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Teddy Roosevelt May Just Have Saved Modern (American) Football · Ridiculous History

• 0:23
  Speaker 1: The following episode is going to be of uh. You know,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: so it's going to be about something ridiculous, but it's
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: also going to be a peek into US culture for
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of our fellow ridiculous historians listening outside of
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the United States. We are today talking about football, American football,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: American football, and there's going to necessarily be some roughness
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: in this episode. Necessary roughness. No, what was necessary rough
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: It was just a raunchy like nineties American football comedy.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: I believe who are you? Oh? I'm Noel uh and
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: I am an aficionado of raunchy nineties football based comedies. Yes, yes, yes,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: that's how we met. I did my undergrad in that.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Actually all facts. I am ben and this is ridiculous history.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: But it would not be ridiculous history without our super producer,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Casey Pegrop. I just want to acknowledge that American football
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: also a great band. YEP kind of h what is
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: what would you call him? It's a little emo, kind
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: of emo, but way more on the tolerable side as
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: far as I'm concerned. No, they're good. They're kind of jangly,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: they don't like, they don't wind scream, and it's kind
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: of a little more low key, and the guitars are
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: kind of jangly and our peggio e kind of I
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: dig it. And they have reunited after many years dormant.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: They have a third album coming out. I will say
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: this though, for some reason, the name American Football, it's
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: just very bland sounding. It sounds like they'd be a
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: very bland kind of vanilla band. And they mean it's
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: approachable emo. That's what I would call it. Casey on
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: the case. Well, today's story actually has a pretty cool
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Atlanta connection, which is where we find ourselves right now.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Back in eight seven, there was a fullback um at
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: the University of Georgia named Richard von Gammon, and he
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: was playing um with his team against the Virginia team,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: which is a college team. And in those days, it
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: was quite common for players to be brutally injured, and
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: this was no exception. He was rushed and dogpiled on
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: and was at the bottom of this heap of humanity
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: and he started he received this this hit and then
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: began to vomit blood and he they realized that he
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: was dying on this football field. They eventually realized what happened.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: The team doctor pop the guy with a syringeful of morphine.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: And then notice the blood was coming from Richard von
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Gammon's head. Von Gammon, you see, had suffered a skull
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: fracture and a concussion. He was placed in a horse
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: drawn carriage headed for Grady Hospital and he died in
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: the hospital overnight. Yeah, and that scene that we're describing,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: a medic basically coming out and stabbing a football player
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: with a syringeful of morphine sounds more like something akin
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: to what you see on a Vietnam battlefield or you
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: know what I mean. This is this is a college
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: sport for fun, right right, he was not wearing headgear. Today,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: football is still hazardous. According to CDC estimates here in
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: the US, one point six to three point eight million
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: sports and recreation related concussions occur each year in the US.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Of all contact sports, athletes sustained concussion each year, brain
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: injuries caused more deaths than any other sport injury, and
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: in American football, brain injuries count forget this, sixty five
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: to nine five of all fatalities. And this is with
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: all the equipment that people have today. Back in these
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: days that we're talking about, they didn't have helmets. They
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: barely had any padding. Um. A little later, there's a
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: movie called leather Heads that started a guy played Jim
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: in the Office and George Clooney, where you can see
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the relatively minor changes that were made in football by
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: nine and there were some pretty small helmets, a little
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: bit more shoulder padding. But in these days, when this event,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: this death of this young man, really polarized the nation
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: against the sport, very little protective measures were put in
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: place for these, uh, these young men that were out there.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: I am delighted because we knew a lot about each other.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: This is news to me, folks. I am delighted. Noel,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: by your by your fascination with these these like turn
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: of the twentie century football films, you know, nineties to
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: early two thousand's, is at your wheelhouse? Did my dissertation
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: on varsity blues? You know, looking back, it all makes
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: sense in retrospect, and that's something that we see today.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: You know, if you've ever watched a US football game,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: you can see the tremendous amount of damage these folks
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: are dealing out to one another. And then you can
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: look back at pictures of footballers of yesteryear and see
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: that they were doing the same thing with much less protection.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: This has been an ongoing debate in this country. Was
