The necessity which impelled the English schoolboy at Rugby a century ago to inaugurate some healthful, clean and interesting outdoor sport and the felicitous choice of this form of recreation are the factors which have caused the growth of football until now it is the leading college game of America. It originated in a simple, Anglo-Saxon desire for clean, energetic sport and the participants in the game were the only spectators. It lives now through the same desire, but the interest in the game has so developed that hundreds of thousands throughout the country annually witness its play, not as mere spectators but as ardent votaries. From Maine to California, from Minnesota to Texas, wherever there are schools or colleges, football, during the crisp, autumn days, is the magnet which draws people from every walk of life from offices and shops for a few hours in the open air.
History shows us that college life, before athletics had been so universally adopted, was very often a detriment to the physical development of the student. Formerly two ideals, diametrically opposed, met the student at his advent. There was the bookworm, with his high forehead and stooping shoulders on the one hand, and the gilded youth who sought and enjoyed the reputation of being the best billiard and card player in the institution, on the other. There was no middle course open to him if he aspired to distinction as a popular idol among the underclassmen. The billiard hall, with its poor light and poorer ventilation, or the stuffy card room, where its peculiar accomplishments were taught, offered the gravest menace to the physical well being of the student at this most critical period of his existence. Nor was the life of the bookworm better in this particular.
This condition does not exist at the present time. Before the prospective college man has finished his preparatory course necessary to an entrance into the higher scholastic field, the college athlete, the football player, the nearest approach to the all-round man, is the central figure in his ambitious dreams. Into his visions of physical supremacy there has been dexterously inserted by his older brother, his father and his different school teachers the absolute necessity for study. He realizes and regards it more seriously than did his active, young prototype thirty years ago. He is imbued with the definite ambition and knows that, before its accomplishment can possibly be attained, he must, first of all, he the student.
During that period of life ordinarily spent in college, energy and vitality are generated so abundantly that some legitimate physical exercise of a strenuous nature must be invented as a safety valve. Improperly directed or neglected, this surplus of vitality works an irremediable damage to the after life of its possessor. It is a matter of speculation, of course, but is, at the same time, warranted by our knowledge of what athletics are doing at the present time, that many men of brilliant promise in their early college life of a century ago would have been prominent in football had they lived at the present time, and would have thus avoided many influences which, in some cases, undoubtedly ruined their careers of service to the world.
Objections to football have been heard in certain quarters on account of its alleged brutality and the violence of the exercise demanded in its play. It is certainly not a game for weaklings or improperly trained boys, but statistics show that accidents of a serious nature are no more frequent in football than in horseback riding, hunting, yachting and many other kindred sports, which do not meet with disapproval on this ground. The game is no more violent than is required by the physical demands of the men who play it.
There are no memories which cling so persistently to the mind of the alumnus, always capable of awakening a glow of enthusiasm and always recalled with pleasure, as those interwoven in the football games of his undergraduate days. There are no ties so potent to bind him to the college through the business of after years. The conversations at class reunions invariably drift to football in general and certain games in particular. A comparison of the present with the past, which makes the undergraduate and the alumnus one in spirit, is of necessity drawn in this way. It is loyalty to college--college spirit--which makes the college man a valuable addition to the institution he adopts. It is the self-same spirit or a sentiment that stands for the best in college life and is an absolute essential to its success in its highest meaning, and it is college athletics, of which football is the highest exemplification, which make this spirit possible.
Without athletics the college life is dull and listless and a man leaves the halls of his alma mater, an alumnus, with the relief attending an accomplished task.
But, at the same time, while sentiment and spirit are essentials to success in the life of every man, they cannot lie dormant and accomplish the desired results by their mere existence. In conjunction with them must go other just as valuable attributes and these attributes are fostered and developed in football as in no other known game. Self-reliance, moral courage, "sand", determination, energy, discipline, judgment, self-restraint and enthusiastic interest are all found in the successful football player.
The training the football candidate necessarily undergoes is never wholly forgotten and, in after years, when he has left college and is grappling with the problems of life, it is an inestimable advantage. The player must learn to act for himself and quickly. In the stress of the game he must draw from his own resources in all emergencies. An inclination to falter through timidity or fear of the consequences is a complete disability. He must have a definite object in view in every play and must carry it through with bull-dog tenacity. His own interests must be subservient to the interests of the team. He must carry his whole heart into every play of the game and must never lose his temper. These same rules, properly carried out, bring success in after life.
The same vital points, continually drummed into a player in his training, are sure to influence the spectators who daily gather on the field to witness the practice. These attributes, personified in the ideal football player, dominate the entire student body and create a spirit which reaches out from the athletic field through the campus and into the very recitation room. The influence for good exerted in this way is incalculable.
