NEWSPAPER FOOTBALL 261 



... 

 NEWSPAPER FOOTBALL 



By Professor EDWIN G. DEXTER, 



UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 



r I THAT the game of football as played at our schools and colleges 

 -*- is in ill repute with the people as a class, no one who keeps at all 

 abreast of the times can deny. Nor can it be denied that there are 

 many good reasons for the feelings of general disapproval. The game, 

 in common with other athletic pursuits, puts an undue premium upon 

 certain human (or inhuman) characteristics which are altogether at 

 variance with the highest ideals of the institutions which maintain it. 

 It has too, in some instances, established relations that are to be 

 regretted with professional interests and professional methods. It 

 has, through its immense popularity and consequent tremendous gate 

 receipts, given rise to financial problems that are not easy of solution, 

 and it is, according to the newspaper, seemingly excessively dangerous 

 to life and limb. In spite of the gravity of the other deplorable 

 features of the game, we can hardly doubt the present wide-spread 

 revulsion of popular feeling is due most largely to the last mentioned 

 cause, for it is the one most prominently before the people. The others 

 are treated in an academic way in occasional articles and editorials which 

 are read by comparatively few people, but during the football season 

 no reader of the daily papers can fail to be impressed with the great 

 number of news items, each relating to some fatality or instance of 

 serious injury on the gridiron. Hardly a Sunday issue of any of our 

 principal city dailies has appeared during the past football season 

 without including from three to a dozen or even more of such para- 

 graphs till one was led to wonder whether any of our pig-skin war- 

 riors would survive the campaign. So much at variance were these 

 reports with prevailing sentiment and conditions in a few football 

 quarters with which I was personally familiar that I was led at the 

 close of the last football season to endeavor to find out whether the 

 report fitted the facts more exactly in others. This I did by writing 

 personal letters to all those reported ' seriously injured ' in a number of 

 the leading daily newspapers of the country. Each letter specified 

 the particular injury reported, as well as the date of the game and 

 asked the following questions : 



1. Were you in good training? 



2. How much time did you lose from school work because of the injury? 



3. Have you entirely recovered? 



4. Is there any probability that the injury will prove permanent? 



