Leatherheads Movie Analysis

Football in 1925 was all about the collegiate level, no one really cared about professional football at this time. Leatherheads is about the beginning of popularity in professional football. The Duluth Bulldogs get the attention of America by getting Carter Rutherford, the star player at Princeton, and a decorated war hero. The Duluth Bulldogs are a professional team in Minnesota trying to make professional football as popular as college so they can have a job that isn’t in the mines. As they try increase the popularity they have a lot of their plate, sustaining a team that no one wants to watch, legitimizing professional football so it’s not a joke, and change the rules so they aren’t killing on another.

The first challenge they take in the movie is trying to sustain a failing team. They just lost their sponsor and are officially broke, this will make them has to disband. Jimmy “Dodge” Connelly is the captain of the Bulldogs and like the rest of his team has no other skills except football. Dodge hears over the radio that 40,000 fans showed up at a Princeton game to see Carter Rutherford play, so he tries to recruit Carter to play for the Bulldogs to bring some of the fans to watch the Bulldogs play. Dodge’s plan works out, there are so many fans trying to

watch Carter play they had to move to a local college stadium with more seats. They keep winning with Carter on their team and with the returning fans the once bankrupt Bulldogs are turning a profit.
Another challenge professional teams had in the early 1900’s was legitimizing the game.

In beginning of the movie a reporter asked if Carter was going to play professional football after he graduates college, and all the other reports and Carter start laughing at him. This just shows you how much of a joke professional football was at the time and how it desperately needed legitimizing. They start this process by announcing a Commissioner to the league at the press conference. Pete Harkin, the commissioner, claims he will figure out the scandal that’s going on, and also revolutionize the sport and make it regimented and governed by strict rules. They use the commissioner so the sport can be

legitimized.
The biggest impact in football was the rule changes that took place. Before the commissioner was in place there were practically no rules, you were allowed to do whatever you needed to score. It was extremely dysfunctional as you saw in first football game they had with a cow on the field. Even in the beginning of the film Dodge argues with the referee about there are no rules in football, when the referee said the rule was they had to forfeit because the football was stolen. In the last game the Bulldogs play Chicago with the new rules in place set by the commissioner. Such as the coin toss at the beginning of the game which the player, nor the referees know how to do, so they have to read the rule book just to find out about the coin toss. Another rule they were not use to was they weren’t allowed to trip or hack a player on the other team. Before the rules of the game you could tackle a player however you wanted, such as clotheslining or even punching someone. By establishing rules to football it allowed the game to be played practical and developed the sport to the way we watch football today.