“I don’t think he ever did,” replied Wolcott, answering the last of the triple volley of questions. “The fact is, he never has liked the modern system of college athletics. He says that in his time they used to sit under the trees and talk of what they were going to do in the world, and a prize oration was the highest honor of college life; now the ideal is a professional ball player or a pugilist; and instead of gathering to listen to a debate or an essay, they troop to the field and howl for a lot of gladiators. I’ve heard that kind of thing so many times that I can repeat it word for word,” he added with a melancholy smile. “Most athletes, according to his idea, are an inferior lot who never are heard of after they leave college. And then, as you say, he reads all the stories of injuries in the papers and takes them all for gospel truth.”
“Does he refuse to let you go out in a sailboat with a proper skipper, because so many greenhorns try to sail boats and are upset; or to go driving, because horses run away?” demanded Poole, addressing himself vigorously to the argument implied in Wolcott’s words.
Wolcott smiled grimly, but made no reply. It seemed a bit hard to be held responsible for his father’s views.
“That’s no use, Phil,” said Laughlin. “You aren’t arguing with Mr. Lindsay. What we want to do is to present our case so that he’ll take our point of view. Now in the first place, how many accidents have we had here in Seaton with about a hundred fellows playing every fall?”
“None this year,” said Ware. “Elkins broke his collar-bone last year, and the year before a fellow smashed his nose. Of course there were bruises and lame shoulders, but they don’t amount to anything.”
“Both these fellows you mention were green men,” said Laughlin. “That’s the point we want to make. It’s the green, untrained boys who get hurt—fellows who haven’t had proper care and teaching, and who go floundering into the game without knowing how they ought to dress or what to do with their arms and legs, or how to tackle or how to fall.”
“A good many of the cases of accident in the newspapers are fakes,” said Ware; “the dead man is attending recitations the next morning. Most of the real accidents happen to absolute greenhorns—fellows playing for the first time, without the slightest knowledge of the rudiments of the game,—and it’s almost always off in some remote place where they don’t know much about football, not in the centres where the game has been going on for a long time.”