Damar Hamlin, Korey Stringer, Junior Seau, Dave Duerson, Ryan Shazier, Anquan Boldin.

Which names pop into your mind when you think about violence, severe injury, and death in football?

It’s been a violent sport its entire existence. Deaths on the football field were a big enough concern in 1905 that President Teddy Roosevelt convened a meeting with leaders from major universities to discuss making the sport safer.

Football at that time was exclusively a running game. Teams had 3 downs to gain 5 yards. Forward passes were illegal. Mass formations such as the flying wedge were the norm. Some players had handles sewn into the sides of their jerseys so teammates could more easily link together and drive the opponent backward.

This rugged style of play caused 19 deaths from football injuries in 1905 alone. That year, Columbia University announced it was banning football. Harvard threatened to ban it as well unless rule changes were made.

Reform #1: The Forward Pass

Shortly after Columbia’s bombshell announcement, a rules committee instituted the forward pass, designed to “open up” the game.

Walter Camp, coach at Yale, opposed drastic changes to the sport, so he fought to include conditions that made the forward pass virtually unusable. First, a pass had to be thrown from at least 5 yards behind the line of scrimmage. The pass had to land at least 5 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. It could not travel more than 20 yards downfield. An incomplete pass resulted in an automatic turnover, with the ball given to the other team at the spot the throw occurred (not at the spot the ball landed). Camp’s rules heavily discouraged the forward pass.

By 1912, the rules had loosened and players could throw from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage. Nevertheless, Wabash College had a game-winning touchdown pass against Notre Dame taken off the board when officials walked off the yardage and found the throw had traveled more than 20 yards in the air.

The forward pass didn’t gain widespread acceptance until 1913 when Notre Dame played Army at West Point and Gus Dorais linked up with Knute Rockne multiple times on long passes (the 20-yard rule was now defunct) en route to a 35-13 Notre Dame victory.

The forward pass opened up the field and reduced the size of the scrum at the line of scrimmage. The death toll on the football field decreased after the forward pass was instituted.

Even so, we can’t say the forward pass made football safe. If running downfield to catch a pass were a safe activity, Tom Brady would still be passing to some of the same receivers he threw to in 2001. On the contrary, while Brady continues to toss touchdown passes at age 45, his star receivers such as Deion Branch (age 43), Julian Edelman (age 36), and Rob Gronkowski (age 33) have long since retired due to age and injury.

Reform #2: Helmets

A tragedy on the field at Wabash College in 1910 demonstrated the need for better equipment, specifically helmets.

Ralph Lee Wilson, a freshman at Wabash, went for a tackle in a game against Saint Louis University. He dove and took a knee to the head, fracturing his skull in three places. He died in the hospital the next day. Wabash canceled the remainder of the football season, as did several high school teams in the area.

Wabash built a campus memorial for Wilson and it includes his last reported words, “Did Wabash win?”

[This is eerily reminiscent of Damar Hamlin’s collapse on the field on January 3 this year following a collision in the Buffalo-Cincinnati NFL game. His heart stopped, he was resuscitated after receiving CPR for nine minutes on the field, and he remained in a coma for two days. Upon waking, he asked, “Did we win?”]

A helmet probably would have saved Ralph Lee Wilson’s life. Colleges finally got around to requiring helmets in 1939 and the NFL followed suit in 1943. The problem is, even with these very helpful helmets, brain injuries remain a scourge.

To give you an idea how far we’ve come on the concussion issue, here is an excerpt from a book written in 1992 about the 1966 Notre Dame and Michigan State football teams:

“The only injury suffered during the Indiana game had been to tackle Joe Przybycki, and since it happened to his head, it wasn't considered the least bit serious. In fact, the [Michigan State] Spartans, enjoying their romp through Bloomington, found it downright funny. Przybycki had had his bell rung chasing a loose ball that eventually wound up in Hoosier hands. He made it off the field all right, but he didn't feel real certain about where he was. Being a good football player, he didn't tell anyone, and when the offense went back on the field, he jogged out with them, only instead of joining his own huddle, he wandered into Indiana's defensive huddle. He was pointed to the proper huddle, but on the following plays he kept trying to rejoin the Indiana defense. The coaches finally took him out and gave him the rest of the day off, which he spent on the bench enduring bad jokes not only from the Indiana fans behind the bench but from his own teammates. With a name like Przybycki, it was about what he had come to expect.”

