WHAT AMERICAN FOOTBALL COSTS

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 43, 14 January 1921, Page 15

WHAT AMERICAN FOOTBALL COSTS

When our American cousin takes to football, he recks as little how the doilars fly as how many of his bones are broken in the fray; for a "fray" it is across the Atlantio. Why, three years ago, the casualty list of American football included 18 men killed and 135 seriously injured. Broken legs numbered a round two dozen ; there were 20 cases of brain concussion, 27 broken collar bones, and so on, through the gruesome list which reads like the record of a sanguinary battle. Some years earlier, in 1905, 24 players lost their Iives during the brief season of American football, which only lasts through September and October. Such is the cost in human life and limbs ; and it is only fit-ting that the cost in doilars should be of a similarly sen. sational scale. Yale College, for instance, sp'ends no lfess than £12,000 a year on the training of its football team, and of this enormous sum £3,000 goes to the- head coach alone. A salary greater than that of some of our Cabinet Ministers for a football-coach ! Prodigious! But, then, they are careful to explain that this highly-paid official is an old Uuiversity man, a gentleman and an athlete of world-wide fame. So, no doubt, he is worth his money. Under the head-coach are second coaches; while each man in the team has his own coach and his own trainer who never leave him. Then look at some of the items in this wonderful bill of costs, On shoes alone a sum of £220 is spent annually, a bill for foot-gear which would indicate ta ihe out. sider that a team of centipedes was in training. Ttien there are "uniforms and armour" for the football warrior which run to £750 a year. To speak of "armour" is no fanciful exaggeration ; for the Transatlantic footballer goes into battle as fuliy equipped for the fray as any anci^nt knight of Agincourt or Crecy — indeed, in appearance he is a cross between an armour ed knight I and a diver on dry land. He wears a | jacket of the toughest canv'a^i and trousers of canvas or moleskin, with thick padding at the knees and across the. thighs. He covers his head with a huge leather helmet, like an inverted cookI ing utensil; and wears strong leather eari protectors and indiarubber guards for i mouth and nose. A STOUT DEFENCE. His shoulders are protected with leather shields, and leather pads cover his chest.

He has shin guards of rattan and leather ; | bandages of cotton or silk for wrists and ankles, and knee-caps; leather protectors for his thighs — and so. on through the long list, scarcely a square inch of him -being without its stout defensive armour. No wonder that such a panoply costs every penny of a ten-pound note. And every bit of it is necessary; indeed, with the brutal tackling, jabbing, scrimmages, knee. jerking tactics, and the spiked boots of the players, nothing short of mediaeval armour would provide adequate protection. Then the hotel and living expenses of the Yale team come to well over £1,000 a year ; and carriage hire is roughly £200. Thus the items mount up to the colossal total, which works out to over £1,000 a head for each actual member of the team, leavxng out reserves. And how the expenses have grown is shown by ; the fact that, thirty years ago, Yale ; football cost- only £560 — much less than is now spent on armour alone. And this, we should remember, is the price paid for one sport by one- College, some of the members of which are so poor that they are obliged to pay their college expenses by menial labour. This is how one Yale man actually paid for his degree : The attendance at the matches are enormous, running often to | 50,000, and including millionaires, senators, judges, and Congressmen, who gladly for his degree : He waited at the table, raked leaves, shovelled snow, mowed lawns picked grapes, tended furnaces, tutored, canvassed, collected subscriptions, and rang the college bell. But, of course, there is another aspect of American football. The attendances at the matches are eiv "unous, running often to 50,000 and including millionaires, senators, judges and congressmen, who gladly pay £5 for a seat, and cheer the players j tlll they are purple and hoarse, what time stretcher parties are carrying the wounded | and often dying gladiators from the "stricken field."