Walter Camp

Football and the Modern Man

Julie Des Jardins

This is the first biography of Camp since 1926
Describes his time as a varsity letterman at Yale University, where he began to codify the rules of football
Expounds on the ways in which Camp changed the rules and culture of American college football
Situates Camp in his time and place to speak more broadly on American manhood, culture, and exceptionalism at the turn of the century
Addresses race and class in American football
Examines all facets of Camp's life, including his work as an executive at the New Haven Clock Company, his civic engagement, and his involvement in college baseball, crew, and track and field, as well as amateur boxing, tennis, and Olympic teams

Walter Camp

Football and the Modern Man

Julie Des Jardins

Description

Americans are obsessed with football, yet they know little about the man who shaped the game to make it uniquely technical, physical, and 'man-making' at once. Walter Camp, the "Father of American Football," was the foremost authority on American athletics and arguably the greatest amateur American athlete of his time.

In Walter Camp: Football and the Modern Man, Julie Des Jardins chronicles the life of the clock company executive and self-made athlete who remade football and redefined the ideal man. As a student at Yale University, Camp was a varsity letterman who led the earliest efforts to codify the rules and organization of football-including the line of scrimmage and "downs"-to make it distinct from English rugby. He also invented the All-America Football Team and wrote some of the first football fiction, guides, and sports page coverage, making him the foremost popularizer of the game. Within a decade American football was an obsession on college campuses of the Northeast. By the turn of the century, it was a bona fide national pastime.

Since the Civil War, college men of good breeding had not a physical skirmish to harden them. They had grown soft, Americans feared, both in body and attitude. Camp saw football as the antidote to the degeneration of these young men. When massive numbers of college football players enlisted to fight in World War I, Camp held them up as proof that football turned men effective and courageous. His influence over the game, however, was not always viewed as beneficial. Under his watch, dozens of college and high school players were killed or maimed on the gridiron. President Theodore Roosevelt urged him to reform football to prevent administrators from banning it, but Camp was ambivalent about removing the very physicality that made the game man-making in his eyes. The criticism targeted at him over the aggressiveness of football still haunts the game today.

In this fast-paced biography, Julie Des Jardins shows how the "gentleman athlete" was as much the arbiter of football as he was the arbiter of modern manhood. Though eventually football took on meanings that Camp never intended, his impact on the professional and college game is simply unsurpassed.

Walter Camp

Football and the Modern Man

Julie Des Jardins

Pregame Commentary
Introduction: The Forgotten Father of Football

First Quarter: Adolescence
Chapter 1: Survival of the Fittest in New Haven, 1860s-1880
Chapter 2: The Disillusionment of Afterlife, 1883-1888

Second Quarter: Manhood Epitomized
Chapter 3: Alice and All-American-ness, 1888-1891
Chapter 4: Manifest Destiny, 1892-1894
Chapter 5: Necessary Roughness? 1893-1894
Chapter 6: Martial, Marketable, and Masculine, 1895-1899

Halftime: The Yale Man at the Turn of the Century

Third Quarter: Manhood Tested
Chapter 7: Camp's Boyology: The Making of Eligible Men
Chapter 8: Make Men, but Do Not Break Them, 1903-1906
Chapter 9: Rewriting the Gridiron Narrative, 1906-1912

Fourth Quarter: Manhood Reconsidered
Chapter 10: Realizing Real All-Americans in the 1910s
Chapter 11: Changing of the Guard, 1910-1916
Chapter 12: Preparing Men for Real Battle, 1917-1918
Chapter 13: Death and Democratization, 1919-1925

Postgame Analysis
Notes
Selected Bibliography

Walter Camp

Football and the Modern Man

Julie Des Jardins

Author Information

Julie Des Jardins is the author of The Madame Curie Complex, Lillian Gilbreth: Redefining Domesticity, and Women and the Historical Enterprise in America: Gender, Race, and the Politics of Memory.

Walter Camp

Football and the Modern Man

Julie Des Jardins

Reviews and Awards

"The author skillfully illustrates how the sport of football uniquely spoke to men about being manly and helped to introduce new notions of masculinity. Walter Camp, then, is both a fine sport history and a superb cultural analysis."--R. W. Roberts, CHOICE

"[Des Jardins] capably steers her narrative through the opaque spaces of his life while touching on, without becoming mire in, his many sports ventures. The author expertly conveys the crucial phases of Camp's career...Camp's outsized role in creating arguably America's most popular sport and his influence on his era make it all the more essential to read this well-researched and carefully crafted book."--Journal of Sport History

"As Julie Des Jardins demonstrates in her incisive and comprehensive new biography of Camp, the modern game still bears his imprint, both on and off the field."--New Yorker

"This thoroughly researched biography is a major work and essential for all collections."--Library Journal, Starred Review

Walter Camp

Football and the Modern Man

Julie Des Jardins

From Our Blog

"Deflategate" and the "Father of Football"

The Wells Report besmirched the reputation of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, concluding that the NFL 'golden boy' was likely aware that he was playing with under-inflated footballs in the 2015 AFL conference game against the Indianapolis Colts. If the report is to be believed, even Brady has stooped to less-than-savory methods to win a game of football. There are a range of opinions about Brady's innocence, offered by nearly every sports commentator and former football player.

Posted on August 4, 2015

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