It’s maybe something we’ve forgotten, or never studied in the first place. I, for one, had no idea the military and all its pageantry – helped set up the game of football as America’s past-time.

“Things like building team work and group cohesion were all promoted,” Paul Vasquez, Ph.D. explained. “Plus, it was a form of entertainment so you could be entertained by watching games on post instead of getting in trouble.”

Those were all things the U.S. Armed Forces were looking to do in the troops down time before World War 1.

“There’s a lot of time for action, a lot of down time. But they started to find out there were having problems with things like drinking, gambling—the drinking and the gambling leading to fighting,” Vasquez said.

“There were problems with prostitution and venereal disease before penicillin. So people in the war department were thinking what’s going to happen when we mobilize on a large scale and fight in Europe?? ..”

Dr. Paul Vasquez—a UCF Political Science Associate lecturer –lays it all out in his 2011 20-page published thesis describing how the military shaped college football.

“People were going into the Military with a variety of backgrounds and even if you’ve never been to an elite northeastern private, expensive school where football was frequently played, you might be exposed to it if you were brought into the military through the draft on the bases,” Vasquez added.

The game became popular, expanded with the development of radio and became accessible to the masses.

Army and Navy—two of the first programs to broadcasts their games.

But for many of us—including UCF Football Director of Player Personnel Brandon Lawson—our first introduction to football has little to do with history.

“I grew up in East Tennessee so SEC football was big and that was important in the area,” Lawson said.

Before he came to UCF—Lawson served in the US Marine Corp and acted as the Marine One Crew Chief during President George W. Bush’s presidency. He sees the correlation between the two every day at work.

“I think a lot of it is comradery, being a part of something bigger than yourself,” Lawson added. “You have a specific role, a specific expertise. There’s a leadership piece of it, teaching our guys –leading our guys all of that. The culture is very similar in my opinion. You are getting these guys in a very similar time frame of their lives. So for me 18-24 I am an active duty Marine. For these guys, 18-22 they are division 1 college football players.”

The structure and tactics set forth by legendary coaches, Paul William “Bear” Bryant and Walter Camp, who were products of military coaching, are still being passed down today.

“(Coaches) Took that demeanor, very serious, very dedicated, very tenacious and tough style of coaching into the civilian realm and continued,” Vasquez said. “I think the experience that our players have now even if they’ve never served in the Military or didn’t have parents is kinda passed a long through a lot of the coaching styles that have been inherited.”

For Lawson—he can drum up a here and now comparison.

“It’s a simulation of battle because to our guys and even to us now as 32-year old adults we kind of have a perspective on life and these guys are going out there—only have 12 opportunities a year or 13 opportunities a year it means a lot to them so there is a lot of simulation there.”