We're watching the games in Mexico, Canada and the U.S. as teams gather for the every-four-years World Cup. How did this game, which began in British public schools, become a favorite sport around the globe? On the latest "Short Talks from the Hill" podcast, Todd Price speaks with University of Arkansas political scientist Thomas Adam about how students in the late 19th century turned the game into the world's favorite sport.
Price: Well, let's talk about the origins of the game in England. When you describe the early games in the book, it almost sounds like it's just two mobs running around a field chasing a ball. A limited number of teams, huge crowd, and even one of the most basic aspects of soccer — that the players are not going to use their hands, except the goalie — that wasn't settled for a long time. And the sport today that we call rugby, really the difference between rugby and what we would call soccer, that was very fluid for a long time as well. When did the game evolve to a point that today we would look at it and say, oh yeah, that's soccer, I recognize it?
Adam: So it is only after 1900 that we have this very clear delineation between football on one hand, soccer on the other, if you look on a global scheme, on a global playing field here with regards to the origins. So there were some very wild games before the modern history of football began. So folk football — but I mean, these were games where hundreds of people would face another group of hundreds of people, two villages fighting over something which resembled a ball, in which a lot of accidents, wilfully or unwilfully, would happen.
Price: I have a hard time calling that football or soccer. What prompted people to create rules to codify these games, this game of football?
Adam: So let's start with history of public school here, because the setting is very important. And this is something I also wanted to bring out in this book. Traditional histories of sports, traditional histories of football, are driven by an interest in how the game evolved without an eye on the context in which it evolved. So what I try to do in the book is to bring together the history of education with a history of sports, and that is something other scholars haven't done either.
So we need to understand what happens in public schools in England. Around that time, public schools were created as private schools in the Middle Ages for the purpose of educating poor boys for positions in church administration and for civil service for the state. So these were schools where poor boys would receive an education without having to pay. This is what made them public. And from the beginning, these schools had a few seats reserved for the children of rich families. They had to pay tuition, but they were always a minority in the 18th century.
That turns around — the pay thing, the students from rich families suddenly outnumber the poor students, and these rich students come with certain expectations. The poor students depended on the teachers because the teachers gave them education, gave them careers. So they felt obliged to the teachers. They would not rebel against them. The rich students came to these schools from a position of privilege. They expected to be served, not to serve the teachers. So this is why you have student rebellions in the 18th century, because these students look down to the teachers and see them as servants, and the teachers are completely baffled by it.
So which leads to a conflict between teachers and students, which also leads to other problems, because these schools offer teaching in Latin and Greek, because they train priests, they train ministers. At the beginning of the 19th century, industrialization — such an education is no longer of great value, especially for students who come from richer families. So the curriculum has to be adjusted.
In that context, teachers, headmasters such as Thomas Arnold realized we have to fundamentally change these institutions. And the first thing Thomas Arnold at rugby did was to outlaw all the traditional leisure activities, hunting, because the students constantly shot the animals off — for farming families, which were around, and the farmers complained to the school, you can't allow them to do that. So Thomas Arnold went ahead, outlawed basically all of these pastimes which have this high entitlement in mind.
So now you have rich students who are bored because they can't do anything. And it is at that point where these older traditions of football are appropriated by these students. Thomas Arnold did not introduce it, but he basically created the space in which this sport could then evolve. So students begin to play in the 1820s, unregulated, without supervision, without rules, without codes. And it takes about three decades — until 1840 — for the first rules to be written down, and the rules are very short because everyone assumes that everyone knows how the game goes. So why should you write down a lengthy text? Here everything is understood. And then a competition begins.
Some public schools allow students, players, to use their hands to propel the ball, and others don't. And this is the first time where you have this division. In the beginning, even in the rugby game, both is allowed. You can kick the ball or you can throw the ball. It takes decades before there is a decision to either one or the other. So there is this mix of both activities for decades to come.
