9781422283011

Like rugby, early football in- volved carrying or kicking the ball (which sort of looked like a leather watermelon), and involved mas- sive “ scrums ” or piles of bodies. There weren’t nearly as many of the high-speed collisions we see today. But with almost no protec- tive padding, the game offered plenty of pounding, elbowing, and eye gouging. Here’s an account of an 1893 football game between rivals Harvard and Yale, as reported in a German newspaper: “It turned into an awful butchery. Of twenty-two participants, seven were so severely injured that they had to be carried from the field in a dying condition. One player had his back broken, another lost an eye, and a third lost a leg. Both teams appeared upon the field with a crown of ambulances, surgeons and nurses. Many ladies fainted at the awful cries of the injured players.”

Early players wore canvas pants with leather patches and sometimes with wooden slats on the thighs.

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