Big Game took an unexpected turn in 1906 when Stanford and Cal battled for the Axe — not over football, but rugby. Concerns over player safety led both teams to replace their storied football rivalry with the English game.
This tipping point came on Nov. 25, 1905, when Union College halfback William Moore suffered a fatal skull fracture during a game against NYU. The tragedy was part of a grim trend. The Chicago Tribune reported that 19 players had died and 137 had been injured in 1905 alone. The article, headlined “Football Year’s Death Harvest,” sparked nationwide alarm.
Stanford and Cal acted quickly in search for a safer alternative to football. By March 1906, the schools agreed to play rugby in Big Game. Former Stanford President David Starr Jordan, a vocal critic of football, supported the shift.
“Some day the college presidents and school heads of this country will perhaps be called cowardly and brutal because they did not put a stop to the dangers of football, a sport that destroys the best in American youth,” Jordan told The New York Times.
Rugby seemed like a promising replacement. Its emphasis on skill and faster, open play appeared less hazardous than the brute force of football. Stanford claimed a 6-3 victory in the first rugby Big Game in November 1906 and held the Axe for two more years. The introduction of rugby, however, was not without controversy.
Immediately after the decision to play rugby, Stanford’s former football captain A. J. Chalmers captured the mood of many players.
“It was rugby or nothing,” he told The Daily. “I know there is a general sentiment among the football men at Stanford against rugby, and I heartily concur with that statement. I am opposed to rugby, but when it comes to a choice of rugby or nothing, I will support the English game.”
The opposition to rugby continued to grow. In 1907, just one year after the adoption of rugby, Stanford players called for a return to the old game, arguing that football was much more exciting for the American public. In 1909, an American Football Association was organized to counter the “invasion of rugby” in California secondary schools. The sport failed to expand beyond California and Nevada colleges, and thus, limited the Cardinal’s interscholastic competition.
Critics also derided rugby’s deviation from American football’s principles.
Yale football coach Walter Camp told The Daily in 1910, “One primary principle of the American game is to retain possession of the ball. Rugby, of course, does not make that the primary principle.”
A significant break from American tradition and spirit, rugby remained part of Big Game only until 1915, when Cal decided to return to football. Stanford would not agree to resume football until 1919, and the two teams did not meet for their annual rivalry between 1915 and 1919. Finally, in the 1919 Big Game — Stanford and Cal’s first football matchup in 14 years — Cal won 14-10. The Daily called it a “defeat that [was] virtually a triumph.” Football was back.
The rugby experiment was short-lived, but left a lasting legacy. Nine Stanford students went on to play in the 1924 U.S. Olympic rugby team that won gold, pulling a major upset over the highly-regarded French team. More importantly, rugby’s role in Big Game reflects enduring concerns about football’s risks.
The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS), the precursor to the NCAA, was founded in 1906 to address football’s dangers. While reforms like the forward pass and neutral zone have since transformed the sport, debates over player safety persist.
Today, the NFL leads efforts to improve safety with initiatives like the introduction of the Guardian Cap and new kickoff rules. However, progress at the college level has been slower due to resource gaps and legal liability.
“Players are bigger, faster, stronger than ever before,” wrote Stanford football orthopedic surgeon Seth Sherman in an email to The Daily. “To protect our players, we must match the intensity of the game with advances in equipment (i.e. helmets, braces) and evolving strategies for sports performance, injury prevention, diagnosis and treatment of injury.”
Big Game’s rugby era highlights a pivotal chapter in the rivalry’s history, born from a bold move to prioritize player safety over tradition. More than a century later, the annual Stanford-Cal matchup remains a powerful tradition that is a symbol of both the rich history and ongoing transformation of collegiate football.