“When I cash in, they will take the brain and study it,” he told the San Jose Mercury News. Kapp, who suspects he has CTE, plans to donate his brain to UCSF. It’s also true that NFL veterans are four times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s than the general population. It’s true that Kapp, now 80, might have developed the disease in any case. And legendary Cal quarterback Joe Kapp, the last man to lead the Bears to the Rose Bowl, now suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.
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His autopsy showed early-stage CTE.Īs the number of cases mounts, an increasing number of parents are questioning the wisdom of allowing their sons to suit up.Ĭal has not gone unscathed in what has come to be known as “the concussion crisis.” Former Golden Bears star running back Jahvid Best’s pro career was cut short by a series of concussions, the most dramatic of which he suffered previously at Memorial Stadium. Last January, Washington State quarterback Tyler Hilinski killed himself at age 21. Both men shot themselves in the chest, Duerson specifically to preserve his brain for autopsy. An alarming number of former players with CTE have commited suicide, including well-known NFL veterans Junior Seau and Dave Duerson. The issues of violence and injury have roared back to public consciousness in the form of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease linked to head trauma and previously thought to be confined to aging, punch-drunk boxers. More than a century later, however, football is again in crisis. Many of the features we now take for granted, such as the ten-yard first down, the forward pass, and penalties for unnecessary roughness were born of that period. Modern American football-the game today’s fans know and love-owes its existence to those reforms. Football boosters, meanwhile, scrambled to instigate rule changes that would save the sport by cleaning it up. Critics called for the sport to be abolished. It wasn’t an isolated incident.Ĭontroversy turned to crisis in the 1905 season, when 18 football players were killed in games across the country. In 1899, University of California student Jesse Hicks died after his neck was broken in an intramural football game. Players were often grievously injured, even killed. Dangerous maneuvers like the “flying wedge” were used to mow down defenders. At the bottom of dogpiles, eyes were jabbed and blows thrown. The forward pass had yet to be conceived, so the ball was inched down the field in a slow, bloody grind across the gridiron. Today’s football fans would hardly recognize the game as it was played back then. “The game sets up the wrong kind of hero-the man who uses his strength brutally, with a reckless disregard both of the injuries he may suffer and of the injuries he may inflict on others.” “Football is more brutalizing than prizefighting, cockfighting, or bullfighting,” wrote Harvard President Charles Eliot at the time. And though rugby is hardly a gentle game, many considered it preferable to the savagery of the American sport. Critics called for the sport to be abolished.Īt the turn of the last century, American football had come under intense scrutiny for cheating and extreme violence, leading some schools to jettison it.
Which is to say, the game was rugby: a sport that few in the stands-or even on the field-knew much about.Ĭontroversy turned to crisis in the 1905 season, when 18 football players were killed in games across the country. When the shot rang out, the bodies on the field collided in a scrummage rather than a scrimmage. But this time the contest of chief rivals was missing one very key feature-football.
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Until the crack of the referee’s starter pistol that day, the 1906 Big Game between Cal and Stanford seemed much like the 15 annual Big Games that preceded it.
Banners waved, blue-and-gold streamers unfurled, and the usual cheers of “Oski Wow Wow! Whiskey Wee Wee!” went up as players took the field. It was a sunny November Saturday at California Field and the stands brimmed with 20,000 boisterous fans. A century ago, football was in big trouble.
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