The Man Who Made Football

In 1923, the sport of football was where beer dye was just a few years ago- a niche game enjoyed by white, cocaine-fueled college kids. Football had gained steam on college campuses in the northeast in the late eighteen hundreds, with the first-ever game in 1869 between Princeton and Rutgers. It only took ten years for the sport to reach the South, and by the turn of the century, it was being played at most respectable colleges and high schools.

Which brings us back to 1923, when an eighteen-year-old Red Grange was peer-pressured by his older Fraternity brothers in Zeta Psi to try out for his school’s team at the University of Illinois. Grange had played in high school, but because of a gruesome concussion, initially, he did not want to play the sport at the collegiate level. After his Fraternity brothers used a paddle to convince him to give football another go, and the coach for Illinois saw him play on the practice field, he became a starter immediately.

In his first collegiate football game, he scored three touchdowns against Nebraska. And while he had a great freshman campaign, it was during his Sophomore season that Grange’s life and the sport of football would change forever. In the early nineteen hundreds, Michigan was by far and away the best football program in the entire country. And much like kids that go to the University of Alabama today, they knew they were the best, and they were very annoying about it.

On October 18, 1924, Illinois played their first home game in their new, appropriately named stadium, Memorial Stadium, against Michigan. On the first play of the game, Grange returned the opening kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown. He then scored three more touchdowns on runs of 67, 56, and 44 yards, all in the first 12 minutes of the game. The four touchdowns were as many as Michigan had allowed in the two previous seasons. He finished the game with six offensive touchdowns and two defensive interceptions, and he single-handedly defeated the greatest football team in the sport’s history.

Because he had taken down big, bad Michigan, media outlets began to suck him off. If you think that Bleacher Report’s tweets about Kobe since his death have been annoying and weirdly erotic, it pales in comparison to what the media was saying about Red Grange . Much like Ray Rice, he only kept eleva… he continued to play well. Within a year, his face was on the cover of Time Magazine. He was football’s Babe Ruth. A petition was even created to convince him to run for the Republican Party’s at-large nomination for Congress.

Grange won a National Championship against Ohio State in his final collegiate game in front of 85,000 fans. Think about how many people that is; he was like the Anglo version of Linsanity. He would go on to sign a contract with the newly established Chicago Bears. Then Bears owner and known marketing genius George Halas had an idea to change the game forever. He took Grange around the country, playing any and all teams available. Grange played seventeen games in just over two months. With a 36,000-person crowd packed into Wrigley Field and crowds of 65,000 in New York and LA, Grange infected America with football mania. He was so good at football that people became interested in the sport just by hearing about him. And ever so fittingly, In the NFL’s first championship game in 1933, his touchdown-saving tackle late in the fourth quarter preserved the Bears’ 23-21 victory over the New York Giants. He would go on to be inducted into the College and NFL Hall of Fames, not too bad for a white running back.