Now that football season is here again, it’s a good time to reflect on General Eisenhower’s love for sports, football in particular. When we think of Ike and sports, golf is usually what comes to mind. For those of us who love history, however, Ike’s athletic prowess goes back to his days as a boy growing up in Abilene, Kansas, and later as a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy, from which he graduated along with fellow Army football player General Omar Bradley in 1915.
In his 1982 book Eisenhower, Alan Wykes observed that “only in games did an element of ruthlessness show itself. He played fast, tough football and baseball at high school and, as a spectator, was an equally efficient cheerleader. Ike himself, in his folksy book At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends, published only two years before his death, confessed, “One of my reasons for going to West Point was the hope that I could continue an athletic career. It would be difficult to overemphasize the importance that I attached to sports… In no game or practice session could the coaches claim I lacked pugnacity or combativeness, assumed to offset my lack of weight…I always played as hard as I knew how trying to instill the fear of Eisenhower into every opponent.”
Despite being lanky and muscular due to physically demanding jobs in Abilene, Ike was assessed as too small for the Army varsity team in his first year. Instead, according to Carlo D’Este in his 2002 book Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life, he played on the so-called Cullum Hall team, a junior varsity squad created several years earlier. Ike did earn a place on the varsity baseball team, but since the coach disliked his hitting style, he never played in a single game. Overall, Eisenhower’s athletic prospects during plebe year (1911-12) were dismal, but he bulked up in the mess hall and through strenuous workouts in the gym in an effort to make the varsity football team. His hustle, intensity, and “love for hard bodily contact” made a good impression on the head coach. The trainer, SGT Marty Maher, who spent 55 years at West Point, described how “Ike was the first cadet on the field for football practice and the very last to leave. I used to curse him because he would practice so late that I would be collecting footballs he had kicked away in the darkness.”
Despite starting the 1912 season as a substitute, Dwight was soon promoted to varsity and played five games as a linebacker on defense and running back on offense, including against the legendary Jim Thorpe team, later an Olympic gold medalist in decathlon and pentathlon. Sadly, Ike’s playing career ended abruptly in a game against Tufts University. While being tackled, he severely twisted his knee, later explaining, “I could feel something rip, although it didn’t particularly hurt.” After several more plays, he fell to the ground without being hit. “I couldn’t get up, so they took me off the field, and I never got back on as a player again.” He soon reinjured the knee during equestrian training in the riding hall and was unavailable to play in the Army-Navy game, a bitter disappointment. General Douglas Kinnard, in his centennial book Ike 1890-1990: A Pictorial History, observed, “His athletic horizons—his raison d’etre—were so limited now that he contemplated quitting the Military Academy. But he pursued his studies in stoic acceptance of his fate.”
Ike’s knee injury never healed properly and would bother him off and on for the rest of his life. Still, he was able to remain close to his beloved football team by becoming Army’s head cheerleader in 1914-15. The coach was so impressed with Ike’s grasp of football strategy that he encouraged him to take charge of the Cullum Hall junior varsity team, which he did successfully. Even though his playing time was cut short, he still earned the coveted letter “A” after the 1912 season.
Ike confessed in his 1967 book, “Athletes take a certain amount of kidding, especially from those who think it is always brawn versus brains. But I noted with real satisfaction how well ex-footballers seemed to have leadership qualifications and it wasn’t sentiment that made it seem so… I believe that football, perhaps more than any other sport, tends to instill in men the feeling that victory comes through hard—almost slavish—work, team play, self-confidence, and an enthusiasm that amounts to dedication.”
Dr. Spracher is a retired Army colonel who formerly taught at West Point, National Defense University, and National Intelligence University, and is a Dwight D. Eisenhower Society trustee. The Eisenhower Society is dedicated to promoting the memory and legacy of leadership of Dwight D. Eisenhower through educational programs, scholarships, grants, and special events. Learn more at dwightdeisenhowersociety.org.
The Dwight D. Eisenhower Society is dedicated to promoting the memory and legacy of leadership of Dwight D. Eisenhower through educational programs, scholarships, grants, and special events.