The origins of football have been traced back to
the game of rugby. In 1823, a gamresembling what is today
modern day football began at the famous Rugby boys’ school
in England. American students in Princeton and Harvard
Universities quickly adopted a form of football which they
began to steadily play. Many of the early football games
were extremely violent and rough.
Universities were not the sole participants in the new
game of football. As early as 1860, organized high school games
were being played on the Boston Common. Despite the popularity
of football in America’s colleges, organized games were not
played until after the Civil War ended in 1865. Two New Jersey
colleges, Princeton and Rutgers created their own rules to the
game of football as early as 1867. The short distance between
the two colleges eventually led to the first ever intercollegiate
football game in 1869 at the Rutgers campus. Rutgers was
declared victorious by a decision of 6 goals to 4. These early
games of football resembled more of the traditional soccer games
than that of football.
By 1873 representatives from Columbia, Princeton,
Rutgers and Yale converged on New York City to create the first
set of standardized rules for the game of football. At this
time the game of football was still being played with a large
element of soccer still prevalent. Harvard still felt satisfied
with their own rules for the game of football, and declined to
attend the conference between the four other colleges.
Eventually Yale, Princeton, Harvard and Columbia decided
to found the Intercollegiate Football Association, whose duty
was to establish such universal rules as the size of the field
at 140 by 70 yards and the number of players on a team as 15.
Up until the 1880's football still resembled a soccer-rugby
style game. Under a man named Walter Camp football evolved into
what it is today. Known as the father of American football,
Camp was able to petition a rules change to reduce the number
of players on each team playing at one time from 15 to 11. Camp
also helped to cut down the field size from 140 by 70 yards to
110 by 53 yards. Perhaps Walter Camp’s greatest contributions to
the game of football is the addition of a system of downs, and
the snapping of the ball from a center to a quarterback. By 1895
professional football had began.
Due to the lack of safety equipment and a rule that
legalized tackling below the waist, injuries ran
ramped throughout the league. 162 players became
seriously injured and 18 were killed due to the game
of football. Colleges and high schools all over the
country began banning the game of football due to the
fear of injuries to the participants involved. Due to
the tremendous brutality in the game of footbal at the time and
pressure by President Theodore Roosevelt to create a number of
reforms to benefit player safety, a seven member group was
called upon to create an inter-collegiate league which called on
13 representatives throughout the eastern schools to create the
Intercollegiate Athletic Association, which eventually was
renamed the NCAA. The group created such new rules as
legalizing forward passes, prohibiting all rough mass plays, and
outlawed a locked arm technique used by lineman to clear the way
for the ball carrier. A safety zone was created that separated
the two teams lineman by the length of the ball. Their final
reform was the shorting of the game clock from 70 to 60 minutes.
The new rule changes along with the growing popularity of
the sport lead to the present style and play that is prevalent
throughout all of modern day football.
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