Once an occasion of levity, concussions are now treated much more seriously. Improved helmet design has been a focus the last few years. Rule changes have gone into effect, outlawing helmet-to-helmet contact of the type that caused Anquan Boldin to sustain a broken jaw after an horrific hit in the 2008 Cardinals-Jets game.

Defenders may no longer aim at the head, so they have adjusted by diving helmet-first at opponents’ shoulders, knees, and toes instead. As the more protective helmets have grown in size, they’re able to inflict greater damage than ever before on these relatively unprotected body parts. Brain injuries may be going down (we don’t know for certain), but arms, legs, and kidneys are important, too.

Reform #3: The Culture of Football

Reading Jeff Pearlman’s biography of Chicago Bears running back Walter Payton, I learned that in the 70s and 80s, running out of bounds was considered cowardly. Runners were supposed to stay inbounds, ramming ahead for every possible inch.

The rules of football never prohibited running out of bounds to avoid collisions, but the culture of the sport discouraged it. The culture has shifted since then and players like Justin Fields, Pat Mahomes, and Aaron Rodgers show no compuction about sliding feet first or darting out of bounds to avoid tackles, even if it means sacrificing a few yards here and there. Health is more important in the long run.

For quarterbacks, at least. Running backs and receivers don’t enjoy the same amount of leeway. Neither do linemen or defensive players, for that matter. If any of these non-quarterbacks demonstrate reluctance to collide with other players at full speed, they soon earn the label “soft” and are benched so fast your head will spin.

Conclusion

In football, the rules, the equipment, and the culture have all been reformed in fits and starts since 1905. Yet nothing has changed the sport’s central reality: two teams of eleven men running and crashing into each other at full speed.

Until tackling is outlawed and replaced by belts with velcro flags attached, football will remain a violent, dangerous sport.

In 1905, arguing against allowing the forward pass, Dartmouth’s coach F.G. Folsom wrote, “Open play, for which the public is clamoring, does not abolish tackling and its attendant injuries, but on the contrary, gives occasion for the open tackle, from which more injuries come than from the much abused mass play. In the mass play, men are arranged to protect the player carrying the ball from a hard tackle, while, if he is running alone in the open, he is not so protected, and an open tackle is invited against which he cannot adequately guard himself with his hands, since they are otherwise employed in holding the ball. Open play alone, will not, therefore, eliminate accidents.”

Running plays are dangerous. Passing plays are dangerous. All the equipment in the world cannot prevent injury. No matter the tweaks to the rulebook, football is dangerous.

So What?

So what? I probably won’t stop watching football. I probably won’t stop reading about football. I probably won’t let my kids play football. I will always root for athletes to choose a sport other than football. I will always hope no one gets injured playing football. I will always hope football fades in prominence like boxing: still in existence, but largely overlooked in favor of safer, less violent, but nevertheless exciting sports.

I keep coming back to the people: Damar Hamlin, Korey Stringer, Junior Seau, Dave Duerson, Ryan Shazier, Anquan Boldin. Was football worth what they had to suffer? Unfortunately, some of them are no longer here to answer. 

Sources:

Books:

“Notre Dame and the Game That Changed Football: How Jesse Harper Made the Forward Pass a Weapon and Knute Rockne a Legend” by Frank P. Maggio

“The Biggest Game of Them All: Notre Dame, Michigan State, and the Fall of 1966” by Mike Celizic

“Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton” by Jeff Pearlman

Online resource:

“The Football Rules” by F.G. Folsom [https://archive.dartmouthalumnimagazine.com/article/1905/12/1/the-football-rules]