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: football a proper pastime, people are asking in the wake
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: of Von Gammon's death, or was it as violent and
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: deadly as quote the gladiatorial combat of ancient Rome Ivy League.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: University presidents argued about this, along with reformist muckraking journalists
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: and politicians. As we learn through a great Smithsonian article
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: called score one for Roosevelt, President Theodore Roosevelt himself intervened
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: because you see, in addition to being president, he was
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: a huge football fan and had been from the start.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: And he even schooled his young son who comes into
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: play in this um and saying that the very thing
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: that makes us love football is the very thing that
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: makes it so utterly brutal and dangerous. At the time,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: they I'm not a football okay, man. Now I'm showing
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: him to be my hand a little bit. I am
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: not an expert on the sport itself, just more its
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: portrayal in cinema. But they didn't even have the forward
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: pass you had. It was all about the rush. It
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: was all about having an individual holding the ball rushing
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: it physically not throw throwing the ball and having it intercepted,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: you had to actually physically hold it, and that would
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: open you up to much more um potential to be
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: hit or dog piled on. And that is how the
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: game was played in those days. And this put Roosevelt
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: in an interesting position because he loved the game ever
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: since he was a kid. He publicly presented himself as
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: a fan. But there was a little bit of what
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: pr folks would call optics to play here, because this
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: bravado in his public presentation of himself was meant to
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: distract from his severe asthma, his terrible eyes, sight, and
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: the other physical challenges he had growing up as a
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: sickly child. He was too slender and frail to play
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: varsity football himself, but that did not diminish his love
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: for the sport. Roosevelt called American football the greatest exercise
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: of fine moral qualities such as resolution, courage, endurance, and
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: capacity to hold one zone and stand up under punishment.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: He also wrote that in life, as in a football game,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: the principle should be don't foul and don't but hit
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: the line hard. Furthermore, he said, I will disinherit ady
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: son who does not play college sports. Yeah, and this
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: comes into play in just a little bit. But he
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: also was quoted as saying in a public address in
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: nineteen o three that he didn't feel any sympathy for
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: people who got battered, even a great deal, as long
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: as it was not fatal um. And the thing is,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: these injuries that were happening, they didn't always result in deaths,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: but they were gruesome and they had long lasting UH ramifications,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: even if it wasn't clear right away. It was this
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: death in clear view of everyone basically that really changed
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: the conversation. But we are talking about punctured lungs from
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: ribs that are broken, we are talking about head injuries.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: We are talking about rented spines, broken legs, all kinds
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: of stuff because of the lack of safeguards in this sport, right.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: And we also have to consider that at this point
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: in time, a lot of people were not aware of
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: the long term damage posed by concussions, you know what
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: I mean. They wouldn't notice something wrong necessarily until several
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: years had passed. Historians will tell us that by the
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: time Roosevelt entered the White House as president in nineteen
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: o one, the gridiron had turned into a killing field
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: because of these harsh rules. One Princeton player explained to
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: the journalist Henry Beach need him that we're coached to
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: pick out the most dangerous man on the opposing side
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: and put him out in the first five minutes of
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: the game. In nineteen o five, the Chicago Tribune reported
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: that nineteen people died playing college, high school, and sand
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: lot or amateur football that year, and Roosevelt was getting unsettled.
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  Speaker 1: He didn't like this. He's pres resident, so the press
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: is always going to be, you know, at least partially adversarial, right,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: And being a shrewd politician, he saw trouble on the horizon,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: and he didn't like these journalists talking bad, talking smack
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: about football. He was determined to save football somehow. He
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: also knew on the on the side of the Ivory
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Towers that several officials at Harvard and other universities were
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: determined to abolish the game altogether, at least bannit from
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: their campuses. Roosevelt referred to this as the Baby Act
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: in that period that Ben you were just describing. In
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen o five football season, the Chicago Tribune
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: coined a pretty excellent expression for it. They called it
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: the death Harvest. Yeah. Yeah, So we see Roosevelt at
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: a crossroads, right, the colleges want to end the game,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: the journalists are describing the horrors of physical injury in
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: lurid detail. Maybe now we reintroduce his son, Theodore Roosevelt Jr.
