WI: Teddy Roosevelt bans American Football in 1905, does Rugby take its place?

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Banned
Honestly though soccer and rugby would take either second and third place behind baseball.

Rugby could be popular in the west coast while the east coast would be soccer. Central and Midwest is up to debate for me?

Even if American Football is banned by governments, it would still be played by people anyways. Just not in colleges and universities. It would be a grassroots type sport. Something that still would be popular but not as big as those three.

Maybe I went off topic but I am curious about this now and need some opinions.
If football is banned in schools and universities it won't have the ability to grow and expand. We are talking about a very early point in footballs history where it wasn't even close to being as big as it is now or even would be 20 years later. In the early 1900's its basically an elitist sport restricted to colleges which is just starting to grow, so its momentum can easily be killed.
I think Lacrosse works as a good foil to football as it is also a college sport played in Autumn which would have the same kind of backing as football from college adminstrators and also has the benefit of being a "truly american" game. Soccer may be seen as too foreign to have wide appeal but again the soccer leagues were pretty big before the depression so they have a chance to grow but it won't nearly be as a big as baseball.
Perhaps you could work a scenoria where instead of being outright banned the sport is seen as too violent and dropped by most Major colleges but is retained in certian regions, like the midewest and south. In this scenorio you'd have west coast colleges playing Rugby, eastern colleges playing lacrosse and soccer and then Mid Western and Southern Colleges playing Football but perhaps with different rules depending on the region. So you could have Southern Football and Mid Western football diverge like American and Canadian Football. College and school Sport becomes more regional in the US with different regional "confrences" playing their own regional sport. That could be really interesting.
 
If football is banned in schools and universities it won't have the ability to grow and expand. We are talking about a very early point in footballs history where it wasn't even close to being as big as it is now or even would be 20 years later. In the early 1900's its basically an elitist sport restricted to colleges which is just starting to grow, so its momentum can easily be killed.
I think Lacrosse works as a good foil to football as it is also a college sport played in Autumn which would have the same kind of backing as football from college adminstrators and also has the benefit of being a "truly american" game. Soccer may be seen as too foreign to have wide appeal but again the soccer leagues were pretty big before the depression so they have a chance to grow but it won't nearly be as a big as baseball.
Perhaps you could work a scenoria where instead of being outright banned the sport is seen as too violent and dropped by most Major colleges but is retained in certian regions, like the midewest and south. In this scenorio you'd have west coast colleges playing Rugby, eastern colleges playing lacrosse and soccer and then Mid Western and Southern Colleges playing Football but perhaps with different rules depending on the region. So you could have Southern Football and Mid Western football diverge like American and Canadian Football. College and school Sport becomes more regional in the US with different regional "confrences" playing their own regional sport. That could be really interesting.

I disagree to an extent as I wrote that message while trying to get myself to sleep.

I was thinking more of the amateur and semi-professional American football players who would pick up the pieces. After the college ban took effect, the rules would have been revised by different leagues until the formations of a professional league a decade or so later. It would probably see a return to colleges and universities later on with a more safer version used by the professional league.

Lacrosse is a sport that I'm not too familiar with history wise. While I love watching games both indoors and outdoors, I doubt it would become as popular yet. I do see it being a rival to American Football. I think lacrosse would start becoming popular in the same way football did and that would be on Television during the 1950s. Networks would also spend big bucks on what they can sell to the audience, so while rugby and soccer would be popular in both the east and west coast. Lacrosse would become the second popular sport behind baseball.

As for the midwest and the central United States, I left it up to debate but I honestly would say that Lacrosse would take some parts of it. But I still think American Football would be popular outside of schools due to the fact that Ohio was a hotbed of the sport and would help the game travel throughout the area. especially if the game goes professional in the 1920s.

And before I go, I really doubt Teddy ban on the sport would be revoked anyways a few decades later thanks to changes in the world during the 1920s to 1950s. I really doubt it would stay and some schools would help remove the ban over that time due to the professional game being safer and those people who played it now working at those same colleges and schools. Nostalgia is a powerful drug btw.

Anyways, I will be waiting for someone to find a flaw to this but I don't care. I will stand by what I said.
 
