It’s hard to say exactly when the new era began, but at some point lost in the smog of the 19th century, sports went from being officially a bad thing to being a very good thing indeed, virtually a pillar of state. England, where it all began, was coming into its maturity as an imperial power and the Industrial Revolution was turning country boys into city boys overnight, and society’s guardians began to look at all forms of entertainment in the light of these developments, but especially at sports.

Thus preachers, who had previously considered sports the devil’s work, open invitations to brutishness and gambling (how times have changed!), gradually perceived that they might be rescued and cleaned up in the service of the Lord—and what was good for God was good for England; likewise schoolteachers, who had once punished idle play, decided to join, not resist, and they began to enforce organized sports with such severity that some children grew to loathe and fear the very word “recreation.”