Football is not just war—it’s also life and civilization

By Charlie Barnes, Executive Director - Seminole Boosters

The “Iron Duke” of Wellington, hero of Waterloo, mused in later years that the battle had been “won on the playing fields of Eton.” Boys destined to become leaders of the officers’ corps were drilled in discipline, hardiness, teamwork and other virtues in closely supervised games of sport at England’s elite military academy.

Our society has never been completely comfortable with the obvious connection between organized games of sport and the conduct of warfare. While the case can be made that organized competitive games are simply a substitute or training ground for battle, the reality is more complex and begs a more balanced response.

Ritualized warfare is an offspring of our genetic makeup. The two most powerful impulses of our nature are contradictory. As a race, mankind inclines both toward love and toward mayhem in equal measure. I cannot say why that is true, but understanding the reality of our lives is the first step in any form of progress.

Three hundred years ago, the Apalachee Indians living around the area now occupied by Doak Campbell Stadium played a game strikingly similar in many ways to football. It provided entertainment and a ritualized outlet for natural conflicts between villages.

The ball game utilized a goal post and a small, hard buckskin ball. The ball could be propelled only by the hands and feet. Rival villages assembled teams to play against each other.

“They painted their bodies in colors associated with the dominant clans,” reads the record. Early Spanish missionaries, including a Friar Juan de Paiva, disapproved of it, but fortunately recorded all the details.

The best players were identified and recruited at a young age, and there were complaints of unfair inducements to play for one village or another. Friar Paiva wrote, “Skilled players were especially pampered. Their fields were planted for them, and their misdeeds were winked at by the village authorities.”

Though it fell short of full warfare—which is one of the virtues of all competitive games—history’s recounting of something called the “Meso-American ball game” is dark enough. Researchers Bill and Rich Stones describe a game played for thousands of years in ancient Mexico and Central America. It eventually spread to most of the Indians in North America, so the ancient predecessors of our namesake Seminoles may have had some familiarity with it.

The game had deep political and religious significance among the Maya, Aztec and other Meso-American civilizations, say the Stones. “It was a brutal and violent game, and injuries were common.”

Of particular interest is the fact that captains of losing squads, and sometimes the entire losing team, were sacrificed to the gods. I have seen our fans and the fans of other teams call for similar resolutions after a disappointing afternoon.

But football is not war. In spite of the gleaming helmets and the brilliant uniforms and the teeming tens of thousands of us emotional spear carriers in the ranks, these beautifully ritualized events serve a higher purpose than simply the diversion of our darker instincts.

Our great rivalries and Saturday contests with all their pomp and pageantry aren’t just a sop to our genetic disposition toward ritualized warfare. Our great gatherings also feed our hunger for the higher virtues. Coaches, the direct influencers of young lives, are key.

Certainly, high school and college coaches work very hard to teach teamwork, loyalty and sacrifice, toughness and endurance. When it’s appropriate to the sport, coaches teach the art of controlled violence.

But coaches work equally hard to inculcate in their students a sense of fair play, compassion, honesty and sportsmanship—hardly the virtues of warfare.

Life is about love, and life is about conflict. Those twin impulses of our nature entwine to weave our destiny. All coaches who feel the nobility of their profession know the power they hold to shape young minds toward the advancement of civilization. That alone, if nothing else, makes good coaches valuable to the mission of any university.