No American game has won so much praise and, at the same time, so much censure, as has football. The game has been lauded for the scientific play it develops and for the training of mind and body it affords the players. It has been adversely criticised for its roughness and the consequent injuries which the players are likely to receive. From the point of view of some spectators the game seems so dangerous to the players that to allow the game to be played in our colleges seems half-civilized.
Such persons are not really well acquainted with football as it is played today for the game is first in the many forms of athletic competition in the development of the player physically, mentally and morally.
Although to the layman football is primarily a physical game, the bodily benefits afforded the player are by no means the only ones he receives. True, it does afford the player better opportunities for physical development than any other sport. In most other branches of competitive athletics only parts of the body are brought into exercise. In football all muscles are used alike. The arms, legs and back are all required to do their work. The running and swift succession of plays develop the endurance. In every possible way the muscles of the player are hardened. Furthermore, no single part of him is developed abnormally. Football players do not become slow, muscle-hound men. They develop into smooth, enduring athletes. The physical development derived from football is readily shown by the charts of college trainers, giving the physical measurements of football players before and after they have become veterans. In every case the measurements show a remarkable growth in strength, size and symmetry for the athlete.
The physical benefits, while generally admitted, have often been counted of little value, however, because of the roughness of a game which, it has been claimed, injures more players than it benefits.
That football is brutal, no one who is acquainted with the game will admit. All will concede that the game is rough but roughness does not constitute brutality. Liability to injury on the part of the players cannot be entirely eliminated but this is true of every game and occupation in life. In almost every town where football is played it will be found that such sports as boating, hunting, skating and the rest furnish more serious accidents each year than does the game of football. Since our whole lives are made up of physical risks, any game which has no element whatever of roughness or risk is hardly worthy of young and vigorous men.
However, the roughness of football should be eliminated as much as possible and this is done to a great extent among our great teams today. These teams are trained by skilled men whose sole duty it is to see that each player is fit to do his part in the game. Furthermore, the players are usually taught the principles of gentlemanly conduct and much of the roughness of the game is eliminated in this way. Football is being made more and more a game of physical and mental skill, rather than a contest of mere force. The old style of mass plays is giving way to the more scientific and open variety. All this tends to eliminate the liability of serious injury to the player and at the same time affords him the very best opportunity for physical development.
But the physical benefits of football are of no greater importance to the average college man than are its advantages to his mental development. Football is a game of strength, but of strength properly controlled by the mind. Many games are won by the mental superiority of one team over another. This is a phase of football with which the average spectator is entirely unfamiliar. He can easily see the push and scramble on the field but he cannot comprehend the workings of the minds that direct the efforts of both sides. However, any spectator ought to be able to appreciate the severe mental drill given to the player when, in order to be successful, he must learn a mass of rules and be able to understand them all and act accordingly; master a system of signals and carry them out instantly; understand his own play and that of his fellows so that they all work together with the precision of a machine, and do all this with a quickness and accuracy demanded by no other game.