Nineteen young men died playing football in 1905 . Another 137 were gravely injure . Football has always been a trigger-happy sport , but call to make the game less brute were wide mocked at the round of the 20th C . Satirical magazines of the time warned that the football players of the future would become effeminate dudes , stoop to each other on the field . The raw rules would let in , “ No pinching , no slapping , and hug easy … ” phone conversant ?
The illustration below appeared in a 1906 issue ofJudgemagazine .
The Chicago Tribune had the tally of the dead and injured in 1905 :
Of those slaughter eleven were gamy schooling players and ten of the wipe out were immature boy of 17 and under . Three hardened , veteran and presumptively physically primed college men were slain . The others were amateur .
Body blows , get internal injury , were responsible for for four deaths , concussion of the mind claimed six victim , injuries to the prickle leave fatally in three cases , blood poisoning carried off two gridiron warriors , and other injuries caused four death . Among the combat injury that have not lead fatally are : reveal catch bones and shoulders , nineteen ; broken legs , thirty - one ; humiliated branch , nine ; fracture to some portion of the head , nineteen ; broken ribs , three ; spinal injuries , three ; concussion of the encephalon , three .
The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States ( IAAUS ) wasformed in early 1906with the stated mission of reforming the rules of college sports . Its first foreign mission was making football safe . The IUAA would take the name National Collegiate Athletic Association ( well known as theNCAA ) in 1910 .
President Roosevelt himself encourage the revision of football ’s rules after his son was injured playing for Harvard . And despite warnings that dialing back the barbarism of the game would somehow make America ’s gentleman soft , people were nonplus sick and commonplace of hoi polloi die for a game . But the option to making it less brutal could very well have been doing away with the sport wholly . or else , football game got the forward mountain pass .
By drop of 1906 the new rule were in seat . The September 23 , 1906 edition of the New York Tribuneran an articleintended for both thespian and spectators to better infer what was allowed .
Despite the shipway in which football was made safer over a hundred age ago , it ’s hard to pass lessons for today . When nimble and deceivingly degenerate 300 - pound men bop their heads together play after play , game after game , season after season , it ’s not exactly a surprise that there ’s lasting damage which cripples role player physically and mentally . But no one is quite sure of what reform will best insure player safety .
There seems to be no easy answers . Do you make helmets safer asresearchers at station like UCLAare attempting to do ? Is there such a matter as a helmet that can keep the form of foresightful term injuries players are sustaining ? Sadly , most of the enquiry tell no . At least not without them being comically Brobdingnagian and puffy , or being so big and cushioned as to get serious damage to the instrumentalist ’s neck on impact .
There ’s a history of fearful lover harangue about the masculine wholeness of football game — but the game ’s survival of the fittest has always depended on making necessary decisions with the usable skill of the day .
Images : “ What the Game Will amount To ” was the title of the top illustration which ran in a 1903 issue of Life magazine , two work force on the field lead in a 1906 issue of Judge magazine
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