1898 Vanderbilt Commodores football team
| 1898 Vanderbilt Commodores football | |
|---|---|
| Conference | Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association |
| 1898 record | 1–5–0 (1–2–0 SIAA) |
| Head coach | R. G. Acton (3rd year) |
| Captain | Joe Goodson |
| Home stadium | Dudley Field |
| 1898 SIAA football standings | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Conf | Overall | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Team | W | L | T | W | L | T | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sewanee $ | 3 | – | 0 | – | 0 | 4 | – | 0 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Auburn | 2 | – | 0 | – | 0 | 2 | – | 1 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| LSU | 1 | – | 0 | – | 0 | 1 | – | 0 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Georgia | 3 | – | 1 | – | 0 | 4 | – | 2 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Clemson | 1 | – | 1 | – | 0 | 3 | – | 1 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tulane | 1 | – | 1 | – | 0 | 1 | – | 1 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kentucky State | 0 | – | 0 | – | 0 | 7 | – | 0 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Vanderbilt | 1 | – | 3 | – | 0 | 1 | – | 5 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Texas | 0 | – | 1 | – | 0 | 5 | – | 1 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ole Miss | 0 | – | 1 | – | 0 | 1 | – | 1 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nashville | 0 | – | 2 | – | 0 | 0 | – | 2 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Georgia Tech | 0 | – | 3 | – | 0 | 0 | – | 3 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cumberland | 0 | – | 0 | – | 0 | 0 | – | 0 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SW Presbyterian | 0 | – | 0 | – | 0 | 0 | – | 0 | – | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Sources: |
The 1898 Vanderbilt Commodores football team represented Vanderbilt University during the 1898 Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association football season. Vanderbilt was in its ninth season of playing football, coached by R. G. Acton in his third and last year at Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt’s 1898 record was 1–5. This was Vanderbilt's first losing season.
During the 1897 season, in the second half of the Georgia game with Virginia in Atlanta, a Georgia fullback named Richard Vonalbade ("Von") Gammon was fatally injured on a play. The Georgia, Georgia Tech and Mercer football teams soon disbanded. The Atlanta Journal ran a headline; “Death Knell of Football" and the Georgia legislature passed a bill to outlaw football in the state of Georgia. A letter from Gammon's mother to the state legislature asked that the bill not be passed because her son loved football so much. Georgia Governor William Atkinson vetoed that bill to ban football in Georgia.
The season opened with a 10–0 loss to Cincinnati.
Georgia beat Vanderbilt 4–0. Quarterback Kid Huff saved a touchdown in the Vanderbilt game when he tackled the large Wallace Crutchfield.
The October 30, 1898, edition of the Nashville American gave a report on the debate to abolish the game. The headline for the story stated, “How Many Lives Are To Be Sacrificed During This Season?” More notices to the story read, “HUMAN BLOOD STAINS GRIDIRON” and “Horrors of the Foot Ball Field Have Given Rise to an Agitation in Favor of Abolishing the Game” and “BEEN FORBIDDON IN SOME COLLEGES.” This is a portion of the story: “Is football becoming so brutally dangerous as to call for legislate restriction or abolishment? Just as the desire for the superseding, of war by arbitration to straightening out international complications had its birth in the grief and tears of the widow and the fatherless, so does the above question owe its origin to those who have been seen promising young men cut off in the prime or their youth, or maimed for life by the disparate struggle for football honors. Year after year the list of victims grow, until the matter has at last attracted national attention and in the absence of laws, declaring that young men may not risk life and limb in the gridiron contests some college authorities are forbidding the students to play football, and thus it comes about that institutions that have been prominent in this branch of sport will not be heard of during the present season.
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