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  Speaker 1: It was in that year of the Death Harvest that
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Ted Roosevelt, as Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Was known, Was playing
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: for his alma mater of Harvard against Yale, and that
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: was when he got an illegal hit that left him
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: with a broken nose and a pretty bloodied face, and
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: some conjecture that they this was done to him on
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: purpose because no one else had been seriously injured in
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: in that game and in that But here's the thing.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: In that same afternoon, another football player by the name
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: of Harold Moore, who played for Union College, he died
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: of a cerebral hemorrhage when he was kicked in the
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: head while attempting to tackle an n y U player. Um.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: And this was all during that year, and it was
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: kind of an eye open thing for President Roosevelt because
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: he wasn't he certainly didn't want to give his son
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: special treatment. But I think he it opened his eyes
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: to how there needed to be some kind of change
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: that wouldn't rob the sport of what made it good,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: but also would have some protections for these young men
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  Speaker 1: who were in Ivy League schools and had bright careers
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: ahead of them outside of the sport. You know, they
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: didn't want to I didn't want them to have like
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: brain injuries and be so seriously injured that they couldn't
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: pursue their dreams. I mean, I think, what do you
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: think made it click for him Ben? Because he certainly
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: didn't seem someone that would pamper his son. He wanted
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: him to, you know, be in this rough environment and
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: kind of learn and you know, stand on his own
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: two feet. There are multiple factors. We know that he
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: was very very close to his children, but he also
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: expected a lot out of them. We know that he
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: wrote to his son and said that the very things
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: that make it a good game make it a rough game,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: referring to football and even and he seemed a little divided.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: He definitely wanted his children to play, but he was
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: also as any father would be, concerned. And then you know,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: you have the media angle and then you have the
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: inarguable fact that children are dying. They're dying preventable deaths,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: and they're dying as a result of participating in this sport.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: On October nine, Roosevelt convenes a football summit at the
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: White House. A lot of people are there, athletic directors,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: ivy league coaches, Secretary of State at LEI, who root
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: and Roosevelt says football is on trial because I believe
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: in the game. I want to do all I can
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: to save it. And so I have called you all
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: down here to see whether you won't all agree to
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: abide by both the letter and spirit of the rules,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: for that will help. And Ben, if I'm not mistaken,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: this summit, or this intercollegiate collective a conference, I guess
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: would ultimately become what is now today known as the
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: n C Double A. Yeah, the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: This happens. So it makes this speech on nineteen o five,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: same years the death Harvest. The next year, March nineteen
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: o six, sixty two institutions become members of the n
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: C Double A. And this included a codified set of
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: rules of engagement, much like any kind of international agreement
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: between nations on what constitutes fair war tactics. I mean,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: this was very much along those lines. They changed some
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: of the rules. Remember earlier was talking about how they
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: didn't allow the forward pass. You had to run with
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: the ball. Now they allowed the forward pass, which would
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: cut down on the opportunities for um runners to be tackled.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: And not to mention, they changed some more specific things.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Then you might have a better grasps with this than me,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: but I'm gonna do my best to explain it. They
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: changed they had a neutral zone between offense and defense,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: and they actually so a neutral zone would be a
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: zone where you are less likely to get hit? Is
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: that right? So in American football, and I had to
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: look this up. In American football, the neutral zone is
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: the length of the football from one tip to the
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: other when it's spotted placed on a certain spot on
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: the field prior to the snap of the ball during
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: a scrimmaged down. Okay, so there's that again. I feel
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: like you just got wish. I got wish. We got
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: wish big time. So legalize the forward past that one.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: I understand neutral zone And then they also um doubled
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: the This is from a history dot Com article about
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: how Teddy Roosevelt say football. They doubled the first down
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: distance to ten yards, so I guess you didn't have
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: to rush quite as far. Oh, you know what, in
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: the amount of time. That makes sense. Also, I was
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: getting two in the weeds with that neutral zone definition.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Let's just think of it as an area where no
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: members of either team can go other than the person
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: holding the ball. That makes sense. It makes a little
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: more sense. We're unwooshing ourselves. And this didn't completely change
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: the nature of the game, which was by design. They
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: wanted to keep it rough. They didn't want to like
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a little bit of a pejorative very
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: much as but Roosevelt said. They didn't want to make
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: the game be played quote onto lady like a basis.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: So it certainly wasn't because yeah, it certainly wasn't becoming
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: touch football or flag football or something. But uh, fatalities
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: declined to eleven per year instead of the nine team
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: that we saw in that death harvest here, which to
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: me isn't quite good enough. Still progress, I guess you
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: could say that Harvard's football coach at the time, William Reid,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: said that Roosevelt had helped save the game. A ban
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: against the sport by colleges and universities would have prevented