And so the rules then occur when people start competing. The rule making begins at rugby, 1844. Eton School is the second one to develop codes, 1847. So these students graduate — one of them goes to Oxford, knows you can kick the ball. Another student goes to Oxford, knows you can throw the ball. So now you have another chaos. So Oxford and Cambridge have to define football rules. So students from different schools come together, try to find a compromise, find one only to realize that everyone plays separately because no one likes the compromise.
So again, it takes a long time. Then the school — with these students growing up — leaves the public schools, leaves for universities. When it enters basically the world at large, so suddenly it's no longer a teenager game. Now it's a game of adults. They meet 1863 in London to come up for rules which apply to clubs not connected to schools anymore. This is where what in the 19th century was called Association football came into life, because this is where they decide, OK, now you can only use your feet, don't touch the ball anymore.
And these association, these clubs — this was really just recreation. All of these games were for fun. There was no scorekeeping yet. In all honesty, again, after 1900, it's a participation sport, and it's a sport where even the number of players in each team isn't determined yet. Anywhere between 10, 15 — in some cases, 10 to 20 is allowed. It's a game where different groups of students within one school play against each other. At Harvard College, for 10 years, the only games which happened were among students within the college. And codification becomes much more important when this ventures out, when you start to have games with other clubs from other institutions, when you have to sit down — and every single time they have these meetings, they have to sit down and agree on rules, because every place has its own rules.
Price: A lot of histories have said that football came to the United States and it took root in colleges, specifically Yale and Harvard. You found a different story. So tell us where you found football originally arriving in the United States.
Adam: So this is why this selection of Germany, Argentina and the United States makes a lot of sense, because in all three cases, the starting point is always a high school. And the problem with the United States is that, in contrast to Argentina and in contrast to Germany, where we have detailed accounts because the teachers involved — or the students involved — wrote about it, in the U.S., we don't have that. The only thing we have is that it's the same pattern.
It's Dixwell School in Boston, one of these private preparatory schools which prepared its students for Harvard College. By the way, it charged more tuition than Harvard College, which tells you who went to this school. This is the first school in the U.S. where we have the game of football played, and the game of football, again, very loosely defined, because this is the beginning of what is called the Boston rules. And the Boston rules are this mix. Players were expected to kick the ball, but they could also pick up the ball if they were chased by another player, but only for as long as they are chased, and they cannot throw the ball into the goal — they have to kick the ball above the goal. So this is this mix of these rules. And Dixwell School, Dixwell Latin Private Latin School in Boston, is the place where the first documented American football club, the Oneida Club, is created in 1861. So this is the beginning.
Price: In your book, you show how sometimes the spread of football relied largely on one individual — a principal, a headmaster — bringing the game. Chance sometimes played a role, but now football, soccer, it's everywhere in the world. Do you think that spread was inevitable?
Adam: So we have to look at this from two angles, from the angle of the teachers and from the angle of the students. There is a reason why football became so popular. The alternative — were there any kind of physical exercises which we would today, in today's terminology, identify with military exercises, marching exercises, boring stuff. Remember teenagers doing basically marching exercises? This is the alternative. Football, in all its varieties, was so popular because it allowed the students to take an active role, and it allowed them to engage in something that the teachers had a very minimal role in. If the teachers were involved at all, they were referees, because the beautiful thing of that game is that there are codes, there are rules agreed upon before the game, and then everyone has to obey by these rules. So there is no mechanism where teachers can punish students. So it gives the students an enormous degree of independence, and that made it so attractive.
This is why students, wherever they went in the 19th century, they had a ball in their backpack, and they carried with that ball the game. And the moment they started playing it, it basically brought new students into the fold. From the perspective of teachers, this was the perfect game, because the game is played all afternoon, especially for students in boarding schools. They come home exhausted, and an exhausted student is a perfect student. You don't have to discipline him anymore. He will behave. So this is a win-win situation for both sides.
That was an excerpt from the most recent episode of the "Short Talks from the Hill" podcast. This time, Todd Price spoke with University of Arkansas political scientist Thomas Adam about the global spread of soccer. If you'd like to learn more about Adam's work, you can visit kuaf.com/talks.
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