The record-union., 1893-12-22
A COMING CONVENTION AND SUG-
GESTIONS FOR IT.

The press of the land may be said to be
football as we have it. Some months ago
the RECORD UNION pointed out how by
few sensible changes in the rules
the game might be divested of its
roughness, and the advocates of the game
have frankly replied that to modify as
suggested would strip the game of the
attractiveness it now has for the multi
tude.
We are pleased that this reply has been
made, since it amounts to confession that
the game is now promoted as a spectacle,
rather than an athletic exercise. 1t comes
very near to being the same defense that
the champions of prize-fghting make
for ,heir sport" though the latter really
have more legitimate reasons to offer for
their game than the devotees of football
can marshal. 1t is precisely the defense
that bull-fighters do advance. and,
stripped of it's disguise, it means that
there is in a large part of mankind an in
tense desire to witness purely animal
contention involving large amount of
tragical risk, and to this football caters.
If the friends of football deem this
severe judgment and unwarranted CEN
sure, they viii be disabused of the idea
by reflection upon the simple statistical
fact ascertalned by the Toledo Bee, that
more people are injured in football games
in proportion to the number engaged in
the sport, than in railroad wrecks or any
other forms Of disaster. 1t is said, how
ever, that it contributes to the physical
development of the general body of stu
dents at colleges and universities. The
fact is that the number trained to football
spectacles bears a ridlculously weak rela-
ton to the whole number of students in
such schools, or to the number who en-
gage in the game without having exhibit
tions in view.
Above this consideration. however, is
the verdict of the faculty of medicine,
and of the advanced teachers of bodily
culture, namely, that the violent exercise
demanded, the continued strain, the ex-
treme tension and the unnatural demand
upon the organs and mechanism of the
body, do not conserve bodily strength or
physical culture. AS the Baltimore Sun
puts it, it is exercise that needs to be
humanized to be beneficial.
The Detroit Free Press phrases it thus:
''The claim that it develops manliness,
self-restrain, Spartan endurance and
physical development, is to be secuted as
pleasing exaggeration."
The New York EUening Post, which is,
perhaps, foremost in journalism as the
friend and champion of collegiate and
university education, severely criticises
the game, not only because of its physi-
cal risk and profitlessness, but because it
needs reformation on the moral side. By
tainment' for vast assemblies of spectat-
ors, it adds a feature of the ring. We
quote from the trenchant criticism, and
the altogether new charge in the latter
part of the following paragraph as re-
markably strong reason for the protest
that is going up:
The game furnishes to the gambling fra
ternlty something OF which they are con
stantiy in search-an interesting event of un
certain result-and sets free from the restraints
OF home and friends a large body of youths in
q state of great excitement. one of its worst
results Is, however, that il frightens 'the
PLAIN people, away from the colleges. The
modest father who is willing 10 pinch himself
and wife and daughters IN order TO give a son
college education is appalled, by what he
hears and sees of the results of a football
match. Debt, drink, deoauchery rise up be-
lore his minds eye as probable concomltant
OF college training" and he decides 10 keep
his pet lamb at home. The COLLEGES are not
drawing as they ought on this class The
wealthy men are going 10 them In greater and
greater numbers, but il is not they who keen
alive the traditions OF American schoIarship
or show the word what college education
can do by way Of preparation for life.
And really that is the choicest meat in
all the discussion. Is football as we have
it bringing collegiate life into disrepute
among the masses of parents who enter
tain for their sons high hopes on the in
tellectual side of life?