Posted on 02/02/2012 4:30:34 PM PST by rickmichaels
Three downs to gain 10 yards. Live punts. And a 110-yard field.
Sound familiar? It sure does: Canadian football, right?
But did you know that those same rules were in effect in American football from 1906 to 1911? Of course you didn't. Few American football fans even know it.
It was exactly 100 years ago Friday — Feb. 3, 1912 — that the U.S. college football rules committee (there was no pro league yet) agreed to pass the last of a series of sweeping, epochal rules changes that would forever differentiate, and define, the American game.
Those new rules included:
adding a fourth down; shortening the playing field between the goal lines to 100 yards; creating a 10-yard end zone behind each goal line; increasing the value of the touchdown from 5 points to 6; allowing forward passes to be thrown across the goal line; removing the 20-yard downfield limit on forward passes.
David Nelson, the longest-serving college rules-committee member and the game's foremost rules authority, wrote before his death in 1992 that these changes "laid the foundation for the game as we now know it."
And they were a long time in coming.
For the six seasons prior to 1912, college teams had struggled mightily to muster much offence. Games were borrrring. But at least players weren't getting killed much anymore.
Killed?! Yes, killed. Let us wind the clock back even farther to explain.
Pre-1906 football in America remains, in all likelihood, the most violent form of sport conceived by man since the Roman Empire. Slugfests, bloodbaths, melees — these were the terms used by witnesses, participants and historians alike to describe the various incarnations of football, from its inception in America in 1869 until its most wanton forms of violence were finally legislated out starting in 1906.
Until then, teams had three downs to gain five yards. Both touchdowns and field goals were worth five points. Forward passes were illegal. The most daring, wide-open offensive plays were end runs. Protective equipment was sparse. Slugging was commonplace. And the mashing, smashing, pulling, tugging and even tossing of ball carriers by teammates and tacklers alike rendered the sport, in essence, a savage form of goal-line offence — from start to finish.
"Every day one hears of broken heads, fractured skulls, broken necks, wrenched legs, dislocated shoulders, broken noses, and many other accidents of a more or less serious nature," the New York Times' football correspondent wrote in 1893.
Even deaths were commonplace. Every year, high school and college football players in America died from severe injuries suffered on those old 110-yard football fields.
After the 1905 season, when at least three more college players were killed, public pressure to both tame and open up the game hit its zenith. When U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt threatened to abolish the sport unless its rulesmakers went back to the drawing board, they finally did — reluctantly.
De facto rules czar Walter Camp suggested going from three downs to gain five yards, to three downs to gain 10. University of Chicago coach Amos Alonzo Stagg and other influential experts agreed. The thinking was that doubling the distance to be gained in the same three-down series would compel teams to drastically open up their playbooks and formations and, thus, make the game safer.
Some coaches didn't buy it for a second.
One was Fielding H. "Hurry Up" Yost, who predicted that three downs to gain 10 yards would result in an even more conservative game, with no-less-compressed action. With first downs so hard to make, contests would become little more than punting duels, Yost of Michigan promised, with outcomes hinging on fortunate bounces and fluke plays. He and others advocated four downs to gain 10, insisting offences needed that extra down.
Camp and co. prevailed, though. Even with the addition of rules allowing forward passes and onside, live-ball punts, the critics' prognostications proved immediately correct in 1906.
"The game is now largely dependable on chance," Yost said just a few weeks into the season. "I think it will be absolutely necessary to reduce the distance to be gained after this season to, say, seven yards, or else to allow four downs."
He was ignored.
Finally, after five more seasons of low scores and puntfests (teams usually kicked the ball away on first or second down in their own end of the field), America had had it with three-down football.
The fourth down was added, permanently.
Almost as radical and invigorating to scoring was shortening the field to 100 yards, so as to make room for "forward pass zones" — what we now call end zones. The restrictions on passing from 1906-11 seem quite comical today, but it's no wonder coaches were hesitant to have their teams attempt many throws.
For instance, in the first year of the forward pass, 1906, the penalty for an incompletion was not loss of down, but loss of ball — a turnover! In subsequent years, that rule was 'softened' to a 15-yard penalty. As well, the passer had to be at least five yards behind the line of scrimmage when he threw the ball, and he couldn't throw farther downfield than 20 yards.
Nor could he throw across the goal line; if he did, it was a touchback and a turnover. Defences quickly exploited that advantage. Whenever they were pushed back inside their 15-yard line, all 11 defenders would merely jam the box, with the fear of a pass play virtually non-existent. The result: offences seldom could run it in, and few touchdowns were scored.
The intention of allowing passes to cross the goal line, and into the newly created end zones, was to loosen goal-line defences, and increase scoring opportunities for offences. Starting in 1912 it did.
So why couldn't the rulesmakers keep the field 110 yards long? Simple.
Permanent, concrete stands already had been erected around a few big-time college teams' fields. And massive, immovable wooden bleachers hugged just about everybody else's. Rulesmakers wanted the new end zones to be deep enough to effectively aid the passing game. Thus, there was only one option — short of demolishing stands everywhere.
"The committee deemed it wise to shorten the length of the field from 110 to 100 yards," the New York Times explained, "and thus give plenty of room behind the line for the new forward pass zones."
By so doing, the length of the new field — with end zones included — remained 120 yards in length, as the old 110-yard fields had a small area beyond each goal line, much like a rugby field.
What about the width of the U.S. field? Since 1876 it always has been 53 1/3 yards wide. Canadian fields always have been wider — 65 yards.
Maybe if those 1906-11 American offences had had those extra 11 2/3 yards of width to work with, they never would have needed that fourth down — as Canadian teams happily have discovered over the generations.
As it was, the Americans truly needed it. One thing they won't ever abide is boring, low-scoring football.
If you can’t achieve the target, instead of improving, move the target closer.
I completely forgot the rules from 1906-1911. Must be getting old!
Canadians punt, don't they?
Touchbacks are VERY boring. Providing a reason not to take one and maybe play from the shadow of one's own goal-line seems like a good idea to me.
ML/NJ
Canadians punt, don't they?
Touchbacks are VERY boring. Providing a reason not to take one and maybe play from the shadow of one's own goal-line seems like a good idea to me.
ML/NJ
Even fewer care.
Up until the 1950s you had to hold the guy with the football down on the ground for 3 seconds before he was considered tackled.
Of course Freepers who are 10+ y/o remember when you could actually tackle the quarterback, hit another player’s helmet, make a snow angel after a touchdown, or speak harshly, without getting a penalty
It would be interesting if we adopted the “Rouge”, of course, we’d have to call it something else, since “Rouge” is too gay sounding.
“Pre-1906 football in America remains, in all likelihood, the most violent form of sport conceived by man since the Roman Empire.”
Might make it an interesting game to watch then.
Is the drop kick still allowed?
Which ties in to the fact that Americans never embraced "soccer", which is like watching paint dry.
To this day, I'm surpised that the rest of the world has not imitated us in this way.
Rome had gladiator duels all over the empire.
What, enduring constant breaks in the action in order to be sold erectile-dysfunction meds?
Yes, one was attempted in the pro-bowl this year.
*bump*
Nice, timely article, with the Super Bowl approaching, and especially on “Papa Bear” George Halas’s birthday!
Part of the folklore of lacrosse is that it was created by the Original Americans as an alternative to war, and deaths were not uncommon.
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