The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-12-13
GAME A SAFE one
Football Now Is No More Danger
GUS Than Others.
Rules Committee Can Turn to
Perfecting Game.
PASS WILL REMAIN.
Stability in Regulations the
Present Object.
Too Much Change From Veal
to Year Injuries Sport.
BY PARKE H. DAVIS.


The object continually before the
members of the rules committee In its
prolonged and strenuous session last
spring was the Iessening of the posi-
pilities for injury The statistics of the
season just closed indicate that this
object has been accomplished. Upon
the basis of these figures it fairly may
be asserted that football now presents
nr greater hazards than baseball,
hockey, track athletics and lacrosse.
1t may be assumed, therefore, that the
major amendment of 1910 by which this
result was accomplished, the abolition
of interlocked mass interference, which.
of course, includes aid to the runner,
will stand without change. From some
quarters eInanates demand that this
rule shall be modified so as to permit
one man to aid the runner but as one
man was all that was necessary to aid
the runner at the very height of this
push and pull game it is exceedingly
doubtful If this proposition can i'm
press itself sufficiently upon the foot
ball public to obtain reinstatement in
the code and set the game back TO
1909. The return to the custom of the
early sos which permitted a with
drawn player to be returned to the play
has been provocative of such good re-
suits and Is so universally commended
by the players that it also may be as
sumed as a fixture in the game.
The forward pass is still unpopular
attractive to the public to be elini-
mated from the sport without bringing
upon football an avalanche of disap-
prevail. While the forward pass, there
fore. may defy any effort to eliminate
it, the details of this play unquestion-
ably will face a searching scrutiny
and a possible change.
No Injury From Pass.
1t is true that no accidents in 1910
have been charged to this play. but its
mechanism has been so cumbersome
and complex that it has been unintelli-
BILE to the spectator, bewildering to the
player and beyond application for the
official These details must be SIM
plified. And yet this is the very prob
lem that blocked the deliberations Of
the committee for eight days and a
large part of the intervening nights
last spring. Nevertheless, there is a,
solution. 1t lies in the removal of some
of the restrictions by which this play
has been surrounded and complicated
and which actual use this fall has
demonstrated to have been fanciful and
unnecessary. Throughout its history
this play has been subjected, it would
seem. to an excess of caution. When
the forward pass was introduced to the
game in 1906 its use was forbidden
within five yards of the place where
the ball was put in play. Dire were
the results predicted by the tacticians
if this limitation was removed, yet the
past season found it removed, and its
removal was absolutely inconsequen-
tia1 upon the course Of the game.
The question of quarters VS.. halves,
upon which the players now seem to be
equally divided; the fairness of the
rule requiring a gain OF ten yards with
in the 25-yard line, which a majority of
the players apparently deny; the
perennial problem of the relative value
of a goal from placekick with goal
from dropkick and the value Of any
field goal to touchdown; the preven-
ton of the privilege Of making substi-
tutions from abuse by being made a
subterfuge for side-line coaching; the
ancient proposition of limiting the
positions to be assumed by players on
defense, and the query as to the fair
ness of locating kickoff at midfield
instead of near the 35-yard line, by
which one team is Immediately placed
upon defense within the shadows of its
goal posts through no inequality in
play but through the flip of coin. are
subjects which will arise at least for
| discussion and debate.
Many Suggestions Made.
Many suggestions are appearing for
| interesting additions to the game, but
! intercollegiate football has reached its
limits of expansion. A game whose pat
ronage is SO great that seating capacity
can not be provided and that tickets of
| admission become the subject of brok-
! nG6QS
no further spectacular features. What
football needs is a perfection of it's de-
tails, simplification of it's rules and a
prolonged period of stability and rest
| for it's code.
The perfection of its details is not diff
| fcult. 1t is merely matter of time
and application by the rule makers.
| Leisure study of the rules, which time
| denied to the committee last spring, to-
| gether with the stresses and strains of
/ raf1fr 1n1 >Toxy 1,41 14G -4A ae<se-
antiquities and some contradictions in
| the rules. These easily may be RENE
| died, but their presence should permit
| the committee for 1911 to assemble early
and devote to the subject the patient
| and deliberate attention that the sub
ject requires. Simplihcation Of the rules,
which necessarily carries with it SIM
plihcation of the game, may be accom-
! plished by an elimination of some of the
unnecessary features in the present
game which are to be found among its
many restrictions. Another source of
relief from football complexities may be
gained by creating a distinction be-
tween foul which involves an element
of wilfulness and fault which is
merely a misplay, as for instance an in
completed forward pass, thereby d.
Ininishing to some extent the present
number of fouls and reducing the pro-
blem of Strengthening out the game $
present labyrinth Of penalties by q sys-
tematic equalization
Stability Now Needed.
AS for stability of the rules, has not
the time arrived when this is absolute
ly imperative?- It is now 81 years since
Princeton, Rutgers and Yale held
Americas first intercollegiate football
convention at the old Fifth Avenue no.
tel in New York. October 10, 1873. In
every year since that time, excepting
1874 and 1877, other conferences have
been held at which changes in the game
of football have been enacted. During
erations * cof1seians some Of foot.
balls features have travelled verita-
bic circuit of adoption, abrogation and
readoption. Of the socalled innovations
of 1910 only the 20-yard zone and the
forward pass legislation are new. The
novelties merely are conditions drawn
from a hzeasae- dax and re-esfablished