In many cases students who would otherwise have been failures from the standpoint of physical development have been fired by the example of the football player and have developed ability which has been used for the glory of the college and the physical welfare of the owner in after life. The example of self-sacrifice engendered on the football field often extends in most surprising ways to the entire student body, and even those not participating in the active athletics are moved to habits of temperance and regularity. The perseverance which eventually brings success on the football field is an open book to every member of the undergraduate body and points the way to both athlete and student, not only during the college days but later in life as well. Independence of action and quickness of thought are sharpened by active participation in the game. Almost every college man is a conscientious and studious follower of the game. In no way is the utter futility of incompetence better illustrated than on the football field.
Aside from the better physical health resulting from a few hours spent on the field as spectators of the daily practice or the regular contests, the students return to their books or recitations with a mental exhilaration which is of great assistance.
From the opening of college in September, in all sections of the country, to its close in June, football is the most potent factor in the moulding of spirit, in the making of men, and in the bringing them together in the democracy of a common cause in the collegiate life. In the autumn, when the candidates for the team are being tried out and selected according to their worth, thousands of healthy young men take their places on the athletic field every afternoon. These hours in the open air are spent in beneficial exercise and, even if the candidate does not succeed in making the team, he is storing up for himself a fund of health from which to draw in later years. Besides, to a candidate disappointed in making the Varsity team, or the second eleven, there are positions waiting on the class teams.
One of the most impressive structures in the country is the Harvard stadium. Massive in construction, with a seating capacity of over 35,000, contributed by a class which has long since left the immediate influences of the institution, it is built essentially for the future and for football. Long after many of the buildings now used for the dissemination of learning at Cambridge have been replaced by newer edifices, the Harvard stadium will stand, impressive and entire, a monument to energetic manhood illustrated in football, and will ring with shouts and songs as rival colleges meet in contests of skill and strength in years to come.
Throughout the country, at the different universities, have been and are being erected structures intended for the same purpose. They are being built with a view to the permanency of the game to which they are adapted. These edifices are being erected at an enormous expense, it is true, with a view to the future, but are nevertheless necessary to meet the present demands of those who desire to witness the playing of the scheduled games of each season.
Wherever the game is being played--and this scope is limited only by the presence of schools and colleges, for these institutions are practically unanimous in their support of football--representative people of that particular section are attracted by football contests as by no other athletic event of the year. If football answered no other purpose than that of drawing the hundreds of thousands into the open air, away from offices and shops, drawing rooms and clubs, for a few health-giving hours, this would be reason enough for its existence.
Anyone who can be present as a spectator at one of the big football games of the year and can look on without enthusiasm as the game progresses is lacking in red blood and can expect no pleasure in outdoor sport. Football has earned for itself a unique place in the life of this country and deserves the position it has acquired. It is the national autumn sport, without a rival, and as such will retain its position as long as Anglo-Saxon blood flows in the veins of the young American.
No better evidence is found of the popularity which football has attained and the natural attractiveness and benefit which it brings, than the rapidity with which the game has swept over the preparatory and high schools of the country. From the colleges, the original homes of football, have gone out each year football players who have adopted teaching as their life work. These men have carried into their new positions a knowledge of the game which has been eagerly received wherever they have gone. Every preparatory school now has one or more instructors, a regular portion of whose labors is the instruction of the pupils of the school, in football, and the development of a team which shall properly represent the school on the gridiron. By this method the game has gained myriads of friends and adherents who in their college and university courses keep up their devotion to football. It also develops the young players along the correct lines and moulds the play of the schoolboys in ways which not only benefit the player, but develop him for the more important contests that will come when he reaches his chosen school of higher learning.
The necessity for an adequate field on which the game may be played in the high and preparatory schools has generally arisen all over the country and often the popularity of the game from the spectator's standpoint has provided the means of equipping the field and paying the expense. Some preparatory schools are far better off than many colleges in this respect and many of them maintain a football field and equipment complete in every particular. It is true that ideals are not always carried out and that the game and its influence are not always for the best. This is true of practically everything in life.
The photographic reproductions accompanying this chapter portray better than is possible by words the great concourse of people regularly attracted to the big football games all over the country. Such crowds, while largely composed of college people, could not be gathered from these alone. The spectators at a football match come from all walks of life and include thousands who love the game solely as a spectacle and an exhibition of concerted pluck and action. There is no crowd so cosmopolitan as that at a football game and this is, after all the most effective testimonial to the hold the game has, east, west, north and south, on the hearts of the American public.