The Early 1900s. But the sport really was becoming “big time” by 1903, when Harvard unveiled the first large concrete stadium designed specifically for football. Despite rapidly growing popularity, college football was in serious trouble in the early twentieth century. The rules changes of the 1890s led to only a brief decrease in the rate of injury and death on the playing field. By 1905 the public outcry against the game’s brutality was so great that several colleges (including Columbia, the third school to take up the sport) banned football, and others threatened to do so. Even President Theodore Roosevelt, hardly a pantywaist, demanded that reforms be made. The movement led to the creation of a body that five years later, in 1910, became known as the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The NCAA since has been the major power in formulating rule changes and in setting up and policing the procedures under which members operate their football programs.

http://www.collegefootballpoll.com/history_of_college_football.html

My suggestion is get the performance enhancing drugs out of the game and reduce the unnecessary violence in the game. Sure PEDs are already banned, but just like in the Lance Armstrong affair the NFL is testing, but doing one sorry damn job at it. The use of the drugs has dramatically increased the average size of the NFL player in the last three decades.

I’m trying to understand the need to include the Roman Catholic church’s issues in the article.

tyketto on February 3, 2013 at 2:33 PM

It’s propaganda and indoctrination strategy. By associating Professional Football with the Catholic Church’s molestation scandal it conditions people to think of Professional Football as a perverse activity.

So if you openly go out to try and kill the sport, you’re also going to kill the dream of a better life through the sport for many of the top athletes, as well as those at the college level who get full-paid scholarships based on their ability (some many not take advantage of what they can do with the scholarship, but the opportunity is there). There’s a different between saying you don’t want your son to play football and telling them the federal government isn’t going to let them play football at the pro, college or even high school levels, which long-term is where this is headed if some on the left get their way

If football is too violent, then I propose we outlaw all ancient history and mythology (we can’t have kids learning about our violent pasts or cultures). We must also rename our days of the week from Tuesday-Friday, as those days are named after Norse gods, who were too masculine and violent for our modern culture. We’ll just use the pansy French (or any Latinized) names for our days…or call them new-aged and kindler, gentler names like Treeday, Friendsday, Energyday, Meditationday, etc.

Or we could just tell the Left where to stuff it, keep Junior in peewee football and his little sister in cheerleading, let the kiddos roughhouse with daddy and the dog outdoors in the dirt, and then sit down tonight and read a book of Norse mythology to them or watch 13th Warrior (for the ones that are old enough).

SW, you’re slurring already.

tommy71 on February 3, 2013 at 1:41 PM

BWAHAHAHAHAH… Not yet my friend… Not yet…

SWalker on February 3, 2013 at 1:44 PM

I’m under special rules this year, no drinking until AFTER I’ve made the Salsa… (that’s to ensure that nobody bursts into flames at half time)

SW, you’re slurring already.

tommy71 on February 3, 2013 at 1:41 PM

BWAHAHAHAHAH… Not yet my friend… Not yet…