cumbersome attire cannot move so quickly as an English player clad
simply in jersey, short breeches, boots, and stockings; and I question
very much whether--slugging apart--the American assumption that the
science of Yale would simply overwhelm the more elementary play of an
English university is entirely justified. Anyone who has seen an
American team in this curious paraphernalia can well understand the
shudder of apprehension that shakes an American spectator the first
time he sees an English team take the field with bare knees.

Certainly the spirit and temper with which football is played in the
United States would seem to indicate that the over-elaborate way in
which it has been handled has not been favourable to a true ideal of
manly sport. On this point I shall not rely on my own observation, but
on the statements of Americans themselves, beginning with the
semi-jocular assertion, which largely belongs to the order of true
words spoken in jest, that "in old English football you kicked the
ball; in modern English football you kick the man when you can't kick
the ball; in American football you kick the ball when you can't kick
the man." In Georgia, Indiana, Nebraska, and possibly some other
States, bills to prohibit football have actually been introduced in
the State Legislatures within the past few years. The following
sentences are taken from an article in the _Nation_ (New York),
referring to the Harvard and Yale game of 1894:

The game on Saturday at Springfield between the two great teams
of Harvard and Yale was by the testimony--unanimous, as far as
our knowledge goes--of spectators and newspapers the most brutal
ever witnessed in the United States. There are few members of
either university--we trust there are none--who have not hung
their heads for shame in talking over it, or thinking of it.