American Football wasn't always pretty like todays version, back then,
Football was Ugly!!
Football, ahh the great sport of football!! A sport which huddles many
American families around the television on quiet Sunday afternoons. Sure it's
a violent game but many take a strong attraction to its machoness and
toughness. The players are mean, the coaches are insane, and the fans are
wild!!
About 125 years ago the coaches were still insane and the fans were
still wild but the players were, well, a bit crazy. The game of football back
then wasn't about money or salary caps, no sir, it was about real courage and
real toughness. You had to show that you were a gentlemen in a real
gentlemen's sport. There were no pads to hide behind and there were barley
any rules to abide by. The only thing you could rely on was your own true
physical strength and your ability to dodge serious injury or even death.
The Ivy league colleges were the first to participate in these barbaric
games. Schools like Harvard, Yale, Swathmore, and Rutgers sent there young
men onto the fields of battle. They played the sport much differently then they
do today. First of all, the ball was always to be kicked and never to be
carried. This style of play resembled the European sport of soccer. It was not
until 1871 when Harvard first handled the ball and added English Rugby rules
to the game. The game of American football was beginning to take shape.
In the year 1880 a man by the name of Walter Chauncy Camp from
Harvard introduced the 'line of scrimmage', the line where play has stopped
and will begin again. Camp also created the positions snapback and
quarterback. These two positions would start every offensive play.