“The most finished player in all around play I ever came across is Tack Hardwick.  He could go through a game, or afternoon’s practice and perform every fundamental function of the game in perfect fashion.  The most interesting and remarkable player I ever came across was Eddie Mahan.  He could do anything on the football field.  He was so versatile, that no real defense could be built against him.  He had a wonderful intuitive sense and always did just the right thing at the right time.”

CHAPTER XV

“THE BLOODY ANGLE”

Football in its very nature is a rough game.  It calls for the contact of bodies under high momentum and this means strains and bruises!  Thanks to the superb physical condition of players, it usually means nothing more serious.

The play, be it ever so hard, is not likely to be dangerous provided it is clean, and the worst indictment that can be framed against a player of to-day, and that by his fellows, is that he is given to dirty tactics.  This attitude has now been established by public opinion, and is reflected in turn by the strictness of officials, the sentiment of coaches and football authorities generally.  So scientific is the game to-day that only the player who can keep his head, and clear his mind of angry emotions, is really a valuable man in a crisis.

Again, the keynote of success in football to-day is team work, perfect interlocking of all parts.  In the old days play was individual, man against man, and this gave rise in many cases to personal animosity which frequently reduced great football contests to little more than pitched battles.  Those who to-day are prone to decry football as a rough and brutal sport—­which it no longer is—­might at least reverse their opinions of the present game, could they have spent a certain lurid afternoon in the fall of ’87 at Jarvis Field where the elevens of Harvard and Princeton fought a battle so sanguinary as to come down to us through the years legended as a real crimson affair.  One of the saddest accidents that ever occurred on a university football field happened in this contest and suggested the caption of “the Bloody Angle,” the historic shambles of the great Gettysburg battle.

Luther Price, who played halfback on the Princeton teams of ’86 and ’87 and who was acting captain the larger part of the latter season, tells the following story of the game: 

“Princeton’s contest with Harvard in the autumn of ’87 was the bloodiest game that I ever experienced or saw.  At that period the football relations between the two colleges were fast approaching a crisis and the long break between the institutions followed a couple of seasons later.  It is perhaps true that the ’87 game was largely responsible for the rupture because it left secret bitterness.

“In fact, the game was pretty near butchery and the defects of the rules contributed to this end.  Both sides realized that the contest was going to be a hummer but neither imagined the extent of the casualties.  Had the present rules applied there would have been a long string of substitutes in the game and the caption of ‘The Bloody Angle’ could not have been applied.