything wrong with the way football is played. he practically invented the game in over the years tweaked the rules and thought they'd gotten things just about right by 1905. he was very happy with the way football was. harvard's coach however was a young man named bill reid. he's a grizzled more seriously. as a harvard man cannot understand the threat to football differently. he did that elliot still wanted to eliminate the game and within weeks in the roosevelt came to their elliot was on the verge of success at harvard. this almost certainly would've encouraged harvard to drop the sport. this would've encouraged other colleges to do the same. they were looking to harvard for leadership. this would have endangered the future of football in america. they play with a group of reformed many colleagues to form an organization that today we know that the ncaa. the approved a set of sweeping rule changes to reduce football violence and committee meetings read-out maneuvers and receive critical behind the scenes support for roosevelt. that off-season, football experience an extreme make over. the yardage necessary for her son increased five yards. they created a new show zone in the line of scrimmage, limited the number of players to line up in the back field and made the personal file at heavy penalized attraction. one of my favorables is a band that tossing a ball carriers. no longer could you throw guys across the line. these were important revisions, but the one that would transform the sport with the advent of the forward pass. after that point, football is a game of running and kicking. there is no past. there were quarterbacks, but no wide receivers. for years, a number of football men had wanted to introduce the forward pass and among them as a coach named john heisman. kant had always blocked them. walter compay blocks and enables committee he dominated. this changed after roosevelt's intervention. bill reads committee decided to permit the forward pass in order to open up the game. it's a them a few years to get the rule right. coaches and teams did know how to take advantage of the latest revisions. they had to make football more aerodynamic, turn them from what amounts to shape of the football we know today. eventually however it all clicked. on november 1st, 1913, irreversibly into the modern era. the military academy had one of the best teams in the country. they were considered real national championship contenders that year. on a saturday afternoon, they were scheduled to play a game against a little-known catholic schools in the midwest. army wants big score read the headline in "the new york times" that morning. is going to be a blowout, just like when michigan played appalachia state a few years ago. you can probably guess the rest of the story. the little-known catholic school for the midwest with notre dame. rockingest teammates launch the tour airport. during again and again. they won 35 to 14. the most sensational book all gushed in your times the next day. the army players are hopelessly confused and chagrined before notre dame and their style the attack of the indiana collegians. a cadet named dwight eisenhower watched from the sidelines yet he played for the army team, began an injury that day and couldn't perform. .. nobody speaks of prohibiting football anymore. when many influential people disked theodore roosevelt stepped in and played a critical role in the development and pries sir vegas -- preservation of the game. we don't want politicians throwing themselves into our game. the only thing to make it worse is congressional oversight, right? but the example of roosevelt does show that a skillful leader can use a light touch to solve a vexing problem, and with the nfl season threatened by lockout and maybe cancellation this year, who doesn't wish that football had a teddy roosevelt today? decades after roosevelt's involvement in football, bill reid, the harvard coach, hailed his row. except for this chain of event there might be no such thing as american football as we know it. you asked me whether president theodore relevant helped save the game. i can tell you he did. he took on many roles, war hero, trust buster, cam -- canal builder, big stick wielding diploma, but he deserves another title as well. we may have been football's most indispensable fan. thank you. >> i know john will take questions. it's interesting to hear roosevelt with a light touch. surprisingly. i also thought immediately in the beginning of your detroit lions discussion they epitomize the definition of insanity, keep doing the same thing and expect a different result, but redskins are getting close to you. if you have in the questions for john, raise your hand, and the microphone will come to you and if you could state your affiliation and name, it would be appreciated. questions. >> thank you very much. i imbill glack, you mentioned the ncaa was born out of this meeting? >> yes. >> did the other sports come along afterwards? >> so, football was governed by a rules committee. the walter camp helped organize and dominated throughout the 1880s and 1890s, and there was a rules committee that had representatives from the major schools and they would -- every winter that i would meet and tweak the rules and develop the sport basically. well, in 1905, bill reid decided that with some other figures and higher education, they decided, you know, this rule's committee is not going to change anything about football. they're not going to do what needs to be done so they created a separate organization and tried to sign up a number of colleges to join. so briefly there were two organizations competing for members, and so on. and reid was -- got harvard to join, and harvard joining with the help of roosevelt, too, was critical to the -- it became the dominant organization. a few years later it renamed itself the ncaa, and over time it gathered other collegiate sport us but started as a football rules committee. >> i am lipnet. you mentioned you thought that today no one really questions or attacks football in the way they did in the early 20th century. i was wondering if you mighting there that was actually untrue with the modern feminist movement, and their attacks on sports, that encouraged this kind of masculinity that overpowers over rights of women. >> that's a good point. i don't mean to suggest that football is uncriticized today. it's completely different than a century ago. there are modern controversies. congress has haven't hearings on concussions in football. there's a lot of concern about the long-term health effect that football can have on people. the nfl did a study where they found that nfl veterans, i think, are four or five times more likely to suffer from dementia than a member of the general public, and you can national why that may be true. there a lot of ongoing research in this area, debates about equipment and tweaking the rules. the nfl just changed its kickoff rule. they're going to kickoff from the 30-yard line rather than -- they moved it five yards. what is going to happen, there will be more touchbacks and fewer kick returns, and kick returns are famously dangerous plays. so they're doing things like that. there are controversies about what was the organization that criticized the super bowl, for domestic violence increases on super bowl sunday. i think that was shown to be not true, or at least unproven, but football does come under attack, and there is a -- there are people who don't care for it, and -- but they're not going to scoop football the way these progressive era prohibitionists tried to do, and may have succeeded in doing if it hadn't been for these innovations. >> another question? any final commentses? other than, i'll sell the book for you. we do have copies of the book available for you in the lobby. i know john would be grad -- glad to sign them and talk to you. thank you are for your attention. we hope to see you again soon. >> book tv is on facebook and twitter. lock and follow us for book industry news, behind the scenes looks at author events and to enter act with authors during live television programming. here are a few of booktv z posts. pete seger died at the age of 94. on tuesday we posted a link to a 2001 program on the late folk singer. booktv tweeted a "new york times" article about the plan to push a book by former president jimmy carter on women's rights, and on facebook, we posted a portion of our recent interview with georgetown university law center's paul butler. >> if you listen to hip-hop, you are reminded there are two and a half million people locked up. you can watch all these reality shows about real housewives and 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