Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Football (American)
The author was a high school football player when a junior coach from West Point tried to recruit him. Years later the player discovered who the now-famous coach was, and learned a valuable lesson.
Vi Read more >>
Fifty years ago, Vince Lombardi took over the Green Bay Packers and revolutionized the game of football
At the height of Operation Desert Storm in February 1991, former All-American football star Ron Kramer was watching the news on television. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, chief of U.S. Read more >>
That’s what everyone agreed. Jim Thorpe was at the 1912 Olympics, but legend had to make him even more—and draconian rules had to take it all away
Born in 1888 to an Indian father and French mother, Thorpe is best known for winning the pentathlon and the decathlon at the 1912 Olympics and for his exploits in football and baseball. WikimediaAmericans have always demanded that their heroes be more than human. George Washington had to have thrown the dollar across the Potomac, Davy Crockett had to have wrestled a grizzly, Babe Ruth had to have come through for a dying boy with a promised home run. We all know that these stories are Sunday truths, but somehow the men wouldn’t be the same without them.
Read more >>
SMU isn’t playing this season; men on the team were accepting money from alumni. That’s bad, of course; but today’s game grew out of even greater scandal.
During October of 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt, who had recently intervened in a national coal strike and the Russo-Japanese War, turned his formidable attention to another kind of struggle. Read more >>
A Vivid Look at Early Football
Each fall for more than a century now, the thoughts of countless young men have turned to the controlled mayhem called football. Read more >>
Like most authentic folk creations, baseball is deeply and obscurely rooted in the past and its moment of origin is cloaked in legend. There are innumerable threads that go back to the beginning of things, but nobody can follow them all the way. Read more >>