War Football: World War I and the Birth of the NFL

By Chris Serb  
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019 
Joe Unger, Reviewer

The Rock Island Independents Would Become a Charter Member of
the National Football League in 1920

"In the history of American Football, 1919 will always stand out as a memorable year, one of remarkable achievements and of splendid promise for the future..." This opening quote of the prologue to War Football: World War I and the Birth of the NFL begins the explanation of how football became a part of the national conscience.

Obviously, the Great War had many influences on our modern life, from the geopolitical to the arts, from literature to the military, and everything in between, but football was never previously regarded by me as a product of the Great War, except for my local professional team, the Ironton (Ohio) Tanks, founded by veterans in 1919. (Article)

Author Chris Serb does a great job, however, of explaining early football and making it an exciting read. The chapters are very digestible, and they lead into each other easily, so you can lay the book down and pick it up, right where you left off. Serb discusses early players in depth, without getting bogged down.  The players motives, strategies, achievements, and failures are all presented. This is important because readers would have heard of many of these great football figures before, men like Jim Thorpe, Red Grange, George Halas, etc.  There are, however,  other personalities discussed who played football and who are probably more interesting to readers of Roads to the Great War because they were men who shaped America and the entire world. These individuals, according to Serb, learned much of their leadership skills, teamwork, and offensive strategy on the gridiron. These men became better known in different stadia—George Patton, Omar Bradley, Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, and Woodrow Wilson, who was not a player himself but had many football associations.

The author also shows the dramatically changing role of the rules of the game, from a forward pass to a drop-kick and evolving penalties. He  has even described some engaging play-by-play during the championship games. Likewise, college football is a major topic in the book, especially since football was known at the time of the war mostly as a college sport, attracting sizable crowds. When these college men enlisted, or were drafted, they joined or formed their own football teams at each Army camp or Navy base. In this manner, "All-Star" teams were formed, as men from many different college clubs ended up at the same camp or base. Rosters were manned, leagues were formed, and games were played. Many times the military teams played well-known college clubs, while at other times they pitted themselves against semi-pro teams but mostly against other base teams.

Serb claims that professional football would never have taken flight without World War One, and he does a good job of presenting his case. I believe, though, that the postwar teams, those semi-pro local town and city teams, the teams from the shoe factories, the steel mills, and the packing houses, had a larger part to play in the forming of the NFL. These were the teams that brought the sport right into your own neighborhood.

If you are a fan of entertaining sports history like me (I enjoyed reading biographies of Johnny Unitas and Vince Lombardi in the early 1970s),  or if you are interested in studying  the U.S. home front in WWI, then this book belongs on your shelf.

Joe Unger