Preface: During research on my grandfather, John Beck, who was an all-conference halfback during his senior year of college football, I discovered that football was almost banned in the early twentieth century due to the large number of injuries and deaths that occurred. The game has changed, but it continues to be a dangerous sport.
The following essay received first place in non-fiction submittals in a six week writing seminar in which I participated last year.
Football Players: Pawns in a Dangerous Game
non-fiction essay
by Gregory E. Larson
The quarterback for the Washington
Redskins, Joe Theismann, held the ball on a routine play during the Monday
Night Football game with the New York Giants on November 18, 1985. Two of the Giants’ defensive linebackers,
Lawrence Taylor and Harry Carson, tackled Joe, and in an instant both the tibia
and fibula in his lower right leg snapped like chicken bones. Theismann,
suffering from compound leg fractures, lay motionless on the field. A nation of football fans was shocked and
horrified, and Joe’s professional football career came to an abrupt end. Television viewers watched the slow motion
replay in horror as Taylor’s knee hit Theismann’s lower leg, fracturing the
bones and creating a limp attachment.
With each replay, viewers turned their heads away from the television. The injury was too sickening to watch. The incident shook the American football
fan’s psyche to the core. They wanted to see a clash of modern day gladiators –
they just didn’t want to see a career-ending injury.
Football has been, and always will be,
inherently dangerous. Throughout the
history of the sport, both college and professional football organizations have
attempted to address various safety issues to help protect the players and make
the game more enjoyable for the fans. As
each safety issue is corrected, others arise to be given attention, but the
violence and danger continue to be an integral part of the game.
In the early years of college
football, 1880 to 1905, the deaths and injuries incited a public outcry to ban
the sport. Mass formations and flying
wedges (players locked arm-in-arm) were commonplace. Injury-prone gang-tackling (piling on the
ball carrier) and the lack of protective clothing also contributed to player
injuries. In 1894, the Harvard versus Yale game became known as the “Hampden
Park Blood Bath.” Four players sustained
crippling injuries, and future games were suspended between the two teams until
1897. There was enough concern about the
violence of the Army versus Navy contests that authorities suspended the games
from 1894 to 1898. Deaths and injuries
in the sport continued to mount. In the
years between 1880 and 1905, 325 college football players died, and 1,149 were seriously
injured.
In 1905, the public clamored for the
President, Teddy Roosevelt to either ban the sport, or bring the colleges
together to work to improve the safety of the game. On October 9, 1905, Roosevelt sat down with representatives
of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to discuss the issues.
Ironically, on the weekend prior to
the Roosevelt football summit, the brutality that occurred during a game
between University of Pennsylvania and Swarthmore College highlighted the
continued violence. It became known as the Tiny Maxwell Incident.
Tiny
Maxwell was a 240 pound player for Swarthmore College. He was a brute of a man who played both
offense and defense. When he carried the
ball, it took three players to bring him down. Pennsylvania was a football powerhouse, and
they didn’t want little Swarthmore College to ruin their reputation, so they
developed a plan to rough up Tiny Maxwell.
On every play, the Penn players gang-tackled Maxwell, and inflicted
slugs and punches to his face. By the
end of the game, Maxwell’s nose was broken and his eyes were so swollen that he
could hardly see, and he had to be led off the field.
Supposedly, pictures of Maxwell’s
bloody face were given to Roosevelt prior to his meeting with Harvard, Yale and
Princeton. At the very least, the images
were a convincing argument that changes were needed. Roosevelt’s meeting prompted the colleges to
create the American Football Rules Committee.
The committee formulated several rule changes which initially reduced
injuries by spreading out the game over the entire field of play. The key changes were:
·
Creation of a neutral zone at the line
of scrimmage
·
The distance required for a first down was
increased from five to ten yards
·
Mass formations and gang tackling were
banned
·
The length of the game was reduced to
two thirty-minute halves
·
The forward pass was recognized as a
legitimate offensive play
In
1906, college football deaths were reduced to six, of which three were caused
by fist fights between Ivy League players.
