War and Sport

I'm not EXACTLY sure if this counts as a J'ACCUSE!!!^tm but since Tyler hasn't mentioned it over the course of multiple episodes where I feel as if it may have been relevant, (As of the Weather/Environment episode, maybe it's come up since then) I feel as if it is my responsibility as a scholar in the subject to bring it up.

Around the time of December 24-25, 1914 on the Western Front, the Imperial German Army, British Expeditionary Force, French Armée de Terre, and others laid down their arms in spite of their officers' orders, and engaged in various festivities on the battlefield. To keep it short, the portion of these activities which are actually relevant to this podcast include impromptu games of Football/Soccer, in which the respective armies would face eachother not on the battlefield, but on the field of play. Often, lacking the neccessary equipment to play the game, soldiers would substitute cans of corned beef for balls and lay their jackets upon the ground to serve as goalposts. The games were friendly, a stark contrast from the soldiers' dreary and excessively violent lives in the trenches. This perhaps constitutes one of the most fascinating and edifying events in the history of sport and humans alike.

If I may humbly suggest a future topic for the podcast, "War and Sport" may be one with much potential. This could of course include sport teams inside the military, international "war games", war-imitating sports such as Paintball and Airsoft, or sports such as Lacrosse which some scholars suggest were developed to (among other things) prepare men for warfare. There are even examples of sport culture showing prominence in warfare in other ways, such as the tradition of at least one British battalion which would begin their attack by kicking a soccer ball into No Man's Land.