FOOTBALL | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 9, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 48.

FOOTBALL.

An eastern newspaper says: “There are two directions in which the modern game of football excels all other out-of-door games; first, in the drawing power of the game as a crowd getter; second, as a means for killing and maiming people.” Nine, we believe, is the number killed to date this year, and nearly three hundred have been maimed and crippled for life. Press and pulpit cry out against pugilism, and it is a brutal and degrading sport or “profession,” but in its results it is not as bad as football. After the recent game between Yale and Princeton in New Haven was a grand drunken carouse lasting from Thursday night till Sunday morning. Betting like drinking was fast and furious. Many were arrested and locked up, tho the police were unusually lenient. Says a reputable correspondent of a New York paper:—

“Students shrieked, smashed each other’s hats, tore each other’s clothes, poured beer down each other’s necks, swore, and sang. It seemed as tho at least every other man to be found anywhere was drunk. But by repeated attempts to count the drunken men in various places, and assorting those who appeared to be college boys from the others, I could not possibly estimate less than one thousand drunken students in New Haven last night.”

‘Here’s to good old Yale, Pour it down, pour it down.’

The above old refrain could be heard from one end of New Haven to the other.” And to complete the picture numerous lewd women led away to deeper dishonor many of the tipsy boys.

Fifty years of pugilism we venture to say have not killed and maimed and ruined as many as football has this season. And then the attendant gambling grows as the game grows popular. Men wager their last sesterce on the oftentimes brutal slogging contest, as the old Roman wagered his on the gladiatorial shows. We are living Pagan Rome’s days over again. The ancient bejeweled maiden or dame on the Tiber cheered on to death the gladiators who fought to amuse them, and the modern beflowered or beribboned maiden or dame cheers on to crippledom and often death their favorite college eleven. “Are we better than they?—No, in nowise;” for both American and Roman, Christian tho one profess to be and pagan the other, are both examples of the instincts and savagery of the natural heart of man, which Christianity, not civilization, alone can overcome.