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The Carlisle Indian Football team was one of the greatest football teams of their time but the actual magnitude of their amazing feats are often swept under the rug. With legendary football coach Pop Warner and the equally renowned player Jim Thorpe, the Carlisle Indians defeated top teams such as Harvard and were credited with many of the plays still used today. The Carlisle Indians were defeating historically white schools so badly that rule changes were implemented in order to slow their roll. Not only did the teams success call for rule changes but by the early 1900's football was becoming an extremely lethal sport with 18 deaths and 149 injuries reported in the 1905 season alone. President Theodore Roosevelt insisted on reform thus implementing multiple rule changes, the most monumental of which being the legalization of the forward pass.[1] The forward pass completely changed the game and is one of the most important plays in all of football to this day. The Carlisle Indian Football team was so good that many people, including the press, began accusing the team of illegally using professional players. The Bureau of Indian Affairs responded to these charges by assuring them that all of the team members were also pupils at the Carlisle Indian School.[2] When Richard Henry Pratt first founded the Carlisle Indian School many of the students were sleeping inside for the first time and in turn were becoming ill from the close quarters environment. One of the first dormitory masters who had formerly taught at an ivy league school thought football was a good way to get the students outside, and started to teach the students how to play. Pratt was skeptical at first because he was trying to civilize the students and this was doing the opposite. After one Pawnee student, Stacy Matlock, broke his leg during a scrimmage Pratt had had enough of the violent game. Shortly thereafter, three dozen students walked into his office and pleaded that he allow them to play the game to which he accepted under certain terms and conditions. After the game against Yale in 1896, Pratt is committed, he believes football is the perfect way to prove the value of his pupils, show that they could assimilate into American society, and that they could match up against the ivy league schools. Pratt decides to fully embrace football at his school and discovers that it's great for public relations, Cornell graduate Pop Warner is then hired to coach the football team. [3]
