Death on the Gridiron
After tragedy 100 years ago, Confederate hero Mosby led the charge to abolish UVa football
By Steve Clark
One hundred years ago, on Sunday, Nov. 14, 1909, a University of Virginia football player died from a brain injury suffered the previous afternoon in a game on the Georgetown campus in Washington, D.C.
The death could have ended football at UVa and across the country – which is exactly what a Confederate war hero wanted.
The player was Archer Christian, an 18-year-old first-year student at Mr. Jefferson’s University and a 165-pound halfback. Christian came from a prominent Richmond family. His fatal injury appeared on Page One in the Richmond Times-Dispatch the Sunday morning after the fateful Georgetown game.
The newspaper article reported that Christian was “a tower of strength” in Virginia’s 21-0 victory, carrying the ball on more than half the plays. “The player who contributed the most to the victory, however, was unconscious when the referee blew the final whistle,” the paper added.
Christian’s concussion occurred in a pileup late in the game when one of his own players tripped and fell violently on his head and neck. Reported the Times-Dispatch:
“When the pile was separated it was discovered that Christian was unable to rise. He appeared to be in a faint, and the referee called for a number of substitutes to remove the stricken player. He was lifted up and taken to the sidelines, where a doctor made a hurried examination and asked some of the bystanders for the use of an automobile to take the stricken man to the hospital. On more careful examination, however, the physician discovered that the player’s injuries were such that he could be removed with safety only in an ambulance. Accordingly, one was ordered. In the meantime, Andrew Christian, a brother of the stricken man and a substitute on the Virginia team, was beside the quiet form. Once or twice the injured player stirred, and once he murmured, ‘How goes the game?’ He relapsed into unconsciousness immediately.”
After a lengthy surgery, in the wee hours of Sunday morning, Archer Christian died. His funeral was held two days later at
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in downtown Richmond. Dr. Edwin A. Alderman, president of the University of Virginia, was among the attendees. Burial was in
Hollywood Cemetery.
Before Christian’s death, a small number of football players – mainly high school boys – had died from injuries, prompting calls for the game to be banned for amateurs. In 1905 alone, there were 18 football fatalities. President Teddy Roosevelt threatened to shut down the game, and rule changes soon followed that made the game safer. But the death of Archer Christian ignited a firestorm of renewed demands to abolish football in high schools and colleges.
One of the most vociferous protesters was John Singleton Mosby.
Mosby was a 76-year-old diminutive Virginia lawyer and University of Virginia alumnus. As a Confederate colonel in the Civil War, he had gained a measure of fame and a nickname, “The Gray Ghost,” for leading Mosby’s Rangers, or the Partisan Rangers, an elusive band of cavalrymen.
Mosby’s alma mater began playing football in 1888, about 20 years after the first college game – Rutgers vs. Princeton. By the turn of the 20th century, football had become an entrenched extracurricular activity at Virginia and other universities, infuriating Mosby. The old warrior believed that students at the university should not participate in such a blood-thirsty activity. Never mind that, in his student days, Mosby had gone to jail for shooting and wounding a man.
When he learned of Archer Christian’s death, Mosby wrote numerous letters to prominent UVa alumni, urging them to use their influence to ban football at the university.
In a letter to Richmond lawyer Thomas Pinckney Bryan, Mosby wrote:
“You say that fox hunting is as dangerous as football but there is no public protest against it. The difference is a Hunt Club is not a public institution supported by the State like the University, where the youth are sent to learn not only the Classics and Mathematics but principles of Ethics. ... It is notorious that football teams are largely composed of professional mercenaries who are hired to advertise colleges. Gate money is the valuable consideration.”
Mosby’s protests went unheeded. He died in 1916.
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Steve Clark is a former columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and, prior, The Richmond News Leader. Contact him at
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