Lately I’ve been reading how (American) football evolved in it’s early days, from it’s split from rugby in the 1870’s up until the NFL became something resembling it’s modern form in the 1930’s. I’m wondering if anyone can point me to a source that has a rundown the rules of football around 1906-1910 or so? I’m interested in that time period because that’s just after the forward pass was legalized (1906), which IMHO was the last major element of the modern game to be put into place.
I’ve found bits and pieces here and there (such as NFL.com’s chronology by decade) that highlight when some of the major rule changes took place, but I’m interested in something more like a snapshot in time. I don’t necessarily need a complete rulebook, though that would be cool.
The Wikipedia article on the history of (American) football is pretty good, although it doesn’t exactly give a codified list of rules for exactly that time period. But there’s enough detail to work out how football was played at the turn of the 20th century.
As rugby was still evolving from soccer as football was evolving from rugby, kicking was a much more significant part of the game than it is today.
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges into the Universe has a really good story, broken into 5 time periods (going by memory on that one). You can get it used for less than $10 including shipping (although I’m not sure if that’s the type of book you want to buy used…)
The NCAA football records book available at the NCAA website http://www.ncaa.org has a rules chronology. You might be able to piece together what football was like 100 years ago.
They didn’t throw much even with the pass legalized. The passer had to be five yards to the right or left of the center and if the ball hit the ground untouched, it went over to the other team.
It took a while before pass interference was a penalty. It wasn’t until 1934 that two incompletions in a series of downs was no longer an automatic turnover. Also in 1934, you could throw an incompletion in the end zone without it being a penalty.
One of the weirder things about watching a game from 100 years ago would the lack of hash marks. You would see plays run from very close to the sideline. The NFL introduced hash marks in 1932 I believe.
For most of it’s early history, football was primarily a kicking game. In it’s earliest days, field goals were the only means of scoring. A touchdown only gave the offense a free attempt at a field goal (which is the origin of the PAT). When they were first counted towards the score, a TD was considered to be worth 1/4th a field goal. When the point system was initially implemented, a TD was 3 pts, the PAT worth 2 pts, and a field goal worth 5 pts. Interestingly, a safety has always been worth 2 pts since day one.
The hash marks were introduced in the '32 championship game because the game was moved to an indoor arena due to weather. The arena wasn’t big enough for a full-sized field and the sidelines went right up to the walls, so marks for putting the ball in play were put down 10 yards in for safety reasons. The change was made permanent for regular season games the following season. Before that, if the ball went out of bounds it was snapped on the sideline, and teams would burn a down just to get the ball towards the middle of the field where they could do something.
The '32 championship game also prompted another rule change: the forward pass was made legal from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage. Previously the passer (who, at the time, usually wasn’t the quarterback) had to be 5 yards back. The Bears won the game over the Portsmouth Spartans (who would move to Detroit two years later and become the Lions) on a controversial TD pass that the Spartans contended was thrown too close to the line of scrimmage.
Thanks for the inputs. I think I know enough already to piece together mostly how the game was played. I’m just not clear on exactly when some rules changed, and a sort of snapshot in time would help.
Exactly. The free attempt at a field goal was known as a “try”, which is still what a score in rugby that is “touched down” in the goal area is called, hence the term TD. In rugby, a try is worth 5, and the PAT is worth 2, and must be taken from a point perpendicular to the goal line from where the ball was touched down.