This “tradition” was not present when the sports began, it was fist recorded as being played in 1918, and did not catch on right away. So we went from 1814 when it was written, until 1918 when someone started playing it at a game, without this ‘tradition’.
It is obvious that no QA is done on the site page: this renders in the same faulty way in FireFox, IE, Chrome, Opera, Iceweasle, and OB1. It strikes me that this may not be an error in rendering, but in presentation. The apparently missing data may not, in fact, exist in the file at all. FYI: The top of every frame is clipped until only two words of the entire strip can be read.
This “tradition” was not present when the sports began, it was fist recorded as being played in 1918, and did not catch on right away. So we went from 1814 when it was written, until 1918 when someone started playing it at a game, without this ‘tradition’.