By 1909, the danger returned, with
thirty-three football-related deaths.
More changes were made to the game in 1910 and 1912, including a ban on
flying tackles. Field goal points were
reduced from four to three, and touchdown points were increased from five to
six.
College Football blossomed as a sport
in the years following World War I. Many
of the veterans returned from the war and entered college. The deaths and violence experienced in Europe
made football seem like a parlor game. The
prosperity of the 1920’s, and the relief that war was over, seemed to heighten
the enjoyment for the fans during their Saturdays at the stadiums. The radio broadcasts also created legions of followers.
But the danger continued to lurk on
college football fields throughout the United States during the 1920’s. At Kansas State Normal (currently Emporia
State University), many veterans returned from the war to play football. Their coach, Bill Hargiss, followed the strategies
of Knute Rockne, the coach at Notre Dame, who was perfecting the wide open game
of passing and open field running. It
was in the latter part of the 1920 season when tragedy struck the Normal team during
a game against Washburn College. In a
light mist on a muddy field, Normal’s big fullback, Jack Reeves, took the ball
and plunged through the line. A sideline
tackle by one of Washburn’s players broke Reeve’s neck. He was carted off the field and died while
the game continued. His teammates were
not told of Jack’s death until after the game.
The news broke the spirit of the Normal players. The game for the next week was cancelled, and
the final game of the season was played, but Normal lost to College of Emporia,
24-0.
Tragedy struck again at Kansas State
Normal in 1921. Don Davis, Normal’s
outstanding running back was playing with an ear infection. He was tackled hard in a game against Baker
University, and the infection spread to his sprained and bruised shoulder. Davis’s condition deteriorated, and he died
on November 21, 1921. The final game of
the season was cancelled.
In 1923, Normal was renamed Kansas
State Teachers College. For the football
players, the deaths of years past were behind them. The college fans looked up to those who
continued to play the game. To them, the
players were heroes, and carried an aura of invincibility and machismo.
The
senior quarterback and halfback, John Beck, had the best game of his career at
the beginning of the season, scoring three touchdowns and two drop-kick field
goals. He paid a heavy price through the
physical pounding he received from the opposing players. The coach put him on the bench for the better
part of two games to allow him to recuperate from his injuries. While Beck sat on the bench during a game
against Southwestern College, KSTC tied the score, and then intercepted a
pass. Time was running out and KSTC was
within field goal range. This prompted
coach Hargiss to call time-out and walk over to Beck, who was known by the fans
as Johnnie with the educated toe. They knew he was suffering, but they yelled
for the coach to put him in the game. A
great cheer went out from the crowd as Beck stood up and did his best to mask
the pain as he limped out onto the field.
He kicked the winning field goal and became the hero, upholding the
macho image of a football player who ignores pain and injury to do anything for
the team.
While
college football continued to grow as a sport, there wasn’t much public
interest in professional football in the early twentieth century. After World War II, the National Football
League grew in popularity as the public sought out sporting and recreational
venues. The league’s largest expansion
occurred in 1970 when it merged with the American Football League and expanded
to twenty-six teams. The players
continued to increase their size and speed, due to improved nutrition and
physical training, which included major emphasis on weight lifting.
With
larger, faster athletes, new safety issues have emerged, such as concussions
and bone/joint injuries. In 2004, the
average weight of an NFL defensive tackle exceeded 300 pounds. Quarterbacks, running backs and wide
receivers have become open targets for massive defensive players who move at
lightning speed. The Joe Theismann injury is a prime example of this
vulnerability of the ball carrier. The
defensive players have learned to be effective by lowering their heads just prior
to executing a tackle, thus creating a battering ram of tremendous force. The NFL has attempted to counteract these
issues by imposing new rules to penalize players for intentional use of the
helmet as a weapon, and for late tackles or hits to the quarterback. The immediate injuries are obvious, but there
is now concern among the players and the league regarding long-term effects
from the heavy and repeated blows a player receives during his career. One recent NFL study determined that football
veterans over the age of fifty are five times more likely than the average
population to exhibit some form of dementia.
