Wednesday, September 14, 2016

American Football, Radio Lab

LISTEN
to American Football, a podcast from RadioLab. Link here.


(flickr: Dewayne Neely/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Along with conflicted parents and players and coaches who aren’t sure if the game will survive, we take a deep dive into the surprising history of how the game came to be. At the end of the 19th century, football is a nascent and nasty sport. The sons of the most powerful men in the country are literally knocking themselves out to win these gladiatorial battles. But then the Carlisle Indian School, formed in 1879 to assimilate the children and grandchildren of the Native American men who fought the final Plains Wars, fields the most American team of all. The kids at Carlisle took the field to face off against a new world that was destroying theirs, and along the way, they changed the fundamentals of football forever. 

Carlisle Indian School's 1903 football team (U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center)

More photos to see. Link here
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