He played fullback and halfback and was a punter and drop-kicker for the unbeaten Harvard Crimson football teams of 1919 and 1920, which won the 1920 Rose Bowl.

His brother, Arnold Horween, was also an All-American football player for Harvard, and also played in the NFL for the Cardinals.

After retiring from football, Horween attended Harvard Law School, and became a patent attorney, and later a federal government official.

[1] Horween's Jewish parents, Isidore and Rose (Rabinoff), immigrated to Chicago from Ukraine in the Russian Empire in 1892.

[14] During World War I, he enlisted and was a Junior Lieutenant in the United States Navy, on active duty from April 1917 to July 1919.

[14][26][27] In 1919, Donald Grant Herring ranked Horween the Third-Team center on the Princeton-Yale-Harvard composite team, and opined that if he had played regularly at center for the entire season he might have been the number one choice, and the New York Times named him All-East honorable mention.

[14][21] Horween was part of the unbeaten Harvard football team that won the 1920 Rose Bowl against Oregon, 7–6.

[22] On December 2, 1923, they did it again, as ran for a touchdown and his brother kicked a 35-yard (32 m) field goal as the Cardinals beat the Oorang Indians 22–19.

[14] He was paid $275 ($4,900 in current dollar terms) for a late season game, and used it to buy an engagement ring and elope.

law degree in 1929, and that year became a member of the Illinois State Bar and a patent attorney.

[3][18][19][42] He was also a successful businessman, as he raised cattle and helped run a family business that supplied the leather for the footballs used in the NFL.

[51][52] In 1994, the NFL honored 95-year-old Arda Bowser as the league's oldest living ex-NFL player.