We see it todays world an increased awareness over the toll the sport takes on bodies, but what was awareness and thinking like back in the early days of the sport? I just can't imagine being in a crowd and seeing someone die. It's a wonder the sport became as popular as it is.
Violence has always been apart of the games DNA, from even before it was transmitted across the Atlantic. A game roughly equating with a form of proto-football was banned in London by royal proclamation of King Edward II on 13 April 1314:
“Forasmuch as there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls from which many evils may arise which God forbid; we command and forbid, on behalf of the King, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in the future.”
In 1531 Sir Thomas Elyot would further note that, "English Footeballe is nothinge but beastlie furie and extreme violence." The English Highway Act of 1835 would explicitly spell out that Football was to be banned from playing on the roads.
##The Game's Violent DNA
What does this have to do with American football you ask? Well, the development of these proto-football/soccer/rugby games had yet to diverge into their distinct sports until the 19th century. When the various games that were to become known as the American version of football were first forming and codifying starting in the early 1800s they all had three similarities:
What was to become known as American football would only start to become organized through intramural games on college campuses. While Dartmouth, and the College of New Jersey(Princeton) each played their own games dating back to the 1820s, it's the Harvard tradition of "Bloody Monday" that we're going to focus on briefly. Began in 1827, the game was a massive contest between the freshman and sophomore classes. While on its surface it was supposed to foster esprit de corps it could instead be characterized more closely to a street fight. By 1860 town police and college authorities were tired of the game and it's inherent violence, and the playing of "Bloody Monday" football was banned. (The Harvard students responded by going into mourning for a mock figure called "Football Fightum", for whom they conducted funeral rites.)
At the same time that Harvard was banning the game Yale - under the pressure of the city of New Haven - banned all forms of the game as well. By the end of the 1860s tempers had calmed down and the game began to be reintroduced on campuses. This time attempts were made at controlling the violence - or at least introducing the sense of rules. 1873 and 1874 brought significant developments in the rule of the game. First in 1873 Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and Rutgers codified the first set of intercollegiate football rules (these would have more in common with the English Football Association's rules than that of Rugby Football Union). Then in 1874 Harvard played McGill in a home and away series under each college's rules. This meeting would introduce changes to the game which Harvard would introduce to the American system in a meeting in 1876 - which resulted in the formation of the Intercollegiate Football Association.
Even with this level of organizing, violence was still common in the game. Walter Camp would lead a minor crusade beginning in 1878 to reduce the violence in the game as he saw it as two disorganized mobs running at each other. His efforts lead to the standard eleven players per side in 1880, along with the establishment of the line of scrimmage, and quarterback snap to begin play. Unfortunately, Camp's scrimmage rules (later amended to required a team to advance the ball a minimum of five yards within three downs) just led to teams developing ways to slow the game down even further which lead to further violence and injuries.
##Public Backlash and the Rough Rider
With the game evolving in both rules, and strategies, the game would never lose it's violent side. Tactics such as the "flying wedge" would emerge that led critics to note that the game had become even more violent. The 1894 Harvard-Yale game would become known as the "Hampden Park Blood Bath," with crippling injuries sustained by four players. The 1894 Army-Navy game encountered similar issues, and both contests would be suspended until the 1898 season. Gruesome injuries of the type of wrenched spinal cords, crushed skulls and broken ribs that pierced their hearts became common. Obituaries of young pigskin players ran on a nearly weekly basis during the football season.
The 1897 on field death of Richard Von Albade Gammon almost killed the game dead. When Gammon died the Georgia Legislature was in session, and the public were outraged. A bill was quickly rushed through that would ban the game in the state, with the Atlanta Journal commenting:
"Football will soon be as dead in other states as it is in Georgia. That game has been tried and justly condemned as brutal, cruel, and dangerous. It is not an American game anyway. It is an importation from England, and one that has done more harm than good."
The game was only saved by the intervention of Gammon's mother, who publicly wrote the governor over her grief at her son's death:
“It would be the greatest favor to the family of Von Gammon if your influence could prevent his death being used for an argument detrimental to the athletic cause and its advancement at the University. His love for his college and his interest in all manly sports, without which he deemed the highest type of manhood impossible, is well known by his classmates and friends, and it would be inexpressibly sad to have the cause he held so dear injured by his sacrifice…”
Although the game was, temporarily, saved public backlash was never far out of the spotlight as injuries, and deaths continued to pile. Most universities continued to hold meeting debating the viability of continuing to support the game as well.
Enter Theodore Roosevelt.
"...in short, in life, as in a foot-ball game, the principle to follow is: Hit the line hard; don't foul and don't shirk, but hit the line hard!" - Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life
Roosevelt was a massive fan of the game, and vocally extolled it's virtues. He was one of the main voices (as a Harvard alumnus) that had gotten the Harvard-Yale game reinstated after the 1894 Blood Bath. When forming his volunteer battalion he actively recruited former football standouts based on his thoughts on the game. His belief that the game was a proving ground for the battlefield was validated - in his view - by the performance of his Rough Riders during his so-called 'crowded hour' in the Spanish-American War.
The 1905 season would again call the future of the game into question. At the conclusion of the season the San Francisco Call would report:
"Today's fatalities bring the total of slain to nineteen and the injured...to 137. This year's record of deaths is more than double that of the yearly average for the last five years...of those slaughtered eleven were high school players and ten of the killed were immature boys of 17 and under."
Roosevelt, through his power as President would meet with college officials in early October an attempt to curb the violence in the game. He technically did not possess the power to shut the game down, but the threat of his legendary bull pulpit was hung over the heads of the officials. Statements were made that the officials would do something.
Then Roosevelt's son was injured during practice ten days after this meeting in a way that many suspected was intentional so as to send a message to the President. All this did was enrage the public over a tipping point. That the President had publicly attempted to 'fix' the game only for his son to be injured proved the violent nature of the game.
Newspaper headlines would shoot out condemning the game once more, with congressmen calling the game a 'bum sport' and likening it to cock fighting. Columbia University would suspend it's program shortly after followed by Stanford, Cal, Northwestern, and Duke. Harvard was to be next as it's President Charles Eliot was not a fan of the game and had long been looking for a reason to eliminate it. Roosevelt would be most concerned, writing to a friend that he would not let Eliot “emasculate football,” and that he hoped to “minimize the danger” without football having to be played “on too ladylike a basis.”
With the game threatened across the country, and the President hanging like a shadow over the proceedings, 62 schools finally met in New York City on 28 December 1905 to discuss rule changes to make the game safer. The meeting spawned the he Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States, later named the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Most importantly, it would save the game as it would abolish tactics and practices in the game that the public viewed as directly contributing to the violence. Instead of only having to go five yards for a fresh set of downs, teams would now need to advance the ball ten. Forward passes were now codified into the game in order to 'open' the game more. Finally, officials were given more power over policing misconduct and unsportsmanlike behaviour by the teams.
These changes would ultimately lead to the game developing as we understand it today, forever shifting it away from rugby. Ultimately this would save the game, harkening back to what Roosevelt had been after: minimizing the danger, while still retaining it's rough DNA.
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