Tracing the Origins of Presidential Attendance at College Football Games

You know, in this modern society, it seems like there's a celebrity at every single football game that's on television that they show on tv, including sometimes the President of the United States, which happens probably at least once a year.

But who is the first president elect that ever attended a football game?

Well, that question's on the mind of us.

And our friend Timothy p. Brown of footballarchaeology.com Tim joins us to tell us all about it.

Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen, Darren.

Looking forward to chatting.

And I will do my best to be presidential in our discussion this evening.

Well, that is very appropriate because it segues right into a tidbit that we'd love to talk to you about tonight.

It's one that you titled, the first President Elect to Attend a College Football Game.

What can you tell us about this story?

Tim?

Sure.

I mean, this is just kind of me being kind of a dork and thinking weird things.

But yeah, I mean, there's, I think, you know, I mean, it's one of those things that kind of.

It's pretty well established that Teddy Roosevelt was the first sitting president to attend a football game.

But so I was kind of, I can't remember if I went looking for this or I just kind of happened upon it, but one way or another, you know, kind of came across the idea, the issue that, that William McKinley had attended a football game when he was president elect.

You know, he lived in Canton, Ohio, and he ran what was what they called a French front porch campaign.

So back then, a lot of times when a president was campaigning, they'd be out, you know, basically on the back of a train and they train would be chugging all over the place and then they conduct little speeches from the back of back of the train.

You know, they didn't have a radio, they didn't have television.

So that was a way to get around and communicate to people.

So what he did is he stayed in the same place and had people come to him.

So he would literally do like, you know, five, ten speeches a day from his front porch for like, you know, this organization from, you know, Youngstown and this one from Chicago or whatever.

Anyways, he, he's elected president, and so that would have been in November.

And then his wife either, I'm not sure when she went, but her sister lived in Chicago.

So his wife had headed out to Chicago to spend a few weeks with her.

So then he follows her to basically spend you know, Christmas holidays.

So he gets out there and.

And it turns out that Wisconsin and Carlisle are playing a football game on December 19th.

And it was Chicago had built this place called the Chicago Coliseum.

So it was a big, you know, arena, you know, maybe a stock pavilion even.

But you know it's one of those places where they held conventions.

And I think it was a site of like multiple you know, national political conventions, you know, things like that.

But anyways it was you know, this big massive building.

It.

They claimed that somewhere between like 8 and 16,000 people attended the game.

So that's pretty wide estimate, you know and they think they had a some sense capacity.

But for whatever reason he goes to the game and you know, I couldn't find any information about did he enjoy it or you know, was he a fan.

But he attended the game and unfortunately you know, the Badgers were I think leading at halftime.

But then Carlisle was just.

Was in better shape, you know, playing simple.

They apparently just like ran play after play after play.

And you know the Badgers were just, you know, I mean they would have stopped training a few weeks back.

But anyways Carlisle ended up beating them 18 to 8.

And you know, best as I could tell that was the only football game that McKinley ever attended.

And and you know again I found other historical records saying, you know, suggesting that's the case.

And that time around Teddy Roosevelt was his VP.

And so that set the precedent of the President attending the Army Navy game.

Those are in Philadelphia.

So anyways, then the, the only other little thing to add on is that William Howard Taft was the first president to attend a non Army Navy game.

And can you guess either of the teams that played in the game that he went to for Taft to play?

I don't know, maybe like Cornell, Dartmouth or something like that maybe.

No, down in South Southern teams playing maybe George, Auburn, LSU and Suwani.

Oh, the, the School of the South.

Yeah, yeah, the Tigers.

Yeah, I mean they were, you know what became the sec.

You know they were right, it was the SIA or something at the time.

But yeah, they were playing pretty big time football despite being in Pinky Little School.

So quite a travel that one year they that tour of six games in Seven days or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, it's just one of those.

This is just one of these oddity kinds of things where it's.

I just think it's kind of interesting sometimes to see who was at certain games and how kind of like the, the president attending games, how that whole process started.

But I guess it's thanks to McKinley, but mostly to Roosevelt.

But they, hey, it's still important today because how many times do you watch a game and they have to pan the, the press boxes or the luxury boxes to find, you know, a celebrity or Taylor Swift or, you know, whoever's at the game, you know, McConaughey at a Texas game, you know, there's always somebody there.

So President's counting that celebrity atmosphere, for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that, I mean, that's neat stuff, though, when you think about it, because it's not something that you.

We think about as football history, but it's things that happened at a football game, part of football history.

And you cover some of the, you cover the games, you cover the great players, but you also cover some of the obscure things that maybe we don't always associate with football history in some of your tidbits.

Maybe you could share with people where they could catch glimpses of some of these.

Sure.

Just go to footballarchaeology.com you can subscribe and, you know, you'll get an email every time that I publish a new story, which, you know, typically a couple times a week, plus, you know, I publish the fact these podcasts, you know, go every Tuesday.

And we appreciate that.

Yeah.

So we'll be.

You'll get reminded of those.

So you can see both of our pretty faces.

But otherwise, you know, you can also just bookmark it or whatever, you know, kind of whatever floats your boat.

But love to have you subscribe and join the fun.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we'd love to join you again next week on another adventure in football history.

And we'll, we'll see if we have time for that.

That's all the football history we have today, folks.

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