Post by Coach Campbell on Jun 26, 2009 18:49:08 GMT
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version of the sport of football so named for the vertical yard lines marking the rectangular field. Gridiron football evolved from English rugby and soccer (association football); it differs from soccer chiefly in allowing players to touch, throw, and carry the ball with their hands, and it differs from rugby in allowing each side to control the ball in alternating possessions. The sport, played with 11 on each side, originated in the United States, where it was largely developed and eventually became the country’s leading spectator sport. It quickly spread to Canada (where it evolved into a 12-man game), though it never achieved the great popularity and status of ice hockey there. Gridiron football has not been taken up in the rest of the world to the same degree as other American sports such as basketball and baseball. Since the 1980s, however, primarily through the marketing efforts of the National Football League, teams and leagues have been established in Europe, and the game has achieved a degree of international popularity through television.
Football in the United States » The game emerges » Roots in soccer and rugby
Gridiron football was the creation of elite American universities, a fact that has shaped its distinctive role in American culture and life. After several decades of informal, student-organized games that were tolerated by faculty as an alternative to more destructive rowdiness, the first intercollegiate football game was played on November 6, 1869, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, between in-state rivals Princeton and Rutgers according to rules adapted from those of the London Football Association. This soccer-style game became the dominant form as Columbia, Cornell, Yale, and a few other colleges in the Northeast took up the sport in the early 1870s, and in 1873 representatives from Princeton, Yale, and Rutgers met in New York City to found the Intercollegiate Football Association and to adopt a common code. Conspicuously missing was Harvard, the country’s premier university, whose team insisted on playing the so-called “Boston Game,” a cross between soccer and rugby. In May 1874, in the second of two matches with McGill University of Montreal (the first was played by the rules of the Boston Game), Harvard’s players were introduced to the rugby game and immediately preferred it to their own. The following year, for Harvard’s first football contest with Yale, representatives of the two schools agreed on “concessionary rules” that were chiefly Harvard’s. When spectators (including Princeton students) as well as Yale players saw the advantages of the rugby style, the stage was set for a meeting in 1876 of representatives from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia to form a new Intercollegiate Football Association based on rugby rules.
Football in the United States » The game emerges » Walter Camp and the creation of American football
Harvard made the first breach in rugby rules. Rejecting the traditional manner of putting the ball in play—players from both teams massed about the ball in a “scrummage,” or “scrum,” trying to kick it forward through the mass of players—Harvard opted for “heeling it out,” or kicking the ball 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 lifetime was known as the “Father of American Football.” As an undergraduate and then a medical student at Yale, Camp played football from 1876 through 1881, but—more important—beginning in 1878, he dominated the rules committee for nearly three crucial decades. Two of Camp’s revisions in particular effectively created the gridiron game. The first, in 1880, further refined Harvard’s initial innovation, abolishing the scrummage altogether in favour of a scrimmage, which awarded possession 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 foot continued as an option until 1913.) The second 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 ball to give it up. After Princeton simply held the ball for an entire half in its 1880 and 1881 contests with Yale, both games ending in scoreless ties that bored spectators as much as they frustrated Yale’s 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 also responsible for having 11 players on a side, for devising a new scoring system in 1883 with two points for a touchdown, four points for the goal after a touchdown, and five points for a field goal (a field goal became worth three points in 1909, a touchdown six points in 1912), for naming the positions (centre, guard, tackle, end, quarterback, halfback, fullback), for marking the field with stripes, and for proposing several other innovations; but it was those two simple rules adopted in 1880 and 1882 that most fundamentally created American football.
After the crucial rule changes, the play of the game was relatively open, featuring long 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 speedy backs streaking around the ends. The new rule resulted in the rise of mass plays, an offensive strategy that massed players on a single point of the defense, most famously in Harvard’s “flying wedge” in 1892. This style of play proved so brutal that the game was nearly abolished in the 1890s and early 1900s.
Football in the United States » The game emerges » Managing the violence of the game
The spirit of early football can be glimpsed in the introduction of a rule in 1894 that banned projecting nails or iron plates in shoes and any metal substance on the player’s person. Rules establishing boundaries between permissible and impermissible violence have been continually revised over the years, sometimes in response to periods of heightened concern over deaths and injuries (in the early 1930s as well as the 1890s, for example). To ensure greater safety, the number of officials grew from two in 1873 to seven by 1983. Over time, improvements in equipment also provided more safeguards against serious injuries. In the 1890s players’ only protection against blows to the head came from their own long hair and leather nose guards. The first headgear, in 1896, consisted simply of three leather straps. It evolved into close-fitting leather caps with ear flaps. The suspension helmet, which used straps to create space between the helmet shell and the head of the wearer, was introduced in 1917. However, helmets were not required in college football until 1939 (1943 for the National Football League). Improved equipment sometimes increased rather than curtailed the game’s dangers. The plastic helmet, introduced in 1939, became a potentially lethal weapon, eventually requiring rules against “spearing”—using the head to initiate contact.
