Football for Player and Spectator. Fielding Yost
of Yale, Rutgers, Princeton and Columbia met in New York and adopted a set of rules which formed the first intercollegiate football association in America.
While throughout the New England towns and villages at this period a "dribbling" game was being played, the American colleges naturally adopted a form of play resembling that in progress under the English Rugby rules. Running with the ball and tackling, in fact every feature which tends to make the game a vigorous one, have subconsciously moulded the game in America. College football in the United States now stands as an exemplification of the athletic instincts of its younger generation.
The assimilation of the Rugby game and its evolution into the form in which football is now played in the United States were matters of considerable time and no small amount of deliberation. The English rules were found to be ambiguous in some cases, and difficult of comprehension in others. The novelty of the game, also, was productive of many suggested alterations and it was one of these which is really accountable for the wide difference which now exists between Rugby and American football. This was the adoption of a clause which permitted the forwards to heel or pass the ball out from the scrimmage where it could be grasped by one of the backs, who could then advance it. This was a procedure not tolerated in the original form of the game, but the additional interest which it imparted was immediately seen and the superiority of this plan for putting the ball into play, over the English method of kicking it about in scrimmage, was so apparent that it was eagerly embraced.
Yale Field, 1905.
In logical order then followed the selection of one man to do the passing, through the greater accuracy which was thus secured, and the alignment of the men in the forward positions, instead of the old form of helter-skelter. Naturally, the heavy men were grouped about the center to protect him and the man immediately behind who was to receive the pass, while the lighter and faster men were as signed to duty on the ends.
Other provisions of the English game were altered to suit the new conditions and a rules committee, composed of prominent sportsmeti of the leading institutions where the game was played, made numerous other changes in finally placing the game on a uniform basis. But one kind of intercollegiate football is now played the whole country over, and of recent years the changes in the rules have been comparatively slight and unimportant. The desire of the men who have from time to time served on the committee has been to develop a game which is clean and manly, and only a reference to the present code of rules is needed to demonstrate the stringent penalties placed upon any tactics even bordering on the unfair. The safety of the individual players has always been carefully looked after by the committee and the most important change made in the rules in recent years was the abolition of the flying wedge and its variations of mass play, an action taken in 1894.
In recent years as well, the rule makers have been endeavoring with continued success to cultivate the attractive features of the game by bringing kicking and open field running into greater prominence, a purpose which is being steadily accomplished without the sacrifice of any of the former attractions which the game has always possessed for both player and spectator.
To a great extent the rapid progress of the game has been due to the natural rivalry manifested between the elevens in the various institutions which took up the game at about the same time. Since the very earliest days of the game the contests between Yale and Princeton have roused the interest, not only of the students and alumni, but of a constantly increasing proportion of the sports-loving public. Yale and Harvard have maintained their annual competition almost every year. Pennsylvania has long been one of the best known homes of the game. West Point and Annapolis, the national schools for army and navy offlcers, have always been supporters of rival football teams. Numerous other institutions, natural rivals, have assisted in the development of the game, urged to increasing efficiency by the progress of the competitor, and the west has in more recent years taken a position of enthusiastic support until now the game is practically general in all parts of the United States, not only in the colleges, but in preparatory schools as well.
Football: Its prestige and popularity in American colleges and high school life
The necessity which impelled the English schoolboy at Rugby a century ago to inaugurate some healthful, clean and interesting outdoor sport and the felicitous choice of this form of recreation are the factors which have caused the growth of football until now it is the leading college game of America. It originated in a simple, Anglo-Saxon desire for clean, energetic sport and the participants in the game were the only spectators. It lives now through the same desire, but the interest in the game has so developed that hundreds of thousands throughout the country annually witness its play, not as mere spectators but as ardent votaries. From Maine to California, from Minnesota to Texas, wherever there are schools or colleges, football, during the crisp, autumn days, is the magnet which draws people from every walk of life from offices and shops for a few hours in the open air.
Ferry Field, Michigan, 1904.
History shows us that college life, before athletics had been so universally adopted, was very often a detriment to the physical development of the student. Formerly two ideals, diametrically opposed, met the student at his advent. There was the bookworm, with his high forehead and stooping shoulders on the one hand, and the gilded youth who sought and enjoyed the reputation of being the best billiard and card player in the institution, on the other. There was no middle course open to him if he aspired to distinction as a popular idol among the underclassmen. The billiard hall, with its poor light and poorer ventilation, or the stuffy card room, where its peculiar accomplishments were taught, offered the gravest menace to the physical well being of the student at this most critical period of his existence. Nor was the life of the bookworm better in this particular.
This condition does not exist at the present time. Before the prospective college man has finished his preparatory course necessary to an entrance into the higher scholastic field, the college athlete, the football player, the nearest approach to the all-round man, is the central figure in his ambitious dreams. Into his visions of physical supremacy there has been dexterously inserted by his older brother, his father and his different school teachers the absolute necessity for study. He realizes and regards it more seriously than did his active, young prototype thirty years ago. He is imbued with the definite ambition and knows that, before its accomplishment can possibly be attained, he must, first of all, he the student.
During that period of life ordinarily spent in college, energy and vitality are generated so abundantly that some legitimate physical exercise of a strenuous nature must be invented as a safety valve. Improperly directed or neglected, this surplus of vitality works an irremediable damage to the after life of its possessor. It is a matter of speculation, of course, but is, at the same time, warranted by our knowledge of what athletics are doing at the present time, that many men of brilliant promise in their early college life of a century ago would have been prominent in football had they lived at the present time, and would have thus avoided many influences which, in some cases, undoubtedly ruined their careers of service to the world.
Objections to football have been heard in certain quarters on account of its alleged brutality and the violence of the exercise demanded in its play. It is certainly not a game for weaklings or improperly trained boys, but statistics show that accidents of a serious nature are no more frequent in football than in horseback riding, hunting, yachting and many other kindred sports, which do not meet with disapproval on this ground. The game is no more violent than is required by the physical demands of the men who play it.
There are no memories which cling so persistently to the mind of the alumnus, always capable of awakening a glow of enthusiasm and always recalled with pleasure, as those interwoven in the football games of his undergraduate days. There are no ties so potent to bind him to the college through the business of after years. The conversations at class reunions invariably drift to football