Old football rules: touching down

[jsc1953]

Was there ever a rule that required a player who has just carried the ball into the end zone, to touch the ball down on the ground? It appears this way in old films – I was just watching The Brute Man (1946), which had flashbacks to the eponymous character’s days as a college football star in 1930. Every time he scored, he would gently place the ball on the ground.

And when did they stop firing a gun at the end of the game?

[Ace309]

That’s still the rule in rugby, so I wouldn’t be surprised.

No cite that it was a rule in football, however.

[samclem]

Yeah, it basically came from rugby and was called a try

A try is the major way of scoring points in rugby league and rugby union. A try is scored by grounding the ball in the opposition’s in-goal area (on or behind the goal line). Rugby union and league differ slightly in defining ‘grounding the ball’ and the ‘in-goal’ area (see next section).

The term try comes from try at goal, signifying that originally, grounding the ball only gave the opportunity to try to score with a kick at goal.[1]

The touch down originally allowed you to try a kick to score a goal.

[quote]

Harvard quickly took a liking to the rugby game, and its use of the try which, until that time, was not used in American football. The try would later evolve into the score known as the touchdown. In late 1874, the Harvard team traveled to Montréal to play McGill in rugby, and won by three tries.

On November 23, 1876, representatives from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia met at the Massasoit House in Springfield, Massachusetts to standardize a new code of rules based on the rugby game first introduced to Harvard by McGill University in 1874. The rules were based largely on the Rugby Football Union’s code from England, though one important difference was the replacement of a kicked goal with a touchdown as the primary means of scoring (a change that would later occur in rugby itself, favoring the try as the main scoring event). Three of the schools—Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton—formed the Intercollegiate Football Association, as a result of the meeting. Yale did not join the group until 1879, because of an early disagreement about the number of players per team.[1]

These last two quotes were from the pretty good Wikipedia article on the History of American Football

I’m still looking for answers to your other questions.

[samclem]

@jsc1953

And when did they stop firing a gun at the end of the game?

I can easily find newspaper articles as late as the 1970s which mention this in college games.

[jsc1953]

@samclem

I can easily find newspaper articles as late as the 1970s which mention this in college games.

Might’ve varied depending on the circumstances. I’ve been attending college games since 1971, and have never seen/heard a game with a gun. But they’ve always been games with electronic clocks on the scoreboard.

[DSYoungEsq]

there is a reason it’s called a “touch down”

[Freddy_the_Pig]

The relevant rule change appears to have occurred in 1930, when it was deemed “Not necessary for the referee to blow whistle to declare a touchdown”. (According to David M. Nelson, Anatomy of a Game)

I’m not certain exactly what had to happen, before that, for the referee to blow his whistle. The modern rule of a ball carrier being down any time anything other than his hands or feet touch the ground wasn’t enacted until 1932. So I don’t know that you had to touch the ball down before that time, but it was one way to ensure the necessary whistle.

I remember occasionally hearing guns during TV broadcasts of games, pro and college, as late as the early 1970’s. By that time, though, it wasn’t universal.

[Gatopescado]

Whatever happened to the “Drop-kick”? Boy, I’d love to see that pulled out of someone’s ass sometime!

[BlankSlate]

@Gatopescado

Whatever happened to the “Drop-kick”? Boy, I’d love to see that pulled out of someone’s ass sometime!

Doug Flutie kicked one in 2006, the first one in the NFL in 65 years.

[RealityChuck]

@Freddy_the_Pig

I remember occasionally hearing guns during TV broadcasts of games, pro and college, as late as the early 1970’s. By that time, though, it wasn’t universal.

It probably depended on the facility. If you didn’t have a scoreboard with an up-to-date system, you probably stuck with the gun, since it was loud and hard to miss or mistake.

[5-HT]

Sometime in the 90s, Lions’ linebacker Chris Spielman (as old school football a guy as you’ll find in attitude) picked up a fumble or intercepted a pass and ran it back for a touchdown. He did indeed then “touch down”, saying after the game that it was a tribute to the old time players.