7 - From Wilson to Dubya: The Curious Case of Presidents and Rugby

Summary

Rugby and the American presidency are hardly synonymous to most sports fans. Indeed, many Americans see rugby as a distinctly ‘foreign’ game, most clearly linked to England and the British Isles. Furthermore, the history of rugby in the United States itself is very much an overlooked one. Though, at one point in the 1870s, rugby was adopted by the trend-setting sporting colleges on the East Coast (such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia), it was later adapted into what is now known to most as ‘American football’ – the national distinctiveness being clear in the name the rest of the world uses. For some scholars, this is a sign of American football’s exceptionalism and ‘American-ness,’ but at the same time this emphasizes how rugby has been correspondingly made to seem somewhat alien. Though rugby made a brief comeback in the early twentieth century on the West Coast, even seeing the United States win gold in the sport in its last two appearances as a fifteen-a-side game at the Olympics in 1920 and 1924, thereafter it has remained relatively low profile across the nation as a whole. With all this in mind, one might wonder why future presidential hopefuls such as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush took part in the game during their student days. With so many more distinctly American sports around, what was the allure of rugby – a sport with very English roots?

The origins of rugby are both well known and widely misunderstood. The most recognized story has it that Rugby School pupil William Webb Ellis picked up the ball during a game of football, and ran with it, thus inventing a game that is still played to this day. Many question the veracity of this narrative, but the game still bears the name of the school and the World Cup trophy bears the name of Webb Ellis. The power of the story, whatever its accuracy, is clear. Rugby’s roots are at Rugby School which, by the late nineteenth century, was recognized as one of the more prestigious and exclusive of England’s ‘public’ schools. When rugby traveled to Harvard University via Canada in the 1870s, it brought with it these elite educational roots, and implanted them in a similarly elite institution in Massachusetts.