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College football still has some work to do when it comes to prioritizing the health of the guys who put their bodies on the line whenever they step onto the field. However, it’s still come a very long way since its early days—as evidenced by a pretty wild tale involving a TCU player who helped his team win despite being unconscious.
The first game in college football history took place when Rutgers and the university that is now known as Princeton faced off on November 6, 1869.
However, the contest that was played that day bore little resemblance to what people today would recognize as football, as it was essentially a glorified rugby game governed by a wildly different set of rules (the forward pass wouldn’t legalized until close to 40 years later).
College football also faced a pretty big uphill battle when it came to being viewed as a legitimate sport thanks in no small part to the brutal nature of the game. Between 1900 and 1905, at least 45 players died due to what unfolded on the gridiron, and Teddy Roosevelt (who championed the sport before he was elected president) eventually stepped in to organize a committee tasked with curbing the violence.
Those changes ushered in a new era, but they only did so much to minimize the damage players were subjected to over the course of a typical contest. Teams subsequently had to grapple with the many injuries that had the potential to impact the game, which led to one squad pulling a pretty wild move to ensure they didn’t have to forfeit.
TCU once dragged an unconscious player onto the field to win a football game
The tale in question was chronicled in the book Greatest Moments in TCU Football History by Francis J. Fitzgerald and Dan Jenkins and brought to my attention courtesy of the Reddit user who stumbled across it while reading up on the history of the football program at Texas Christian University.
In 1923, the freshman squad at TCU faced off against the team representing a prep school in Terrell, Texas in a contest where the program that would eventually embrace the “Horned Frogs” nickname dominated from the start. When everything was said and done, they’d walk away with a 63-0 win, although they got some help from one player who probably didn’t remember very much.
TCU had started the contest with 20 able-bodied men on its sideline, but that number gradually began to decline thanks to the injuries that led to them dropping like flies as the game progressed. The team eventually reached a point where there were only 10 guys who were left standing, which was a bit of an issue when you consider the rules stated they needed 11 players on the field at all times in order to avoid forfeiting.
Ernest Lowry was one of the players who’d been knocked out of contention, and he was nursing his unspecified wounds on a blanket on the ground when he told his coach he could suck it up and play if that’s what he needed to do to help his team win the game.
Unfortunately, Ernest’s self-examination left a bit to be desired when you consider he fainted as soon as he attempted to stand up to get back in the game. However, his coach realized the rules didn’t specify the state of consciousness a player needed to be in to count toward one of the 11, and he decided to drag Lowry and his blanket out onto the field of play.
That was apparently enough to satisfy the referee, and a lifeless Lowry “played” defense for the remainder of the game while remaining firmly out of the way and well behind the line of scrimmage.
It’s only crazy if it doesn’t work, and it worked out pretty well for TCU.