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: most likely would have prevented the development of professional football.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: And although this this ends the main branch of our tail,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: and it is true that if you are a football fan,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: you should ardently thank President Theodore Roosevelt. I have to
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: say there is one thing about football that always trips
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: me out. More and more recently, it's the Super Bowl
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: halftime show. Man, Yeah, which is its own bag of badgers.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: It's own ball of wax or weird string or I
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: should say ball of lip sync abbreviated performances. Totally. We
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: have the Super Bowl in Atlanta this last game, and uh,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: people were talking more about the halftime show than they
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: were about the game. Apparently it was a bit of
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: a snooze fest. But it was funny when there were
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: things that happened as part of the game the telecast.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: I could go outside and hear like the Blue Angel
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Jets flying overhead. That was funny to be able to
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: experience those things in real time. Yeah, you know, I
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: I know that there are amazing Super Bowl halftime performances,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: and I know that there are people who just tuned
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: in to watch that. But I gotta say I the
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: last one didn't really didn't really move me, you know
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: what I mean? Who was that Maroon five number in five,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Adam Levine with his Adam Levine and his TACKI tattoos.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: I heard the bigger controversy was him showing a nipple
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: and not getting nipples and not getting in trouble. Which
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: multiple nipples, yeah, for just the one. Yeah, it's definitely
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: a bizarre double standard. So let us know what you
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: think of American football. I'd especially love to hear what
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: you think if you are not from this country, because
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: here in the US football is tremendously popular. It's a
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: billion dollar industry, and for outsiders looking in the rules
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: of football can seem as inscrutable as the rules of cricket.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Do you know the rules of cricket? Absolutely not? Don't
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: bad neither do I I know the bats called the
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: wicket right now? No? Sorry and no no, it's the
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: uh the I I don't know the name of the
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: bat in cricket, but the wicket is one of the
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: two sets of three stumps at either end of the pitch, know,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: like a wicket in croquet. So what's the sticky wicket? Uh,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: sticky wicket? If I'm just speculating, here is a wicket
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: where it's tough to knock down the horizontal parts the bails.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: I give up, don't give alright, I won't give up.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: I'll send you. I'm gonna send you a great sketch
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: from Mitchell and Webb, my friends about cricket. I would
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: really love that ban because I love Michell and Webb,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: and I apparently am completely ignorant on on the rules
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: of cricket and American football because you know what, Ben,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: they don't really talk about the rules in the movies,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: the football movies. They just assume that you already know.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: And it's mainly about the Oscar moments speeches right to me,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: it's about the Oscar moment. It's about it's about like,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Rudy is a good one. I like Rudy the underdog story.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: I really like for you. I know, I know, I
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: usually go for the deeper cuts, but um, it's it's
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: an important one. Remember the Titans, do you remember them?
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Remember those Titans? I don't remember those Titans. I know
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: the name of the film, but I haven't watched it.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: It's a very, very inspiring tale of underdoggedness. I'm more
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: into weird presidential history and trivia, and I think this
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: episode qualifies for that. I think this episode is the
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: beautiful ven diagram betwixt those two disciplines them right right,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: I agree with you, knowl and this ends our story today. Yeah,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: let us know if American football is popular outside of
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: the US, it's probably never gonna be as popular as
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: soccer or you know what the rest of the world
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: calls football. Furthermore, let us know what you think of
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: the concussion controversy. A few years back, we got together
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: at work and did what I think is is a
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: pretty stand up video, a documentary on concussions. Do you
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: remember that, Casey, I do remember that we went to
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: or I didn't go, but somebody went to like a
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: conference or something about it, right, Yeah, Football Hall of
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Fame or something like that. Maybe we can post that
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians. It's it's an excellent
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: way to learn a little bit more about the current
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: science combating concussions today. While you are on the internet,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: feel free to check us out on Twitter. You can
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: also find us on Instagram. And you can check out
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: some more of knowles I'm certain deep dive research into
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: nineties era football films on his own Instagram. Yep, you
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: can that is at Embryonic Insider, where you know, you know,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: I'll post pictures and video clips of me at various
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: nineties pop culture conferences and symposiums, symposiums and talks, and
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: you know, Ted talks all the different guy talks. And
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: you can find me at Ben Bolan, where I am
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: your faithful correspondent providing a visual travelogue of the various
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: strange countries that I that I get kicked into and
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: kicked out of. North Korea. I'm looking at you. Here's
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: looking at you, North Korea. I like that, Ben, I
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: really gotta go. Um. Thanks to super producer Casey Pagraham,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: as always Alex Williams who composed our theme, research associated
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Gabe Loesier, and Ben you, Thanks Noll and Hey, and
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: thank you too. Thanks to Theodore Roosevelt for introducing us
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: to the term rough riders, for being president, for making
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: football a little less lethal and allowing the game to
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: continue for its millions of fans across the country and
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: the world. And thanks for listening. I have one last question.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: I'm squeezing one last question for everybody. What's the weirdest
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: sport you know about? Yeah, that's not folks. Talk to
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: you soon.