Robert E. Howard -- Sports Fan

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"But physical sports, especially the strenuous kinds, have a definite interest for me. Despite the tinsel and show, the artificial adjuncts, and the sometimes disgusting advertisement, ballyhoo and exploitation attendant upon such sports as boxing and football, there is, in the actual contests, something vital and real and deep-rooted in the very life-springs of the race. Competitive sports are essentially Nordic in their nature, and if the Central Eastern European countries would devote as much time to such sports as do America and England, I think less wars, bickering and intrigues would result. Football, for instance, is nothing less than war in miniature, and provides an excellent way of working off pugnacious and combative instincts without bloodshed. Just now there is a great uproar because nearly fifty players were killed this year. The total is appalling and unusual, but it seems incongruous for so much racket to be raised over the taking of fifty lives, when wars that blot out men by the millions are looked on as necessary. God knows I’d rather die on a clean football field, playing a clean game, than to die like a rat in the muck and slush of a bloody war, the reasons for which I was only dimly aware."

-- Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, Jan 1932


As is obvious in the quote above, REH was deeply interested in competitive sports in general -- the more violent the better. We have a boxing thread already. See here:

swordsofreh.proboards.com/thread/464/boxing-robert-howard

However, Bob was quite a fan of football as well, as evidenced above.  This thread will be mainly devoted to that -- just in time for football season -- but Howard commented occasionally on other sports, as well as just sports in general.  Of course, discussing Texan football of that time specifically -- REH's lifetime was the period wherein football became the state religion -- is a given.

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"I’d have liked to have seen the wrestling match, though it was probably framed. I’ve seen scores of them, and doubt if I ever saw five that were straight. A wrestling match is the easiest sport in the world to put in the bag. The wrestlers are so tough that they can appear to be tearing each other to pieces without really doing any damage. The main thing about a wrestling match which I enjoy is the acting of the men — the roaring, grunting, cursing, threats, and blood curdling glares. The more noise there is to a bout, the less real action usually.

One of the few straight bouts I ever saw was at Brownwood between a youth of splendid build, handsome on the Greek style, and a creature who looked more like an ape than a human; lean, wiry, with long spare muscles. He went with a stoop and a swing exactly like an ape, had a simian chin and a low sloping forehead. The other looked like a Greek god beside him. And they wrestled the same way. The younger fellow’s muscles bulged and rippled beneath his skin as he heaved and struggled, the other’s wiry limbs coiled and uncoiled in a most unbeautiful manner; his small glinting eyes never changed expression. The younger man was a wrestler; the other simply a primitive man-killer. The ape pinned the god eventually, but that was incidental — his main object seemed to be the absolute destruction of his foe and he punished the younger man so badly that he had to be helped from the ring."


-- Robert E. Howard to Harold Preece,
    December 1928