Kansas City Public Library: KCQ Explores Kansas City's Football Ban

Press release from the Kansas City Public Library:

November 5, 2021

Cool, crisp weather. Cheerleaders and marching bands. Big games, big plays, and occasional big hits. For many across the Kansas City metro area, fall wouldn’t be the same without high school football.

The thought prompted a reader to ask What’s Your KCQ?, a partnership between The Kansas City Star and the Kansas City Public Library: Wasn’t there a time when football was banned in Kansas City high schools?

Believe it or not, yes. There was a period in the sport’s early history when it had a bad reputation among the city’s educators and parents. The Friday night lights, wherever there were lights … went dark.

Go back a little more than a century. The Northeast and Westport high school football squads met on the grounds of The Parade at 15th Street and The Paseo on a crisp October day in 1918. Westport won unremarkably, 19-0, but a reporter for The Star noted that this was the first time a football game had been played between two of the city’s high schools since 1905, when it was banned following the death of a player during a contest.

If the story was true, a ban would certainly seem appropriate.

What really happened wasn’t quite as harrowing, but still raised a legitimate concern.

Thirteen years earlier, the Manual High School team had traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska, to play a Thanksgiving Day game. At some point, star halfback Homer Gibson, was kicked in the head. Helmets weren’t widely used in the sport at the time, and even if Gibson had been wearing one, it would have been a cap constructed of leather that didn’t offer much protection.

It was immediately apparent that the injury was serious, and Gibson was rushed to a hospital. There, his condition deteriorated. He lost the ability to speak, and paralysis set in. Doctors determined that a concussion caused a blood clot to form on his brain, and they hurried him into surgery to have the mass removed.

Contrary to the 1918 story in The Star, Gibson survived. The surgery was a success and his condition improved. After nearly a month in the hospital, he was cleared for the trip back to Kansas City.

Despite his recovery, an organized movement against the sport calcified around the incident. All remaining Manual games for the 1905 season were canceled, an action initiated by Gibson’s teammates rather than by school officials. Parents across the city also began pulling their sons out of football.

On December 16, just a few days after Gibson returned from Nebraska, the principals of Kansas City’s schools voted on a measure to ban the sport. Opponents of the censure insisted that football inspired school spirit and was so popular, students would find ways to play outside of school supervision.

James M. Greenwood, president of the school board, echoed calls by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt to make the sport safer for players. In keeping with his “strenuous life” philosophy, Roosevelt ardently believed the toil and strife inherent in the game encouraged positive traits in young men. But the injury rate was a problem of national scale.

Estimates differ, but the 1905 season was particularly brutal for players. As the local ban was debated, area principals were told that football had caused 25 deaths and over 140 serious injuries that season alone.

With a 38-8 vote, the ban passed as national outrage over football’s danger was coming to a head.

Experts trace the surge in injuries to the introduction of the flying wedge by Harvard College in a game against Yale in 1892. The play was simple. As soon as the ball was snapped, players on offense aligned into a wedge and locked their arms, the ball carrier tucked behind them. They then plowed into the defense. With only five yards needed for a first down, teams quickly learned they could run the wedge almost exclusively and efficiently move down the field.

Ninety-minute games were a succession of brutal collisions and massive dogpiles.

This press release was produced by the Kansas City Public Library. The views expressed here are the author’s own.