Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/268

264 of time than did the college men. A delightfully optimistic lot of boys were these gridiron youngsters, not one of whom would grant the slightest possibility of permanent injury. One acknowledged 'a fine headache for several days and a slightly crooked nose which was the fault of the Docktor.' Another adds: 'And I am glad to say I couldn't carry out the ashes.' Only eleven dared say that they were in good training.

In their bearing upon the purpose of this study, which was, as I have said, to determine if possible the accuracy of newspaper reports of football injury, what do these returns mean? Seemingly, so far as college players are concerned, they tend to prove the utter unreliability of the press reports. What are the facts in support of this? Seventy-eight reports of 'serious injury' to college men appear in a single season, many of them described in detail and under 'scare headlines.' From sixty of these persons replies were received, while the letters addressed to fourteen others are returned unopened, indicating in all likelihood that there was no such person, since in every instance the name, the team and the words 'football player' were on the envelope. And of the sixty heard from, but five can, it seems to me, with any degree of fairness be considered 'seriously injured,' and with them it is a question. Upon such reports is the present popular revulsion against football founded. Nor is the condition that I have pointed out either local or of recent standing. The reports that I have studied appeared in papers in all parts of the country, and a series of letters sent out by me at the close of the football season of 1902 gave results in no way differing from these. Of twenty-three college men reported seriously injured that season, 2 stated that the report was false; ten lost no time, and in every instance recovery was complete. If it were not for the tragedy of it all, some of the reports would be better fitted for the comic supplement than the news columns. Note the following that appeared in a leading paper at the close of the last season under heavy headlines, 'The Dead and How They Were Killed.'

The entire list contained the names of 18 others, who are presumably dead and supposedly so from the direct effect of football. Within a comparatively recent time one of the foremost daily papers of the country appeared with the scare headlines 'Football Player Killed,' for no more valid reasons in one case than the killing of an ex-football player by the cars on a grade crossing, and the other the electrocution of a boy on a scrub team, who had climbed an electric-light pole to remove the ball, which had, by accident, lodged in the lamp. Such