An American football player in full armour resembles a deep-sea diver or a Roman retiarius more than anything else.  The dress itself consists of thickly padded knickerbockers, jersey, canvas jacket, very heavy boots, and very thick stockings.  The player then farther protects himself by shin guards, shoulder caps, ankle and knee supporters, and wristbands.  The apparatus on his head is fearful and wonderful to behold, including a rubber mouthpiece, a nose mask, padded ear guards, and a curious headpiece made of steel springs, leather straps, and India rubber.  It is obvious that a man in this 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.

In the first place, we respectfully ask the governing body of all colleges what they have to say for a game between youths presumably engaged in the cultivation of the liberal arts which needs among its preliminaries a supply on the field of litters and surgeons?  Such preparations are not only brutal, but brutalising.  How any spectator, especially any woman, can witness them without a shudder, so distinctly do they recall the duelling field and the prize ring, we are unable to understand.  But that they are necessary