Fielding Yost

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Further, football, by bringing the player into contact with many opponents whom he must watch very carefully and shrewdly, is sure to develop his ability to read character. This is a very important benefit, often overlooked.
Along with the mental benefits of football comes the moral development, of which the most evident characteristic is courage. Every manly man must have a certain amount of courage, physical and mental, and no football player can long be without it. It requires a great deal of mental bravery to run into a foreseen possible physical danger as all players must often do. ”

“ Every player must learn to have perfect control of his temper, so that he may always play with discretion and never disgrace himself or his school by forgetting what the etiquette of the gridiron demands. A player must learn to be calm and rational in the most exciting moments, for it is at such times that the most is expected of him. He must never get rattled but must use his head all the time. Further, a great amount of self-control and self-denial must be exercised by the ordinary young college man when he begins training. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is true, of course, that there are exceptions to the rule in the general results of football. Instincts are developed in some players which do not redound to their advantage in after life. Injuries are possible in all sports as in the daily avocations. There are lawyers whose careers turn out anything but an ornament to the great profession and cases can be cited of clergymen who have disgraced their cloth, yet in neither instance is there a possible stigma to be cast on their co-workers who are sincerely benefiting the world by the same knowledge acquired by those who have perverted it. ”

“ It is very evident that a dullard can never play football properly. Hence it is by no means detrimental to the game to require high standings for all football men in their classroom work, as is the case in most colleges. Almost all the football players who have attained any recognized degree of success are good students. Football not only requires keen-minded men to play it but it makes its players still keener of mind. The regular exercise helps the player and makes his head clearer for study. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A thorough canvass was made of the veteran football players of Harvard, Yale and Princeton and a mass of testimony was secured from team captains, college authorities, preparatory school masters, and the result was a most complete array of data, proving beyond a doubt that football is a game in which the beneficent effects far outnumber the possible drawbacks. ”

“ The many and conflicting opinions regarding the effect of football on the players, not only in college but after graduation and judged from both the physical and mental points of view, led a prominent Bostonian to ask the Harvard Board of Overseers for an investigation. No formal defense of football has been attempted, in spite of repeated assaults on the game by sensational newspaper and magazine writers. ”

“ Obedience must be exercised not only on the field but also off the gridiron, for it is in the latter place that its sway calls for the most will power. Here the player must obey the rule of regular rising and retiring and must learn never to break it, no matter what temptations he may have. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While it was fair to conclude that men who had been out of college all the way from two or three years to sixteen or seventeen would be fully competent to judge of the effects of the game upon themselves, it seemed that something more would be necessary in the case of the schoolboy who had not yet entered college. ”

“ We find that the evidence here too, is that, in the majority of cases, the sport has been beneficial to the physical development and discipline of the school and that the consensus of opinion is that scholarship has certainly not suffered. ”