Three simple fixes that could save pro football: reimagining the game for the twenty-first century.

• Author: Nussbaum, Jeff
• Position: TEN MILES SQUARE

On the afternoon of November 25, 1905, a sophomore on the Union College football team named Harold Moore plunged headlong into New York University's offensive wedge in an effort to "buck the line" and stop NYU's running back. If Moore wore any protective equipment at all, it was likely a nose guard or a padded hat. Players did wear "wedge belts," which allowed teammates to hold on to each other and plow forward as a unit.

The football played in 1905 would be nearly unrecognizable today. The distance required for a first down was five yards, making just about every play a "mass" play, in which the entire offense tried to inch forward by any means necessary. Forward passes were illegal. Dropkicks and punches, while considered ungentlemanly, were not. Falling on the ball didn't stop a play, but rather initiated a prolonged pileup underneath which lawlessness reigned.

As Moore attempted to tackle the ball carrier, his head was hit by the knee of one of his teammates, knocking him unconscious. Though he was seen at Fordham Hospital that afternoon, they had no means of detecting the cerebral hemorrhage he had suffered. Moore died that evening. He was one of an estimated twenty college football players to die that season--and one of three to die that day.

A flurry of emergency meetings took place among college presidents and coaches. President Theodore Roosevelt got involved, gathering football coaches and officials at the White House to discuss "[s]uch modifications of the rules as would eliminate its brutal features," as the Washington Post reported at the time.

In September of 1906, the new rules were published. They included the forward pass, three plays to achieve a first down, a neutral zone between the offense and the defense at the beginning of each play, and penalties for unnecessary roughness. (Less noted, but equally important, the new rules also recommended "football armor," including knee pads, and thigh pads "sewn inside the trousers.") George H. Brooke, Swarthmore's coach, summarized the new rules thusly: "There will certainly be a great deal more kicking, flukes, passing, tricks, open field running and general hurry scurry."

Even before the sweeping rule changes in 1906, there was concern in some quarters that any changes would alter the game to the point at which it became unrecognizable and, worse, unmasculine. The artist Frederick Remington summed up these concerns in a letter to the legendary Walter Camp: "Football, in my opinion, is best at its worst. I do not believe in all its namby-pamby talk, and I hope the game will not be emasculated and robbed of its heroic qualities. People who don't like football as now played might like [the card game] whist--advise them to try that."

Despite opinions like Remington's, however, the new rules went into effect. The National Football League was founded in 1920, playing the game under those new rules. Today, that "hurry scurry" has made professional football the most popular sport in America for thirty straight years.

The safer game thrived. A century later, many fewer players are dying on the field. But many more, due largely to the effects of repeated concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), are...