The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-11-13
THE CIR USADE EAGATNST SOME KINDS
 OF FOOTBaLL.


 The recent action of the Georgia leg islature in making football misde- meanor, when played where admission is charged, has been the source of much newspaper talk in the past week.
 The game has been vigorously defen- ded by all those who are really con- sidered authorities on such matters. Some few have seen fit to criticise the present style of game as productive of the many injuries and advocate more open game.
 The following is an editorial in the New York Evening Post regarding It; Football is in "a position where it is criticised and laughed at,'' wrote Harry Beecher, who was famous football player in his day, when the present season was opening, including an earn est plea for changes in the game, which will abolish mass play and How tackling," and the terrible list of cas- ualties resulting from these modern 1 methods. The events of the past month have fully justified this position of one | of the highest expert authorities. Foot ball is now universally laughed at, | except when the brutality, which so | generally characterizes it, converts the criticism from good nCtured ridicule | into righteous indignation. MT. Beech CT graduated at New Haven in 1888, l after having been captain of a team, and he testifies that at that period he | knew "a college team to play through a season without the use of a substi- | tute." Nowadays a game is seldom played without recourse to substitutes by one side, if not both, and the hos pital squad" swells the number of men on an eleven during the season to I larger proportions
 These serious injuries are chiefly due to the personal encounters" of two bodies of young men, and the old pre- tense that such collisions cultivate self control can no longer be soberly urged in face of the many cases of deliberate "slugging" reported on the part of uni versity students. The public laughs when it reads in the editorial columns of journal a tribute to football as a help to self-command, and then turns to the news page of the same issue to read how three men in one game at Hartford were disqualified by the ref cree for brutality, one of them, a Meth odist clergyman, seeming to have lost his head entirely" and the captain of one team venting his rage on an op- ponent who was down under him
 pounding him with both fists It laughs again when it reads editorial praise of the physical benefits secured
 by playing the game, and then turns to the news columns which reports how three members of one eleven are "on
 the hospital list" how one member ot
 a second eleven has be "sent to his home With a dislocated thigh" and another twill be unable to play agair
 this faIl;" how one of a, third team, in : jured two weeks ago, is confined to his bed;" how one of a fourth will bt , confined to his room for some time"-
 and so on, in dreary round.
 The extraordinary thing about the - modern method of play, which culti vate the brutal exhibitions and cause l the many serious injuries rhat charac terize the contests this year, is the fac that a game as an exhibition for tht . spectators nowadays is nowhere nea, . so interesting as it used to be undel g the "open" system.