History of American Football

The history of American football is an important part of both the culture of the United States and the broader history of various football games around the world, in which a ball is kicked at a goal and/or or carried over a line.

Before the 19th century , when modern forms of football first emerged, the name "football" was applied to a widely-differing variety of codes of rules. Although there are mentions of native Americans playing ball games, modern American football has its origins in traditional ball games played at villages and schools in Europe for many centuries before America was settled by Europeans. There are reports of early settlers at Jamestown, Virginia playing games with inflated balls in the early 17th century .

As is the case with many sports, modern football games were popularized in the USA by students at and/or from elite schools and universities. These appear to have had much in common with the traditional "mob football" played in England , especially on Shrove Tuesday .

By 1820 , a notoriously violent game known as " ballown " was being played at the College of New Jersey (later known as Princeton University). In 1827 , a Harvard University student composed a humorous epic poem called The Battle of the Delta , one of the first accounts of football in American universities. Also in the 1820s, students at Dartmouth College , in Hanover, New Hampshire , were playing a kicking game that would be called " Old Division Football " (for which they published rules in 1871 ).

Within the spectrum of modern football codes there are several "families", which have diverged from and/or influenced each other in their development. Many of these games have their origins in varieties of football played in England . By the 1850s , the two main families of football in England were the " kicking games ", in which the ball was mostly kicked along the ground, and the " running games ", in which the ball was mostly carried by players. Some codes combined elements from both families. In 1845 , at Rugby School in England , rugby football became the first of the running games to have codified rules. The best-known of the kicking games is soccer (a word which originated as an abbreviation of "Association football"), which began with a code of rules devised in 1863 in England , by The Football Association . This form of Football (Soccer) has gone on to become the world's number one sport with the FIFA World Cup Finals attracting the worlds highest televised audiences. However from these English roots it can be said that these FA rules laid the basis for many derivations of football in many forms. [1]

The Oneida Football Club , formed in Boston in 1861 , is claimed by some sources as the first American football team. However, no one knows what rules the club used. [2] They may have played "kicking" games, "running" games, both or some hybrid form. The latter seems most likely, since the "Oneidas" are often credited with inventing the " Boston Game ," which both allowed players to kick a round ball along the ground, and to pick it up and run with it. [3] The game seems to have been popular at least in Massachusetts in the mid-19th century and there are references to it being the most popular form of football at Harvard University shortly thereafter.

The first known instances of rugby football in North America were in the 1860s in Canada . In 1864 , at Trinity College , Toronto, F. Barlow Cumberland and Frederick A. Bethune devised rules based on the Rugby School game. However, the first game of "rugby" in Canada is generally said to have taken place in Montreal , in 1865, when British Army officers played local civilians. The game gradually gained a following, and the Montreal Football Club was formed in 1868 , the first recorded football club in Canada.

Codes based on the Rugby School rules began to be played at other Canadian universities in the late 1860s and these games were the basis of Canadian football. [4] ; [5] & [6] They would also prove to have a major influence on American football.

Rutgers University and Princeton University played a game on November 6 , 1869 using a slightly modified version of the rules of Association Football. The Rutgers website provides the following details of the game [7] [8] [9] :

1. Rutgers won the game, 6 goals to 4
2. It was played by two teams of 25.
3. Two members of each team were stationed near their opponent's goal in the hope of scoring from unguarded positions.
4. Each team was divided into 11 "fielders" and 12 "bulldogs".
5. The ball could be advanced only by kicking or batting it with the feet, hands, heads or sides. The rules banned throwing or running with the ball.
6. Rutgers players formed "a perfect interference" around the ball.
7. Rutgers players advanced the ball by "short, skillful kicks."
8. A Princeton player threw himself into a group of Rutgers players, "bursting us apart, and bowling us over."
9. One Rutgers player used a technique of kicking the rolling ball with his heel.
10. An illustration on the Rutgers website suggests that they were using a round ball.
11. Touchdowns were not a feature. (In fact none were recorded in games played by Rutgers until 1878-79.)

The rules generally were the same as the rules of Association Football at the time. Points 1, 5, 7, 9 and 10 above in particular reflect the influence of soccer, which at the time did not bar players from hitting the ball with their hands, (or taking a "fair catch" followed by a free kick), but did not allow them to hold and run with the ball. [10]

Princeton [11] and the NFL [12] also state that the 1869 game was based on soccer. The historian Stephen Fox identifies it as " New York Ball ", a soccer-like game (which should not be confused with a type of baseball that also went by the same name), common in the vicinity of New York City.

Games between the two colleges and other teams soon followed.

On October 19, 1873, representatives from Yale , Columbia , Princeton, and Rutgers met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City to codify the first set of intercollegiate football rules, based directly on the rules of the F.A. in London. Harvard students chose not to attend. [13]

In the words of the U.S. Professional Football Researchers Association , the four colleges decided, among other things, that: "5. No player shall throw or carry the ball. Any violation of this regulation shall constitute a foul...", "7. [No] player use his hands to hold or push an adversary...", and "12. In all matches a No. 6 ball shall be used, furnished by the challenging side and to become the property of the victor." "The No. 6 ball was imported from England where it was used by the London Football Association . It was 30 inches in circumference, entirely round, and very strong. It was not pigskin; rather, the covering was heavy canvas thoroughly saturated with rubber.'" [14] The PFRA adds:

Rules number five and number seven stamped the game as soccer by eliminating carrying and the use of hands. There was unanimity among the four assembled schools for the exclusion of these practices. And, it was because everyone knew that the four assembled schools felt that way about it that Harvard, although invited, chose to skip the whole get-together. [15]

Harvard was isolated from its US counterparts by the fact that it did not play soccer. As a result, in 1874 , Harvard footballers welcomed a request from the rugby team of McGill University of Montreal to play a pair of games at Harvard. In these games, the two teams alternated between the rules used by each college. Following these games, Harvard also adopted a game based on the rugby football code and played Yale under these rules in 1875 for the first edition of The Game . Within a few years, other US universities had also adopted rugby. [16]

On November 23 , 1876 representatives from Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and Yale met at Massasoit House in Springfield, Massachusetts to decide on standard American rules, an event which became known as the Massasoit Convention . They adopted the rugby football rules in their entirety, except for two innovations: at the time a touch-down in rugby only counted toward the score if neither side kicked a field goal . Princeton, Harvard, and Columbia agreed that four touchdowns would be worth one goal; in the event of a tied score, a goal converted from a touchdown would take precedence over four touch-downs. [17] The three colleges also founded the original Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA).

Between 1880 and 1883 , Yale coach Walter Camp devised a number of major changes to the American game—including some major breaks with the rugby tradition—beginning with the reduction of teams from 15 to 11 players; reduction of the field area by almost half; and the introduction of the scrimmage , in which a player heeled the ball backwards to begin a game. These were complemented by a more significant innovation: a team had to surrender possession if they did not gain five yards after three downs (successful tackles), a rule introduced to thwart Princeton and Yale's strategy of controlling the ball without trying to score. Camp also introduced the seven-man offensive line, plus a quarterback , two halfbacks and a fullback in the backfield, an arrangement which soon became the norm.