ned ankle or broken bone for the love of
one of the best of outdoor sports.

[Illustration: The lineup]

The recent changes in rules have made football a much safer game than
it was in the early nineties, when such plays as the "flying wedge"
and line bucking were practically all there was to the game. To any
one who does not understand football it seems as though it were played
with practically no science and with but few rules. As a matter of
fact a well-coached college team will sometimes have sixty or seventy
separate plays each of which has been carefully practised and which
requires each man on the team to do something to help make the play
successful, while on the other hand each man on the opposing team is
doing his best to cause the play to fail. The result to any one not
understanding the game is simply a confused mass of struggling men and
a final tumble with a pile of legs and arms flying about.

The American game of football called Rugby is a development of the
English game, but the present game is very different from the English
game of soccer or association football, in which kicking predominates
and where a round ball is used instead of the oval-shaped American
football.

Numerous efforts have been made to introduce the game of soccer into
this country, but the long popularity of the American game and the
strong support that has been given to it by the colleges have
prevented soccer from gaining much of a foothold.

Football is played by two opposing teams of eleven men each. The
positions are right and left end, right and left tackle, right and
left guard, centre rush, quarter-back, right and left half-backs and
full-back.

The manner in which they line up is shown in the accompanying
diagram.

0 0 0 0 0 0 0
l.e. l.t. l.g. c. r.g. r.t. r.e.

0
q.

0 0
l.h.-b. r.h.-b.

0
f-b.

The weight and size of the men on a football team largely govern the
positions where they play. The centre rush and the two guards are
usually the heaviest men on the team, as extra weight in the centre of
the line is important to prevent what is called "bucking the centre."
The two tackles should be strong, stocky players, not too tall, but
still with sufficient weight to enable them to keep their feet in a
mass play and to offer strong resistan