Life, 1925-11-19 · page 14 of 40
Life — November 19, 1925 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes the Football Rules Committee's attempt to regulate college football after concerns about brutality and tampering with athletic traditions. The top cartoon shows a coach confronting a player about a "lame leg," with the joke being that injuries are inevitable in the sport. The main article criticizes the notion that football represents military preparedness, arguing that pigskin football—not the "crucial battle of the year"—is what college students actually play. It mocks the idea that football develops future generals and military officers, suggesting this justification masks the sport's real nature as a rough, injury-prone game played by undergraduates rather than serious preparation for Army/Navy service.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Head Coach: _ “According to the National Tanners’ Council of America, it is all wrong to call a football a pigskin; instead it's a cowhide.” ws item. T is hoped that the above disclosure has already been brought to the atten- tion of the Football Rules Committee. Something ought to be done to prevent further tampering with the traditions of a great game. Time may come when a defenseless public, resigned to de-pig- “BULL” MISTAKES THE TACKLER’S HEAD FOR THE BALL, PROCEEDING—— WHERE DID YOU GET THAT LAME LEG—CHARLEY HORSE? Varsity Man Pigs Is Cows skinned football, will be asked to be- lieve that the last game of the season is not the crucial battle of the year, that bulldog grit and courage are sometimes played with by Harvard teams as well as Yale, that grid warriors are, after all, only college undergraduates playing a game, and that there are not enough generalships and admiralships in the en- tire Army and Navy to begin to accom- NO, SIR, CHARLESTON HORSE, DOWN THE FIELD, modate all the Future Generals and Admirals who have figured in the annual service game. What the coun- try needs is bigger and better stadiums and more illusions about what goes on there. There is tragedy enough in the revelation that pigskin is cowhide and that the parents of Halfback Grange named him not Red but Harold. FLW. WHERE HIS UNSUSPECTED) EXCESS BAGGAGE IS TACKLED AND—— comicbooks.com