Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 241, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1915 — FOOTBALL SEASON NOW HERE [ARTICLE]

FOOTBALL SEASON NOW HERE

Appearance of Annual Guide Sounds Doom of Summer —Rough Play is Eliminated From Game. Summer’s doom is sounded, as it always has been for more years than Walter Camp cares to remember, by the appearance of the annual football guide from the pen of Yale’s justly famous football alumnus. The book is full of new information, not the least of which is the codification of the rules for 1915 and the schedules of practically every school and college eleven In the country. As has been the case since 1905, when the first great reform wave struck football, the essence of most of the changes In the rules this season has to do with the elimination of rough play. Furthermore, the committee has taken a half step in the direction of numbering all players on the field by recommending that numbers be worn. The success which numbering players in college basketball games and in the few games in which numbers were used by football teams last fall has achieved, brought the rules committee around to the new way of thinking. The presence of a field Judge on the gridiron has been made obligatory. This means that hencefprth there will be three officials on the field of play and the head linesman on the sidelines. It Is from the linesman that. most of the duties of the field judge have been taken, the object being to leave the former free to observe the particular province of the game which he is detailed to watch, particularly offside play. Already some of the college squads have begun work, and more than one small boy has ushered in the season on the vacant lots with bangs and bruises.