The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-12-25
4 FOOTBALL CRITICS
VIEW Of FOOTBALL.

rOOIDau mas Deen the worst NAL
treated of all national sports. A wild
vociferation has gone out against it.
Ever since its long-haired dome ap-
peared over the horizon it has been the
victim of seething anathemas and large
blasts of vitriOlic rhetoric. MammaS go
or and weep softly when the pride
of their heart donS his tuscanned and
bepadded suit of armor. Pappas turn
pale and use uncouth Syllables when
their heir apparent let's his hair luxur-
i s;oea untrammelled and occasionally in
hicts severe pain upon the air with
college vocalismS and rah, rah, rafs-
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The progenitor of this widespread
quaking in parental hearts is undeni-
ably We editor. If the infection of pain
upon maternal breasts were a crime
with penalties affixed, even a Jury of
new women would sentence the self
satisfied knights of the faber The
dispensers of linguistic wisdom hurl
more thunderbolts at the pigskin glad
iator than Jove ever wasted during his
whole deified career. All this they do
serenely and with unruffable urbanity
And the suffering public wonders and
looks at each other and joins in the
sulphurous chorus against the youth
with the leonine name.
The enthusiast enters a lurid excep-
ton to this verdict of the wiseacres,
and at the same time takes occasion to
rage worse than the heather. His
opinion is that the editor has stood still
and let the world spin past him, and
that II there ever was any wine-red
blood in his veins, it long ago took
upon itself an amber tinge.
What is more, the editorial wiseacre.
when he poses as the tribune OF last
appeal on football is not by any means
a luminous success. He is green
greener that the vegetation in a late
spring. The harsh and bitter truth
is that he very likely never saw a
football game. The enthusiast opineS
that he could not tell a touchdown
from the Ides of March, and that he
could not give a laborous dissertation
of two lines on an "off-side-play." or
the why and where and whittier OF
a goal post In fact, the enthusiast
is read-y to aSSeverate that We editor
ought either to read a book on football
rules or see a football game; or. what
is still better, confine his florid eio-
quence to the even tenor of Cuban re-
bellions or up-to-date political in
trigues.
OF course the gridiron presents Won
drous possibilities for fractured ribs
and crushed thoraxes. But when was
there manly sport which did not
afford the same opportunities There
never has been a time when corecreal
embrasures and fractural irregulari-
ties did not follow on the heels of ath-
leticS. 1t is not recorded in the history
books, but it is not at all improbable
that even in the halloween days of the
OlymDics, there were arnbulances in
Sprinters. jumpers and bicycle riders
all disarrange their forms with the
same unerring accuracy
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And there are accidents in football.
But these are not nearly so frequent
as the public has come to believe, and
there are not nearly so many fatalisms
on the gridiron as of yore. When they
do occur. they are almost always
caused bv the recklessness of the
player or his ignorance of the game.
Football is the most scientific of ali
the worlds sports. Those which the
gods were wont to watch from the blue
slopes of Olympus were merely sad,
sad limitations. The casual observer
sees but a swaying, heaving mass, but
vassed form to pay and in all the
madness there is method.
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Football is mind-trainer as well as
a cultivator of biceps- Every faculty
of the player must be alert and active
Every move must be closely. accur-
ately watched. A momentary lapse OF
vigilance, the failure of quick re-
Spouse to a signal, and the fates of
war may be. reversed. Mental concen-
tration is the first fruits and the first
lesson of football.
g g @
The ideal footballist is muscular and
courageous. The vim and force of the
struggle makes him powerful, iron-sin-
ewed and fearless. 1t requires a cour-
age almost Trojan in the football
hero, when he dashes himself head
long in the powerful, crushing, heav-
ing mass of forms There is hardly a
muscle of the athletes body that is
unexercised. The youth who has en-
dured the rigorS of football season
has the powers of an old veteran.
whose SCARED and hard-sinewed figure
has endured the surly chastisement of
many wars. The heat of a war-fike
fray is scarcely more narrowing than
the Establishments and swift, decisive
struggle of a football battle. There is
no rest after the football bugle sounds
and there is no quarter. 1t is man
meeting man, one great muscular
a hard. bitter. soul-harrowing cam
paign, but the victory is swift and
glorious, and the conquerors are he
rOeS almost as great as were the
Greeks at Thermopalae. Thev are
brave men and true, dauntlessm minded
and oak-hearted. The old soldier, FULL
of memories of smoking guns and
flashing steel, has scarcely endured
more than he. 1t is the same great
test OF manhood. administered in a
different guise. The tutor is brave
deeds and the lessons are courage, en-
durance and unquaking hearts
All the world can point to the sturdy
generous, open-hearted combatant OF
the gridiron and say, here is a hero.
The laurels of the Trojan, the scars
of the Scottish chieftain are no prouder
than his.
The siege that prepares the young
gladiator for the feats of the football
arena is a moral training. There can
be no midnight revels or early morn
ing coquetry with the gushing tankard-
Foot ballism prescribeS against the
weed that cheers and not inebriates.
and against the temptations of welsh
rarebits and the sweet Authorizations
which follow it. 1t is a moral tonic.
a corporal tonic, tonic for the soul
and tonic for the blood
Is @ @
Physical incongruities and shortcom-
ings are corrected by this greatest of
the worlds sports. 1t finds men puerile
and infrm and makes them beautiful
and magnificent The footballist is the
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