On Sunday, November 26, 1905, the citizens of Chicago turned to the pages of the Chicago Tribune and were shocked to learn:

FOOTBALL YEAR'S DEATH HARVEST

Nineteen Players Have Been Killed, 138 Hurt

The dreadful statistic presented startling testimony that American football, played by their sons and brothers, could be fatal. 

The next week on December 3, the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune published a cartoon of the Grim Reaper, scythe in hand, sitting atop a football goal post. Underneath was depicted  the mangled, lifeless bodies of fallen football players. The text read: "A ghastly total of 25 killed and 168 seriously injured." These startling facts spread immediately as other newspapers reprinted the tally of the past season's mortalities. The majority of these deaths occurred among young, high school athletes.

American football had become the dominant sport of autumn, rivaling baseball as the national pastime. It had become the singular activity that defined college masculinity in the nation. And suddenly, the media accused it of being as deadly as a plague. 

What could or should be done to remedy the calamity? Who would make the case for football's banishment or press for football's reform?

A Dangerous Game

The game had become a brutal sport, demanding its eleven competitors engage in close physical combat in mass formations. The players had to be on offense and defense without substitutions in a match comprising 200 plays. And compete without wearing any protection. No padding. No "head harness."

Fundamental were mass plays like the flying wedge, which witnessed the offense locking arms to form a rigid "V", then storming down the field in a solid wall of moving bodies. For the defense, disrupting the powerful wedge could be painful or even lethal. Bone on bone contact. Teams often employed targeted violence, a strategy to eliminate the opposition's best player.

Rules Changes for 1906

Henry MacCracken was the Chancellor of New York University.  At first, to decide football's status, he tried to enlist Charles Eliot, president of Harvard, to form a committee. But Eliot wanted football abolished, decrying the warlike nature of the game. Undaunted., MacCracken convened a meeting in 1905 with representatives of 62 universities to form the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States - IAAUS.

The genius of MacCracken's initiative was to invite a large and diverse total of colleges from all sections of the country. By 1905, football was played from coast to coast, from North to South, in large and small universities (85-plus total), and, prominently, in public and private high schools. The IAAUS consensus was overwhelmingly favorable to reform the game. To preserve the sport with changes and thereby reduce future violence and deaths. The new rules:

• Legalization of the forward pass;

• Abolishing the Flying Wedge;

• Creating a one-yard neutral zone between offense and defense;

• First down distance increased to ten yards from five yards;

• Time of game reduced from 70-minutes to 60-minutes; and,

• New penalties for piling on and late tackling out of bound.

The Forward Pass

The revolutionary adoption of a pass thrown forward - albeit with restrictions - represented the single most important change in the sport. Historically, rugby and football operated with penalties for a ball passed or dropped forward, as indicated by the knock on rule. Vital to remember is that the ball of 1905 was squat and fatter than a person's hand. It was not easy to throw, even with the addition of sewn laces. 

When the Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA) met in 1905, one suggestion was to widen the football field to 40-yards. But in 1903, Harvard had spent $310,000 (11 million dollars in today's money) to build Soldier Field stadium. It featured a cinder track and concrete stands that formed too narrow space to widen the pitch. 

It was then that Bill Reid, the Harvard Coach, recommend the forward pass to the IFA members. The Committee was under pressure to demonstrate quickly a list of potential changes. Reluctantly, it approved the adoption of the pass, but with three restrictions:

1. If the ball touched the ground (i.e.; an incompletion) it represented a turnover to the opposition at the location of the pass;

2. Only the two ends were eligible to catch passes; and.

3. The ball could not be passed over the center, it had to be thrown toward he sidelines. 

Final Note

32:28

By the end  of 1905, the two Rules Committees fulfilled their mission to recommend changes to football. America would have to wait months for the first game kickoffs in September to appraise whether these changes had any effect reducing the harmful features of the sport.