[NU Sports] Change the coaches?

[Jeff Beamsley]

Nice idea, but just not the truth.

Here's a quote from the NU history page.

1905 Football banned for five years due to violence.
1907 Football ban recinded.

Here's a quote from the Yale site:

Across the country, the tide was turning against a game many considered
barbaric and unacceptably dangerous. In that season (1905) alone, 18 deaths
and 149 serious injuries were attributed to football. At colleges across the
country, including Harvard, a movement was afoot to ban the game.

So contrary to your claim, I think that "unhappy people" in 1905 probably
did have a reasonable basis for concern and it had precious little to do
with how teams were performing.  I would also hope, if kids started getting
killed in similar numbers in today's game, that people would also refuse to
be "satisfied" with the status quo.  

Your misleading post does bring up an interesting bit of history.

The reason why the game was so violent is that the forward pass was illegal
and you only needed five yards to get a first down.  In fact Stanford voted
to replace football with rugby because rugby was considered a safer game for
the players.

Teddy Roosevelt was President and got involved because one of his sons was
playing for Harvard.  Yale, however, didn't want the changes because they
had a dominant team.  As more and more colleges banned the sport and Harvard
threatened to do so as well, Yale finally relented and the rule changes
including the forward pass were approved.  The first year of the rule change
Yale beat Harvard 6-0 with a forward pass.  With the new rule changes, the
sport revived around the country (and at NU).  And now you know the rest of
the story.

Jeff



-----Original Message-----
From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On
Behalf Of MHRJGScott at aol.com
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2005 4:13 PM
To: nwu-sports at tssi.com
Subject: Re: [NU Sports] Change the coaches?

 
100 years ago  there were those nay sayers who thought NU football was not
worth the trouble,  bad coaches, underachieving players, too many losses. I
guess those unhappy  people will never be satisfied. I am, we had a great
season. 
With thanks to  hailtopurple.com for a history lesson: 
"A storm of  criticism followed the 1905 season. In the midst of all this
clamor against football,  Northwestern University, along with Columbia and
Union College in the East, took  the drastic action of abolishing
football."
_______________________________________________
nwu-sports site list
nwu-sports at tssi.com
http://romaine.tssi.com/mailman/listinfo/nwu-sports