President Obama’s involvement is not the first instance of a president calling for reform in college football due to severe injuries. At the turn of the 20th century, President Theodore Roosevelt responded to the tragic deaths of eighteen college football players in 1904. President Roosevelt called on university leaders to participate in a White House Conference that was called to deal with the problem of injuries and deaths in college football through the development of safety rules. Roosevelt, no doubt, was also responding to concerns raised in the press, including a 1903 article in the New York Times referring to college football as “mayhem and homicide.” College leaders heeded President Roosevelt’s call by gathering and eventually adopting new safety rules, although it took over a decade for the new football rules to be put in place.