Theodore Roosevelt's Gridiron Gamble
America has liked professional sports like football and baseball for many many years but little do people know that Roosevelt regulated one of the most popular sports of today. Little do people know one of the most largely known sports exist because of a little-known president. Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th president from 1901-1909, who loved football, settled the Russo-Japanese war, and was Harvard educated. Theodore Roosevelt was vastly in love with football but threatened to outlaw the sport if it did not reform itself. Roosevelt's decision was to reduce the number of tragic deaths and horrible injuries associated with the violence of football. After the summit, Roosevelt held the head coaches of colleges founded the NCAA. Roosevelt decision also legalized the forward pass, abolished the dangerous mass formations, created a neutral zone between offense and…show more content… Section 3 clause 5 states that the president has to have “Caring for the faithful execution of the law” which allows the president to execute the Sherman Antitrust act. The Sherman Antitrust act gives him the power to break up trust. College sports teams are trusts’. Roosevelt's threat could have broken up college football. Roosevelt called this regulation of trust “Trust Busting”. Theodore Roosevelt jr was injured many times in football, he had injured his teeth, ankle, and collarbone.People targeted Theodore Roosevelt jr because he was the president's son. After he broke his nose in one game in 1905 his father had to take action. Roosevelt sr was also at the time receiving mass criticism from the media about how violent the game was. Before Roosevelt threatened to ban football a president had never before tried to interfere with sports in their presidencies. The next time a president would interfere was when Jimmy Carter decided to keep America's athletes home from the 1980 Summer Olympics in
