Gridiron glory wasn't always so.

• Author: Miller, John J.
• Position: Athletic Arena - Long-term health effects of football injuries

WHEN WE TALK about football, we usually talk about our favorite teams and the games they play. The biggest ongoing story in the sport right now, however, is something else entirely. It is not about the National Football League playoffs or the final Bowl Championship Series game, but rather the controversy over concussions and the long-term health effects of head injuries.

On Aug. 29, 2013, the National Football League agreed to pay $765,000,000 to settle a lawsuit involving more than 4,500 players and their families, who had claimed that the league covered up data on the harmful effects of concussions. Although medical research into football and the long-term effects of head injuries hardly is conclusive, some data suggests a connection. A number of legal experts believe the NFL, which will generate about $10,000,000,000 in revenue this season, dodged an even bigger payout.

Football, of course, is much bigger than the NFL and its players, whose average yearly salary is nearly $2,000,000. Football's ranks include about 50,000 men who play in college and 4,000,000 boys who play for schools or in youth leagues whose pockets are not nearly so deep. A Colorado jury recently awarded $11,500,000 to a boy who suffered a paralyzing injury at his high school football practice in 2008. How long will it be before school districts begin to think football is not worth the cost?

Pres. Barack Obama even has waded into the debate. "If I had a son, I'd have to think long and hard before I let him play football," he said. He also called for football "to reduce some of the violence." Others have demanded a more dramatic solution. Malcolm Gladwell, the bestselling author of The Tipping Point and other books, thinks football should go the way of dogfighting. He would like to see America's favorite sport run out of polite society.

So, one might say that football's future is uncertain, but the past may offer important lessons. After all, football's problems today are nothing compared to what they were about a century ago. In 1905, 18 people died playing the sport. Football became embroiled in a long-running dispute over violence and safety--and it almost was banned through the efforts of Progressive-era prohibitionists. Had these enemies of football gotten their way, they might have erased one of America's great pastimes from our culture, but they lost--and it took the efforts of Pres. Theodore Roosevelt to thwart them.

On Nov. 18, 1876, Roosevelt, an 18-year-old freshman at Harvard University, attended his first football game. Destined for great things, he was enthusiastic about athletics in general and eager to see the new sport of football in particular. So, here he was at the second game ever played between Harvard and its great rival Yale.

As Roosevelt shivered in the cold and windy fall weather, he watched a game that was quite different from the sport we know today. There were no quarterbacks or wide receivers, no first downs or forward passes. Before play began, the teams met to discuss rules. What number of men would play? What would count for a score? How long would the game last? They were like schoolkids today who have to set up boundaries, choose between a game of touch or tackle, and decide how to count blitzes.

Harvard's veterans agreed to a couple of suggestions proposed by Yale. The first would carry a lasting legacy: rather than playing with 15 men to a side, as was the current custom, the teams would play with 11. So, this was the first football game to feature 11 players on the field per team.

The second suggestion would not shape the sport's future, but it would affect the game that afternoon: touchdowns would not count for points. Only goals--balls sailed over a rope tied between two poles--kicked after touch downs or kicked from the field during play...