Danger, football go back

The Washington Times ^ | 9-1-05 | Dan Daly

[JZelle]

Modern football, we tend to forget, was born in a funeral parlor. The carnage was so great in the early 20th century -- 18 deaths in the 1905 college season alone -- that Teddy Roosevelt threatened to ban the sport if it didn't clean up its act. Indeed, TR probably deserved a second Nobel Peace Prize for summoning athletic bigwigs from Harvard, Yale and Princeton to the White House that year in an attempt to stop the slaughter. On their way home on the train, the dignitaries drew up an agreement in which they acknowledged that "an honorable obligation exists to carry out in letter and in spirit the rules of the game of football relating to roughness, holding and foul play, and [we] pledge ourselves to so regard it, and to do [our] utmost to carry out these obligations." Four years later, 33 players were killed on college gridirons. I mention this not to diminish the death of San Francisco 49er Thomas Herrion but to point out how comparatively safe football is now, how far removed it is from its "Six Feet Under" days. It's only natural, after all, for people -- some people -- to overreact to such a tragedy. One observer, drawing a line from 335-pound Korey Stringer, the late Viking, to the 330-pound Herrion, wondered whether the game itself weren't to blame for putting such an emphasis on bigness. (As if the NFL were in any position to halt human evolution; last I checked, homo sapiens weren't getting any smaller.) Yes, football is a nasty sport, the pro game particularly so. But since the days of Teddy Roosevelt, its guardians have always done what they could to make it a little less nasty.

[JZelle]

Interesting story.

[johnk]

Very interesting. I guess it was hard to follow a player through his career "back in the day".