old union
A football tragedy reforms the game
A
century before the recent conversations about the consequences of head injury in contact sports, the tragic death in 1905 of Union’s sophomore halfback stunned the College and helped to catalyze a movement for reforms in collegiate football. Harold Ransom Moore was by all accounts well-liked and respected. “Blue” was the hardworking son of William and Frances Sayer Moore of Ogdensburg in St. Lawrence County. He graduated with highest honors from Ogdensburg Free Academy where he set a number of marks in football and track. He was named an alternate for an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. After summer jobs as a surveyor, he entered Union in 1904 as a civil engineering major. He joined the Democratic Party Club and Phi Delta Theta fraternity. He ran track and played football. Moore was the ideal college athlete, according to Denis P. Brennan, lecturer in history at Union. “He was the proto‘Frank Merriwell’—naturally talented academically, spiritually and athletically,” he said. On Nov. 25, 1905, Union’s football squad was at Columbia University’s Ohio Field for what would have been an unremarkable 11-0 loss to New York University to end a 3-6 season. What is more remembered than the score or the season record is captured in A Memoir of Union College Life 1903 to 1907 by Moore’s teammate, Hugh G. Davis ’07: “From the start, [the game] was rougher than anything I had ever seen. Early in the game, Harold Moore, Union left
60 | UNION COLLEGE Winter 2014
Harold “Blue” Moore, Class of 1908
halfback, was carrying the ball around our right end. I followed behind to prevent a tackle from the rear, and saw an NYU man break through the right side of our line and hit Moore hard with his body, throwing him backward, almost clear to the ground. Moore apparently hit on the base of his neck and was struck unconscious. He didn’t respond to first aid, and when he was taken to the hospital, his face was purple and he was then probably dead. The game continued and, for whatever reason human nature can provide, became a pure knockdown drag-out affair.” Moore’s funeral was highly attended by crowds from Ogdensburg, Union and NYU. He was glowingly eulogized by Concordiensis, whose reporter wrote, “His qualities were such as to endear him to all; his nature so lovable that he must make friends of all with whom he came into contact.” A month after Moore’s death, Union President Andrew
Van Vranken Raymond Jr. told alumni, “his death will not have been in vain if it results in the reform of athletics.” The Feb. 1906 issue of Union University Quarterly said, “His death caused a sensible shock throughout the eastern college world, and started the movements, now well under way, for the thorough reform of football.” Football at the turn of the century had no forward pass, and teams relied on mass formations to advance the ball. Hard collisions and the injuries they caused made the game something of a spectacle that resembled war. It was considered good strategy, and not against the rules, to try to disable the opponents’ best players. Accounts of football deaths in 1905 vary widely and range as high as the mid-teens. Brennan reports that the extent of injuries and deaths was probably overstated. But with a popular perception of football as a brutal sport, calls for reform and abolition
were building even before Moore’s death. Columbia, whose president called football “brutal and abominable” and an “academic nuisance,” dropped their program when its season ended just days before the Union-NYU game. While Moore’s death by itself did not lead to reforms, it is clear that it helped to catalyze a reform movement already under way. On Dec. 5, 1905, less than two weeks after the tragedy, representatives of 13 schools considered a resolution to abolish football under the current rules. The proposal failed, with Union’s representative voting in the minority. Later that month, however, a second conference of 62 delegates adopted rules changes including allowing the forward pass, the discouragement of mass momentum plays, and increasing downs from five to 10 yards. The second conference created the Inter Collegiate Athletic Association which in 1910 changed its name to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the NCAA. The reforms apparently had little effect; reported fatalities ranged from 10 to 15 over the next three seasons. A serious reduction in catastrophic injuries came years later with the introduction of effective headgear. Sources: Denis P. Brennan, “Reforming an ‘Academic Nuisance’: Harold Moore and the Creation of the NCAA,” (a paper delivered June 5, 2008 at the 29th Conference on New York State History). Wayne Somers, ed., The Encyclopedia of Union College History, (Union College, 2003) p. 289-290.