Today's Tidbit... More American Football in 1910 England

Canada remained in the UK's cultural orbit after Canada and the U.S. borrowed rugby from the UK. While both countries modified the game to suit their own purposes, Canadian rugby (later football)(remained more rugby-like than American football until after WWII). Unlike Canada, American football rules allowed the forward pass by 1910, even if most teams made little use of it, and the game remained rather rough despite numerous safety-related rules changes.

Before WWI, the British press consistently reported on American football's barbarity, boorishness, and professionalism compared to the highly developed and honorable game they saw in Rugby Union. Even worse, football was most popular among American college men, who should have known better but didn't. Of course, few in the UK who held American football in low regard had ever seen an American football game, so their interest was piqued in 1910 when they read of the death of West Virginia quarterback Rudolph Munk following WVU's game with Bethany and possibly murder charges stemming from the event. (See Today's Tidbit... Murder On The Football Field?)

('Football Fatality,' Manchester Evening News (England), November 15, 1910.)