Walter Camp and the creation of American football
Harvard made the first gap in rugby rules. Rejecting the traditional manner of putting the ball in play—players from both teams massed about the testis in a “ scrum, ” or “ scrum, ” trying to kick it forward through the mass of players—Harvard opted for “ heeling it out, ” or kicking the testis backward to a teammate. The further transformation of English rugby into american football came chiefly through the efforts of Walter Camp, who even during his life was known as the “ Father of American Football. ” As an undergraduate and then a aesculapian scholar at Yale, Camp played football from 1876 through 1881, but—more important—beginning in 1878, he dominated the rules committee for about three crucial decades. Two of Camp ’ second revisions in detail efficaciously created the grid game. The first, in 1880, far refined Harvard ’ s initial invention, abolishing the scrum altogether in favor of a scrimmage, which awarded monomania of the ball to one of the two teams. It was then put in play by heeling it out. ( Snapping the ball with the hand became legal in 1890, though snapping with the animal foot continued as an option until 1913. ) The second gear crucial rule change was necessitated by the first. Camp ’ s more orderly manner of initiating play did not require the team in possession of the musket ball to give it up. After Princeton merely held the ball for an entire half in its 1880 and 1881 contests with Yale, both games ending in scoreless ties that bored spectators a much as they frustrated Yale ’ sulfur players, Camp proposed a rule that a team must advance the ball 5 yards or lose 10 in three downs ( plays ), or it would be obliged to surrender the ball to the other side. Camp was besides responsible for having 11 players on a side, for devising a newfangled score system in 1883 with two points for a touchdown, four points for the goal after a touchdown, and five points for a field finish ( a field goal became worth three points in 1909, a touchdown six points in 1912 ), for creating the quarterback position, for marking the field with stripes, and for proposing several early innovations, but it was those two simple rules adopted in 1880 and 1882 that most basically created american football.
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After the crucial rule changes, the play of the game was relatively receptive, featuring farseeing runs and numerous lateral passes, as in rugby. In 1888 Camp proposed that tackling below the waist be legalized, in order to offset the advantage of quick backs streaking around the ends. The fresh rule resulted in the rise of mass plays, an offensive strategy that massed players on a single point of the defense, most excellently in Harvard ’ s “ flying lodge ” in 1892. This style of turn proved so brutal that the game was closely abolished in the 1890s and early 1900s.
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Football Frenzy
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