version of the sport of football so named for the vertical yard lines marking the rectangular field. Gridiron football evolved from English rugby and soccer (association football); it differs from soccer chiefly in allowing players to touch, throw, and carry the ball with their hands, and it differs from rugby in allowing each side to control the ball in alternating possessions. The sport, played with 11 on each side, originated in the United States, where it was largely developed and eventually became the country’s leading spectator sport. It quickly spread to Canada (where it evolved into a 12-man game), though it never achieved the great popularity and status of ice hockey there. Gridiron football has not been taken up in the rest of the world to the same degree as other American sports such as basketball and baseball. Since the 1980s, however, primarily through the marketing efforts of the National Football League, teams and leagues have been established in Europe, and the game has achieved a degree of international popularity through television.
Football in the United States » The game emerges » Roots in soccer and rugby
Gridiron football was the creation of elite American universities, a fact that has shaped its distinctive role in American culture and life. After several decades of informal, student-organized games that were tolerated by faculty as an alternative to more destructive rowdiness, the first intercollegiate football game was played on November 6, 1869, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, between in-state rivals Princeton and Rutgers according to rules adapted from those of the London Football Association. This soccer-style game became the dominant form as Columbia, Cornell, Yale, and a few other colleges in the Northeast took up the sport in the early 1870s, and in 1873 representatives from Princeton, Yale, and Rutgers met in New York City to found the Intercollegiate Football Association and to adopt a common code. Conspicuously missing was Harvard, the country’s premier university, whose team insisted on playing the so-called “Boston Game,” a cross between soccer and rugby. In May 1874, in the second of two matches with McGill University of Montreal (the first was played by the rules of the Boston Game), Harvard’s players were introduced to the rugby game and immediately preferred it to their own. The following year, for Harvard’s first football contest with Yale, representatives of the two schools agreed on “concessionary rules” that were chiefly Harvard’s. When spectators (including Princeton students) as well as Yale players saw the advantages of the rugby style, the stage was set for a meeting in 1876 of representatives from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia to form a new Intercollegiate Football Association based on rugby rules.
Football in the United States » The game emerges » Walter Camp and the creation of American football
Harvard made the first breach in rugby rules. Rejecting the traditional manner of putting the ball in play—players from both teams massed about the ball in a “scrummage,” or “scrum,” trying to kick it forward through the mass of players—Harvard opted for “heeling it out,” or kicking the ball 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 lifetime was known as the “Father of American Football.” As an undergraduate and then a medical student at Yale, Camp played football from 1876 through 1881, but—more important—beginning in 1878, he dominated the rules committee for nearly three crucial decades. Two of Camp’s revisions in particular effectively created the gridiron game. The first, in 1880, further refined Harvard’s initial innovation, abolishing the scrummage altogether in favour of a scrimmage, which awarded possession 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 foot continued as an option until 1913.) The second 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 ball to give it up. After Princeton simply held the ball for an entire half in its 1880 and 1881 contests with Yale, both games ending in scoreless ties that bored spectators as much as they frustrated Yale’s 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 also responsible for having 11 players on a side, for devising a new scoring system in 1883 with two points for a touchdown, four points for the goal after a touchdown, and five points for a field goal (a field goal became worth three points in 1909, a touchdown six points in 1912), for naming the positions (centre, guard, tackle, end, quarterback, halfback, fullback), for marking the field with stripes, and for proposing several other innovations; but it was those two simple rules adopted in 1880 and 1882 that most fundamentally created American football.
After the crucial rule changes, the play of the game was relatively open, featuring long 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 speedy backs streaking around the ends. The new rule resulted in the rise of mass plays, an offensive strategy that massed players on a single point of the defense, most famously in Harvard’s “flying wedge” in 1892. This style of play proved so brutal that the game was nearly abolished in the 1890s and early 1900s.
Football in the United States » The game emerges » Managing the violence of the game
The spirit of early football can be glimpsed in the introduction of a rule in 1894 that banned projecting nails or iron plates in shoes and any metal substance on the player’s person. Rules establishing boundaries between permissible and impermissible violence have been continually revised over the years, sometimes in response to periods of heightened concern over deaths and injuries (in the early 1930s as well as the 1890s, for example). To ensure greater safety, the number of officials grew from two in 1873 to seven by 1983. Over time, improvements in equipment also provided more safeguards against serious injuries. In the 1890s players’ only protection against blows to the head came from their own long hair and leather nose guards. The first headgear, in 1896, consisted simply of three leather straps. It evolved into close-fitting leather caps with ear flaps. The suspension helmet, which used straps to create space between the helmet shell and the head of the wearer, was introduced in 1917. However, helmets were not required in college football until 1939 (1943 for the National Football League). Improved equipment sometimes increased rather than curtailed the game’s dangers. The plastic helmet, introduced in 1939, became a potentially lethal weapon, eventually requiring rules against “spearing”—using the head to initiate contact.