Back when football was banned at BYU – and almost in the entire state

                    Rice Stadium, The University of Utah football stadium.

By Lynn Arave

“OPPOSED to the game of football” was a headline in the Deseret News on Dec. 8, 1905. Too many injuries and even the death of a Utah football player in a game during the 1900 season combined to create a ban on football at the Provo school.

Football was played at BYU, when it was named Brigham Young Academy, from 1896-1903. But, about the same time as the Brigham Young University name came along in 1903, the sport of football was discontinued there, for some 16 years.

In fact, “Mormon Church is against football” was a Nov. 18, 1908 headline in the Salt Lake Tribune. This report stated that all schools operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would now also ban football. The matter had been under review for a year and many students petitioned for football, but it was considered too violent and too injury prone.

This wasn't just an LDS Church stand against football. Institutions all over the U.S., like Harvard and Columbia, were also against the sport for its brutality.

"Not for gentlemen" was a common saying at schools which banned football.

"Football is a hospital feeder," was another slogan against gridiron play.

Nation-wide, there were at least 45 deaths and hundreds of serious injuries reported from the 1905 college football season.

President Theodore Roosevelt that year met with sports officials from Harvard, Yale and Princeton to hopefully get football injuries reduced. President Roosevelt’s sons played the game and he wasn’t out to halt the sport, just make it safer to play.

“Present football is too dangerous” was a Nov. 19, 1909 Tribune headline. Schools in New York State banned all football games in 1909, citing, “bones were broken and pupils otherwise injured.” By 1910, the University of Kansas also banned football.

Some football rules had been changed in the early 1900s to try and make it safer, but numerous injuries still continued.

                 College football could have been banned at Utah in 1909.

The Utah State Legislature had House Bill 165 proposed in 1909, that would have halted all football play in the State – especially at the University of Utah and the Agricultural College. However, the bill was finally withdrawn before a vote.

In BYU's case, it was the General Board of Education of the LDS Church, which prompted the ban on football. According to the Deseret News, some students left BYU, or didn't attend there, because of this ban.

(Of course, no one dreamed back then that BYU would ever be the national champion in college football, as it was in 1984, some 64 years after the ban was lifted.)

Since football was banned at BYU during those years, a church-wide ban meant the sport was also halted at Weber Stake Academy (forerunner of Weber State University).

Finally, more rules were changed and advances in football equipment both helped make the game safer for players.

Football returned to BYU in 1919 as an intramural sport. The next two seasons BYU had limited college play and finally the Cougars had a full football season in 1922, though the team’s record was a dismal 1-5.

-Football was perhaps its most brutal in the late 19th Century. The Ogden Standard-Examiner reported this in 1885 about the Ogden High Football team:

“The boys have laid in a good supply of shin plaster, and for a week or past, they have had a carpenter busily engaged in manufacturing crutches. Several competent surgeons have been retained for the occasion (upcoming game) and will be in attendance.”

-It also wasn’t just brutality that cancelled football games in the early 20^th Century either. An October 3, 1908 game of the University of Utah’s freshman team against Ogden High was cancelled due to bad weather. A few years later, a soggy, wet field also cancelled a game.

Also, a November 1907 gridiron contest of West High School against Ogden High was cancelled by the Board of Education due to rowdy, public disturbances caused by Salt Lake players in their improper advertising of the upcoming game.

-Finally, yes, college teams routinely played high school teams in Utah during the early 20^th Century. In October of 1912, the University of Utah Freshman Team whipped Ogden High 56-0. With a shortage of other prep teams in the area back then, preps even played college teams as far away as Montana.

(-Originally published in the Deseret News on Nov. 21, 2017.)