The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-02-03
l DENOUNCES FOOTBALL l IN HIS ANNUAL REPORT
WHOLLY UNFIT FOR COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS SAYS
 ELIOT.

AarVard's President Declares It Causes
 an Unreasonable Number of Seri0ns
 Injuries and Deaths--Public Kept in
 Ignorance of the Number and Grav- ity of the Injuries--Acts of Brutality
 Constant--Worse Than Prize, Bull or
 Cock Fishting-Game Sets Up Wrong
 Kind of Hero--Other Matters Dis
 oussed.
 Cambridge, Mass, Feb. 2.-Presidenf Eliot's annual report to the board of overseers of Harvard university was given out to-day. It surpasses in lengHa the longest of his previous reports, cov- ering nearly sixty pages, and with the treasurer's statement and the numerous departmental reports makes a volume of 500 pages In accordance with the presidents custom the report deals with a large number of questions of educa- tional policy, in the light of actual con- ditions and tendencies both at Harvard and elewhere
 Evils of Football. President Eliot says on the subject of foot-ball: "The American game of football as now played is wholly unfit | for colleges and schools.
 "Q) It causes an unreasonable num- Der of serious injuries and deaths; not one in five of the men that play foot 1 ball several seasons escape without in- jury properly called serious, and of tEae twenty to thirty picked players who | play hard throughout a season hardly man escapes serious injury. The | public has been kept ignorant concern l ing the number and gravity Of these injuries, the prevailing practice among coaches and players having been to conceal or make light of the l injuries sustained. Many of the seri- ous injuries are of such a nature sprains, strains, wrenches, dislocations. ruptures of fragments and muscles, and shocks to the brain-that in all proba- | bility they can never be perfectly re- paired.
 "(2) Violations of the rules of the game by coaclfes, trainers and players are highly profitable, and are constant. ly perpetrated by all parties. "(3) In any hard-fought game many of the actions of the players are invisi- ble to the spectators, and even to the referee and AaAre; hence much pro- fitable foul aASas capes otice.
 (4) The game fs 4fSfs rrss1fry z mites for several players to combine in violently attacking one player. "(5) There is no such thing as gener- osity between combatants any, more than there Is in gar
 "(6) Acts of brutality are constantly committed partly as results of the pas sions naturally aroused in fighting, but often on well-grounded calculations of profit towards victory.
 ! "(7) As a spectacle, for persons who know what the game really is, football is more brutali ing than prize fighting, cock fighting or bull fighting. Regard ed as a combat between highly trained men, the prize ring has great advanta- ges over the football field; for the rules of the prize ring has great ad- vantages over the footIball field; for the rules of the prize ring are more 7lu- mane than those of football, and they can be, and often are, strictly enforced. ] The fight in prize ring between two men facing each other is perfectly vis- ible, so that there are no secret alborn- nations as in football. Yet prize fighting is illegal.
 "(S) The game sets up wrong kind of hero--the man who uses his strength brutally, with a reckless disregard both of the injuries he may suffer and of the injuries he may infict op others. That is not the best kind of courage or the | best kind of hero The courage which educated people ought to admire is not that reckless, unmotiyed courage. but the courage that risks life or limb to | help or save others, or that risks pop | -------- z ], - 1, rSs--1 =, -- <