OTL the first professional football leagues were starting around this time. It's possible that these leagues get an early boost in popularity from the elimination of college football as competition.
 
Honestly though soccer and rugby would take either second and third place behind baseball.

Rugby could be popular in the west coast while the east coast would be soccer. Central and Midwest is up to debate for me?

Even if American Football is banned by governments, it would still be played by people anyways. Just not in colleges and universities. It would be a grassroots type sport. Something that still would be popular but not as big as those three..
If football remains a sandlot game, it does not develop the protective gear or complex rule system now in place. In other words, it is unknown as a serious, professional sport or even a serious one for colleges. The whole sports/entertainment infrastructure grows very differently.
 
OTL the first professional football leagues were starting around this time. It's possible that these leagues get an early boost in popularity from the elimination of college football as competition.
True. with college football getting banned it would help it become more popular as a professional sport. But...

If football remains a sandlot game, it does not develop the protective gear or complex rule system now in place. In other words, it is unknown as a serious, professional sport or even a serious one for colleges. The whole sports/entertainment infrastructure grows very differently.
I actually agree here with what you said. Football would be totally different then it is OTL. While I personally think it can survive, the rules and the gear would be different. Honestly was just saying that the sport could survive even if it a sandlot game for a good decade or so.
 
Roosevelt didn't threaten to ban football, he negotiated changes to the rules to avert bans imposed by colleges (See here for details). It's likely that without college football teams, professional football would have continued with a more working-class reputation, similar to boxing IOTL. Basketball, which was just becoming popular, is a more likely replacement since it's much less violent than rugby.

It was the very epitome of using the "bully pulpit", a term that TR coined.
 
TR's crusade to clean up football, and the years of deaths and serious injuries that led up to it, were the subject of a book by John J. Miller, The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football (2011). Interesting reading, even if you're not heavily into sports history. In addition to being the proverbial "manly man", TR also believed that all human activity entailed risk, and therefore was against measures such as Prohibition, a movement that was gathering momentum in the early 20th century.
 
Certainly on the East Coast lacrosse could replace football as a fall sport. Given Roosevelt's "American" attitude I could see him promoting the "American" sport of lacrosse.

Lacrosse is played in the spring: ask anyone from Baltimore, Long Island, the Syracuse (NY) area, or much of eastern Canada. And I don't think soccer would gain much traction: it would be stigmatized as an immigrant sport, and indeed, the first generation, trying to assimilate / become fully American, would probably ignore soccer in favor of something more American. I could see a variation on rugby, developed in North America, as taking hold: perhaps some variant wherein the forward pass is legal.
 
I would be eagerly awaiting the first British Lions tour of North America with Test Matches against Canada and the United States. If Rugby became huge these tours would be awesome spectacles. I wonder if there would be a similar professional/amateur divide as with Rugby Union/League in England in the 1890s. Would this lead to two different handling codes as in OTL?
 
While Lacrosse is a spring sport, in a scenario with no HS/College football (and therefore no Pop Warner or JV) you now have the fall season up for grabs. Lacrosse as a spring sport competes with baseball, which in this scenario is already well on the way to being "the national pastime". Lacrosse being a fall sport, and there is no reason it has to be spring, can fill this spot without competing with baseball and if soccer is a fall sport is an "American" sport to compete with soccer. True rugby could also being trying to fill the fall slot, but there is a lot more contact in rugby than lacrosse so that is a potential issue.
 
While Lacrosse is a spring sport, in a scenario with no HS/College football (and therefore no Pop Warner or JV) you now have the fall season up for grabs. Lacrosse as a spring sport competes with baseball, which in this scenario is already well on the way to being "the national pastime". Lacrosse being a fall sport, and there is no reason it has to be spring, can fill this spot without competing with baseball and if soccer is a fall sport is an "American" sport to compete with soccer. True rugby could also being trying to fill the fall slot, but there is a lot more contact in rugby than lacrosse so that is a potential issue.
Did you ever play lacrosse?
 
Football fits the schedule because it is rough and demanding, so the season is necessarily short, making it perfect for the fall semester. For any other sport to fit the time slot, its season must be squeezed short, the way baseball is done in the spring. The result is an appeal that is far different from the professional version.
 
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