In the fall of 1905, the collegiate football season was more deadly than ever, as 23 players died from injuries suffered on the field.

It was an era when there were few rules and players wore hardly any padding.

Punching, piling-on and pummeling with a brutality designed to intentionally injure were the norm.

Schools often let players cheat on their college entrance exams, and there were numerous rumors that many schools were paying the best players to play the game.

When one Penn State athlete had an especially good game against the University of Pennsylvania, he showed up the very next week practicing with the Penn team. Then, the following year he played for both Penn State and Penn.

At Yale, a student was given the entire cigarette commission for the campus in exchange for being on the team, while at the University of Michigan it was discovered that seven of the eleven starting players weren't actually enrolled at the University.

At Purdue University, it was suspected that railroad toughs were being employed to play on its team in place of college students.

However, the death of so many young men that1905 season caused some leading journalists and those in academia to question the validity of continuing the game

Then, when President Theodore Roosevelt saw a newspaper photograph of one injured player, a bloodied and badly beaten player from Swarthmore, he threatened to abolish the game nationwide if reforms were not implemented.

On December 9, 1905, the football rules committee, meeting in Philadelphia, heeded the President's request and vowed to make the game safer.

The committee made proposals "in favor of action leading to the opening of the game, lessening of the brutality and unnecessary roughness, the rendering of foul play unprofitable, and the placing of the officials under the control of a central governing body who should supervise their work."

If a player committed an act of brutality, which included "slugging" and "kneeing," the delegates wanted to eject him for the rest of the half with no substitute allowed.

Six men had to begin on the line of scrimmage, with only a ball-length neutral zone between them.

Seeking to open up the game, the committee recommended allowing forward passes from behind the line of scrimmage and that for a team to keep possession of the ball, it must gain 10yards (instead of five) on three downs.

At a subsequent meeting in New York City on December 28, 1905, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS) was founded by 62 members.

In time, this organization would become the National Collegiate Athletic Association or NCAA.

Universities adopted the new rules but the football establishment was against any changes.

Amos Alonzo Stagg, coach at the University of Chicago, complained that the new rules had turned the sport into a "parlor game," and Yale's Walter Camp complained that the new rules were "so radical that they would practically make a new game."

In October 1906, the new era of football became a reality when the quarterback for Connecticut's Wesleyan University, Samuel F. B. Moore Jr., threw a 20-yard pass to his halfback.

Many other colleges quickly adopted the pass play, which relied more on finesse than brute strength.

It was still a very rough game, but Walter Camp had been correct: in many aspects, it was a new game, but one with an emphasis on moving the football, not on punches and ruffian tactics.

Roosevelt's intervention and public criticism, at that time, was the catalyst for the much needed reforms.

It is likely that football, in some form, would have survived regardless of whether changes were made.

It was too popular a sport and generated enormous revenues for academic institutions.

Had Roosevelt carried through with his threat in 1905 to ban the game, it certainly would have disappeared from college and university campuses.

Survival would have depended on town and club teams.

Perhaps the National Football League would have been founded much earlier to fill the void.

However, it is hard to imagine the game of football today being played any other way.

The reforms made the game more acceptable to everyone and helped it grow into the preeminent sport in America today.