St. Paul daily globe., 1893-12-01
FOOTBALL BRUTALITY.

Ino rOOpali season clOSeQ feSleTuags
and those OF the players who have sur
vived will have few months leisure in
which their dislocated joints may knit
and their wounds heal, preparatory to
the opening OF the season Of 1891 early
in April.
The season has been remarkable one
in many respects. The contests have
been momentouS-from the standpoint
of the college athlete-and the results
disastrous. More than half hundred
young men have been killed outright
or have died from the effects of Injuries
received on the field OF conflict, and
three or four times that number have
been MANNED for life-crippled or dis
figured-through what are called the
accidents of the game. The record is
appalling. Prize fighting in its palmiest
days could not boast of such record.
Bull fighting has had less bloody rec
ord. The gladiatorial sports of the an
cient Romans were harmless paStimeS
in comparison with the modern game OF
football. And yet all these are spoken
of with Il shudder as manifestations Of
the crude civilization and the blood
thirsty propenSities of the nations that
permitted or encouraged them.
1t is assumed that the students at our
universities are composed of the flower
of the country. They are scionS of our
best families. reared in ease, if not in
luxury, endowed with the instincts and
culture of gentlemen, and presumably
gentlemen themselves. And yet such
sport as football seems to have uuWonted
attractions for them. They delight in
witnessing it; they revel in its sangui-
nary details; they participate in its mad
rushes and indiscriminate slaughter.
And if half score Of them are carried,
manned and bleeding, from the field,
there is no thought that 1t is other than
"a gentleman's game" Even the VIC
tins endure their hurts with the air of
martyrs in a good cause, and point to
their hideouS scars with the pride that
soldier maEifests when he shows the
tokens OF combat received in defense of
his country's flag. And vet we pity the
blindness and deplore the brutality of
the Spaniard who glorifies the toreador
who has come off victorious in battle
with savage bull! Are we really any
more enlightened than they? Is not a
civilization that boasts of prowess that
is simply brutality a failure?
Some what tardily, but none the less
properly, the attention of the board Of
overseers of Harvard college has been
called to the great hazards OF the game
of football, and they are asked to ''cause
full statistics to be gathered and COM
piled, and thorough investigation con-
Quoted so that the appropriate attitude
of the government of our university to
the game may be wisely determined, so
that, if practicable, notifications of the
game. calculated to lessen Its dangers.
may be suggested, and so that parents
and also their sons in college, or prepar-
ing for college, may have the benefit of
the results Of a thorough and judicial
inquiry by a competent committee"
There is no question about the neces-
sity of such an inquiry, and there is no
doubt that. il properly made IN spirit
of enlightenment, the game will be
either so modified as to lessen its dan
gers, or abolished altogether. There is
certainly need for reform, and if the
colleges themselves shall refuse or neg
lect to bring it about, it will become the
duty of the legislatures of the several
states TO regulate or interdict it, as they
have forbidden less dangerous and less
brutal pugilistic encounters. If football
cannot be reformed, it must be legis-
lated out of existence. 1t is debasing to
participants and spectators alike as at
present played, and is hazardous to life
and limb to an extent that places it in
the same category as the bull fight and
the prize fight. There is no good reason
why one should be permitted, and the
other placed under the ban of the law.