264 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



of time than did the college men. A delightfully optimistic lot of 

 boys were these gridiron youngsters, not one of whom would grant 

 the slightest possibility of permanent injury. One acknowledged ' a 

 fine headache for several days and a slightly crooked nose which was 

 the fault of the Docktor/ Another adds : ' And I am glad to say I 

 couldn't carry out the ashes.' Only eleven dared say that they were 

 in good training. 



In their bearing upon the purpose of this study, which was, as I 

 have said, to determine if possible the accuracy of newspaper reports of 

 football injury, what do these returns mean? Seemingly, so far as 

 college players are concerned, they tend to prove the utter unreliability 

 of the press reports. What are the facts in support of this ? Seventy- 

 eight reports of ' serious injury ' to college men appear in a single 

 season, many of them described in detail and under ' scare headlines.' 

 From sixty of these persons replies were received, while the letters 

 addressed to fourteen others are returned unopened, indicating in all 

 likelihood that there was no such person, since in every instance the 

 name, the team and the words ' football player ' were on the envelope. 

 And of the sixty heard from, but five can, it seems to me, with any de- 

 gree of fairness be considered ' seriously injured,' and with them it is 

 a question. Upon such reports is the present popular revulsion against 

 football founded. Nor is the condition that I have pointed out either 

 local or of recent standing. The reports that I have studied appeared 

 in papers in all parts of the country, and a series of letters sent out by 

 me at the close of the football season of 1902 gave results in no way 

 differing from these. Of twenty-three college men reported seriously 

 injured that season, 2 stated that the report was false ; ten lost no time, 

 and in every instance recovery was complete. If it were not for the 

 tragedy of it all, some of the reports would be better fitted for the 

 comic supplement than the news columns. Note the following that 

 appeared in a leading paper at the close of the last season under heavy 

 headlines, ' The Dead and How They Were Killed.' 



Latimore, Joseph, at Mukwonago, Wis. September 13. He was rubber down 

 for the Northwestern University team at the training camp at Mukwonago. 

 He had been left at quarters while the team went for a row. The manner 

 of his drowning is not known. The body was found the next day. 



The entire list contained the names of 18 others, who are presumably 

 dead and supposedly so from the direct effect of football. Within a 

 comparatively recent time one of the foremost daily papers of the 

 country appeared with the scare headlines ' Football Player Killed,' 

 for no more valid reasons in one case than the killing of an ex-football 

 player by the cars on a grade crossing, and the other the electrocution 

 of a boy on a scrub team, who had climbed an electric-light pole to 

 remove the ball, which had, by accident, lodged in the lamp. Such 



