Jasper County Democrat, Volume 8, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 December 1905 — ABOLISHING FOOTBALL. [ARTICLE]

ABOLISHING FOOTBALL.

Cincinnati Enquirer; The great danger to the game of football is that there are so many people who “do not know when they have enough.” It has always been a popular game. Our grandfathers liked it and our fathers were still more attached to it. But they would not recognize the football of today. To them it would be an indiscriminate series of sprinting matches, or a GraecoRoman wrestle, or a meeting in the prize ring, or a free fight, rather than the scientific and rational football they used to play. Probably one half of the men and women who attend the big games now would hesitate to confess how little they know about the play; how utterly ignorant they are of the rules; how feeble is their comprehension of the scrambling on the field; and how utterly purposeless is the whole performance. They have paid their money, and it is the fashion, and they are bound to feel that they have been entertained. They are even reconciled to the spectacle of a maimed player carried from the field occasionally, and join in the general admiration of those who remain on the ground, bravely indifferent to the fate of the comrade who has, perhaps, been taken to the hospital. There will be time before the next diabolical encounter to attend the victim’s funeral and to recover mental and physical equilibrium. There may be no funeral, but so numerous are the casualties that when the average observer sees a cripple—some person with bis back bowed and his shoulders caved in—he instinctively asks if he was hurt on the gridiron. There will have to be a modification of the sport in the name of common sense and common humanity. It has been announced that the authorities of Columbia University have decided to abolish football games after the present year. As the active season is over, this means the immediate interdiction of the dreadful performances. This will have a strong influence. Other colleges and universities will have to follow the example, or at least reduce the terrors and dangers of the game. Physical development should go hand in hand with intellectual improvement, but surely the college games can be placed within the limitations of reason and decency. The young men are the hope of the country, but they are perverse. They are released too early from guardianship. Some of them escape too soon from the rigorous discipline of the harness

strap and the shingle. When grave men and delicate ladies pay money to see them destroy , each other, they will take any risk nhat presents itself. If the game cannot be improved and made more rational, the police should be engaged to play the heavy parts.