Jasper County Democrat, Volume 8, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1905 — FAULTS IN MODERN FOOT BALL. [ARTICLE]

FAULTS IN MODERN FOOT BALL.

Harvard Publication Says Sport Is More Injurious And Less Interesting Than Several Years Ago, Cambridge, Maas., Oct. 19.-The Harvard Bulletin, a univeristy publication, in its issue yesterday contains an editorial on “The Trouble With Foot Ball.” It says in part: “Something is the matter with a game which grows more and more uninteresting every year; which takes the time and attention, not only of the players, but also undergraduates as a body, until for weeks they talk and think about nothing but foot ball; which requires the constant attendance of skilled surgeons; which injures men so that they are crippled for weeks and in some cases made permanently unfit for athletic exercise. “It is often said that the constantly increasing attendance at the important-foot ball games controverts the statement that they are less interesting than they used to be. The truth is that the sale of tickets is due to a very large

extent to the advertising which he newspapers give the games. “The unanimous opinion of the men who saw the games in the early ’Bos is that they were infinitely more interesting to watch than those which are played today. The sport is dull. One sees a player plunge into a group of a dozen others and there he disappears. That is all there is to about 75 per cent of the formations in the modern game.” The editorial quotes W. H. Lewis, one of the Harvard coaches on the matter of slugging, and asks: “Why are men coached to ‘slug’ and to violate the rules with the reservation that they.must not be seen by the officials? We know that players are coached. To be a little more concrete everybody who watched the Pennsylvania eleven in Cambridge last fall saw two or three men whose playing was simply barbaric, but no one can deny that they were very effective men for their side. There is something radically wrong with the game. It ought to be substantially changed or else abolished.”