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