Will
the danger in football ever be eliminated?
The NFL history has shown that violence continues regardless of rule
changes and fines to players and teams.
The constant changes to the rules seem like a whack-a-mole strategy. When one safety issue is solved, another pops
up. Fans enjoy the violence as long as
it doesn’t get out of control. They see
the players as gladiators on the field, and get a rush from screaming out their
anger or their joy, releasing all their pent-up emotions each weekend.
The
NFL has attempted to address player safety through rule changes, but the recent
discovery of the bounty system that existed within the New Orleans Saints team
has shocked coaches, players and fans.
The NFL alleges the Saints organization promoted and supported cash
payments of $1,000 to $1,500 to defensive players if they were able to inflict
enough pain to cause the opposing players to be carted off the field. The Saints have been fined $500,000, and the
head coach, Sean Payton, has been suspended for the entire 2012 season. The defensive coordinator, Gregg Williams,
has been suspended indefinitely.
The
story continues to unfold, but the existence of a locker room tape provides a
glimpse into the attitude and directives of Gregg Williams as he prepared his
team for a game with the San Francisco 49ers.
Williams’
instructions to “kill Frank Gore’s head” seem eerily similar to Pennsylvania’s
pre-game plan to injure Tiny Maxwell over 100 years ago. Williams told his
players to turn Gore’s head “sideways.” He also directed them to inflict injury
on Kyle Williams, a San Francisco wide receiver, who was recovering from a
concussion: “No. 10 [Williams] . . .
about his concussion. We need to put a
(expletive) lock on him right now.”
It
causes the fans to ask, “Has anything really changed?”
If
football safety were taken to the extreme, the players would suit up in
marshmallow-like suits, wearing foam helmets the size of pumpkins, chasing each
other like Michelen men, bouncing and rolling around on the field. Football would be in danger of losing its
soul if that scenario became reality.
Fans want to see the physical strengths and weaknesses of the players
tested on the field. They want to see
the muscles and the sweat, the action and the glory.
So
for the time being, college and professional football will roll the dice and
let the game continue to be played in a heady mix of television money, fanatical
followers, packed stadiums and slow motion replays . . . and they’ll wait for
the next tragedy to occur.
*
* *
Sources:
History
of American Football – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Violence and Controversy (1905)
Miller,
John J. How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football.
Wall Street Journal, Thursday, April 21, 2011, page A13.
Pagano,
Richard. Robert ‘Tiny’ Maxwell. College
Football Historical Society, Volume I, No. IV, May 1988.
Keyes,
Ralph. Tiny Maxwell Cut a Wide Swath As a Football Player, Ref and
Writer.
Markowitz,
Fred A. Football – For the Sport of It (A history of football from 1893 to 1962
at the Kansas State Teachers College of Emporia).
Football
game summaries, Kansas State Teachers
College, Yearbook, The Sunflower 1924, pages 116 - 117.
Wallace,
Francis. Knute Rockne. Garden City,
New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1960
Futterman,
Matthew and Albergotti, Reed, NFL Flags
Saints for Bounty Hunting. Wall
Street Journal, Thursday, March 22, 2012, page A1.
Mellinger,
Sam. NFL,
Fans Share Blame for Pain. The
Kansas City Star, Thursday, March 22, 2012, page A1.
Babb,
Kent. A Stunning Penalty. The
Kansas City Star, Thursday, March 22, 2012, page B1.
MercuryNews.com,
04/04/12, Bounty Tape Transcript: Saints
assistant Gregg Williams tells his players to try to seriously hurt 49ers
players.
http://www.mercurynews.com/49ers/ci_20332637/bounty-tape-transcript-ex-saints-assistant-gregg-williams
Great piece, Greg. I hope it gathers some attention.
ReplyDelete