'No better sport than football'.

• Position: PAIRING A PRIMARY & SECONDARY SOURCE

President Teddy Roosevelt's football "summit" at the White House in 1905 ushered in new safety rules, ultimately keeping the sport from being banned. But Roosevelt's passion for football began long before his presidency. In 1893, he penned an essay for Harper's Weekly magazine titled "The Value of an Athletic Training" in which he praised football as a manly sport. Read this portion of Roosevelt's essay along with the two Upfront articles about football.

Excerpt from Teddy Roosevelt's essay, December 23, 1893

While thus utterly opposed to certain of the tendencies that have crept into our athletics, and notably into the game of football, we are equally emphatic in our belief that these sports are good things for the men taking part in them, and for our people generally, and that in particular it would be a real misfortune to lose the game of football. Much of the feeling against this game, and against athletics too, has been stirred up by the persistent and very foolish attacks upon them made by various newspapers....

Granting that athletic sports do good, it remains to be considered what athletic sports are the best. The answer to this is obvious. They are those sports that call for the greatest exercise of fine moral qualities, such as resolution, courage, endurance, and capacity to hold one's own and to stand up under punishment.... Laborious work in the gymnasium, directed towards the fulfilling of certain tests of skill or strength, is very good in its way; but the man who goes through it does not begin to get the good he would in a season's play with an eleven or a nine on the gridiron field or the diamond.... Gymnastics and calisthenics are very well in their way when nothing better can be obtained, but the true sports for a manly race are sports like running, rowing, playing football and baseball, boxing and wrestling, shooting, riding, and mountain-climbing. Of all these sports, there is no better sport than football....

In closing I wish to say one word very seriously to the men who have influence in athletic sports, and who share my belief in them. What I have to say with reference to all sports refers especially to football. The brutality must be done away with and the danger...