Americans, from William James to Jimmy Carter, have been searching for a “moral equivalent to war”: some commitment to high purpose which benefits mankind yet evokes the same degree of discipline and self-sacrifice that war does. Because the vision of such a state is so attractive it has figured rhetorically in the expressions of many presidents, most notably Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Mr. Carter. But in all cases, the ideal seems rarely to have been incorporated in reality; only a mocking echo remains of the countless calls to make the world “safe for democracy,” to create a “Great Society,” or to make “any sacrifice” to defend “liberty” around the world. It hardly seems likely that the American people will find saving energy any more inspiring an ideal or that they will voluntarily sacrifice to the extent necessary to turn this latest ideal into a reality.
While all efforts to transfer the values of discipline, sacrifice, and courage from warlike to peaceful pursuits seem fruitless, there is one area in which this transfer has been successfully made. That area is sports, and in particular the sport of football as it is played in America from the high school to the professional level. But while most of the values and many of the strategies of war can be transferred directly to the game of football (at a tiny fraction of the cost in killed and wounded), most intellectuals would deny that the game serves any moral or even useful purpose. Football is variously discussed by intellectuals under the heading of amusement, recreation, business, or mayhem. Those identified with the game, such as Gerald Ford as a player, or Richard Nixon as a fan, are pitied for having played the game too long without a helmet or for being unable to distinguish right from wrong.
Criticism of America’s preoccupation with football runs the gamut from Senator Eugene McCarthy’s comment that a football coach is a man smart enough to be able to get his team motivated for the game, and dumb enough to think that it is important; to Henry Steele Commager’s reaction to a reporter’s question of the importance of the National Football League in American history (the subject of an NFL essay contest for boys and girls). “You can describe it in five words,” Commager responded. “It has no importance whatsoever.” Commager at least knew what the NFL was. Many of the other historians queried by reporters had never heard of the organization. Almost all intellectuals would, with Christopher Lasch, in a recent issue of the New York Review of Books (April 28, 1977), deplore football as one of the games which enlist “skill and intelligence, the utmost concentration of purpose, on behalf of utterly useless activities, …”
I must take issue with my friends and colleagues in the historical profession who can see little connection between football and American history. Any activity which engages not only the numbers of individuals who play and watch football, but the intensity of their commitment, deserves study. The game of football is a better barometer of American character than any other aspect of our culture because it reflects the true--and not the ideal--nature of our people. The brutality and insensitivity (along with the courage and intelligence) that characterize the game are integral parts of our national character. A game which recognizes and utilizes these characteristics is more consistent with our actual nature than one which appeals to our “better” nature.
In both war and football, however unjust and immoral it may seem, “there is no substitute for victory.” The link between the two activities is well stated in a quotation from General Douglas MacArthur inscribed upon the walls of the gymnasium at West Point: “Upon the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that, upon other fields, on other days, will bear the fruits of victory.” The intensity of feeling about winning in war and football is derived from the knowledge (of those in charge) that success and failure is often measured in inches, in the chance bounce of a ball, or in the temporary attitude of the contestants. In the military the fate of a battle and of a nation turn on the want of a nail for the shoe of the horse. In football too it is the single missed assignment, the single chance operation of fate, that spells the difference between winning and losing. No wonder coaches insist on drilling their players and organizing their resources to minimize the workings of chance and any other factor that can affect the outcome of the game. Spectators show an equivalent concern with excellence of performance. As Norman Podhoretz has noted, “excellence is relatively uncontroversial as a judgment of performance” in sports, and is applied by an audience which tends to be more sophisticated in determining excellence than the theatergoer or concert listener.
The “commercialization and functional rationalization of college football” developed at Yale University in the last quarter of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century, as two sociologists, David L. Wesby and Allen Sack, have observed in a recent issue of the journal of Higher Education. The hallmarks of this movement, initiated under the guidance of Walter Camp, Yale’s coach, were and continue to be, centralized authority and decision making in a single man, the coach; a high degree of specialization and task differentiation (line coaches, platoon systems, kicking specialists, etc.); systematic recruitment; collection and analysis of masses of information about one’s own and one’s opponent’s players; invention of new strategies; and comprehensive control over the players’ life activities (training tables, bed checks, etc.). All these aspects of the modern game of football developed at Yale rather than at Harvard, the other school which adapted to American conditions English-style rugby football (in which the ball is carried rather than kicked). Camp, a self-made businessman, possessed the same intense desire to win and achieve that characterized the newly rich industrialists, railroad presidents and bankers who moved into positions on Yale’s Board of Successor Trustees in the same period. Meanwhile the Fellows of the Harvard Corporation continued to be drawn almost entirely from the patrician class of Boston Brahmins, their philosophy expressed by President Charles W. Eliot who, in referring to his participation in a 1858 crew meet, said, “I had rather win than not, but it is mighty little matter whether we beat or are beaten--rowing is not my profession, neither is it my love--it is only recreation, fun and health.”
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