All eyes look up as President Harry Truman tosses silver dollar skyward to win the kickoff for VPI before start of football game at Alexandria, Va. A 1956 issue of "Sports Illustrated" quotes Truman as saying American football should be in the Olympics.
The “Truman Doctrine” sent resources abroad to help thwart communism, but the President didn’t lavish the same support on U.S. Olympians. Truman rarely invited them to the White House and declined to lend his star appeal to a fundraiser for the 1948 summer games in London; he declared a national Olympics week instead. U.S. athletes didn’t seem to need much help, winning numerous medals (thanks in part to Germany being banned from the competition). The one time Truman held a reception for Olympic athletes was right before the 1948 presidential election. Truman hosted African-American Olympians — six men and one woman — to woo black voters who migrated North after World War II, Bill Watterson writes in The Games Presidents Play.