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Smithsonian.com: The Early History of Football's Forward Pass
Posted on 2/1/13 at 12:21 pm
Posted on 2/1/13 at 12:21 pm
The Smithsonian has been rerunning some football based articles with the Super Bowl coming up and figured someone might enjoy this one.
Apparently the reason we have the forward pass is because the game became so violent that in order to prevent multiple fatalities representatives of the 62 schools participating in football at the time met to change rules to make the game safer. Pretty interesting stuff.
LINK
Apparently the reason we have the forward pass is because the game became so violent that in order to prevent multiple fatalities representatives of the 62 schools participating in football at the time met to change rules to make the game safer. Pretty interesting stuff.
LINK
9
Posted on 2/1/13 at 12:29 pm to BluegrassBelle
Link is blocked for me. But wasn't it all-around badass, and manliest man ever to live, Teddy Roosevelt that ushered in the forward pass?
Posted on 2/1/13 at 12:31 pm to BluegrassBelle
Great article. Thanks for posting. Interestingly, the same set of reforms - prompted by Teddy Roosevelt's involvement - created the organization that would become the NCAA.
Posted on 2/1/13 at 12:32 pm to BluegrassBelle
quote:
Apparently the reason we have the forward pass is because the game became so violent
Thanks Obama!
Posted on 2/1/13 at 12:34 pm to ProjectP2294
quote:
Link is blocked for me. But wasn't it all-around badass, and manliest man ever to live, Teddy Roosevelt that ushered in the forward pass?
He initiated it indeed.
From the article:
quote:
By 1905, college football was all the rage, attracting tens of thousands of fans to games at a time when major-league baseball teams often attracted only 3,000—and pro football was still more than a decade away. But it was also an increasingly violent and deadly passion. There were 18 fatalities nationwide that year, including three college players (the rest were high-school athletes), and President Theodore Roosevelt, whose son was on the freshmen team at Harvard University, made it clear he wanted reforms amid calls by some to abolish the college game. In a commencement address at the school earlier in the year, Roosevelt alluded to the increasingly violent nature of football saying, “Brutality in playing a game should awaken the heartiest and most plainly shown contempt for the player guilty of it.”
Thought it was interesting given all the discussion we've had about the impact all this concussion business could have on football as we know it. Could you imagine watching football then and seeing those kind of changes?
Oh and totally OT but I thought of you when Wiltjer leveled Marshall Henderson on a screen the other night.
Posted on 2/1/13 at 12:35 pm to BluegrassBelle
I also like the article for highlighting the role of Carlisle, which (along with Michigan and Pitt) were probably the first real challenges to Ivy League dominance (the Ivies, of course, invented the game and attracted the best players - academic standing be damned).
Posted on 2/1/13 at 12:36 pm to BluegrassBelle
quote:
Oh and totally OT but I thought of you when Wiltjer leveled Marshall Henderson on a screen the other night
Henderson probably deserved it.
Posted on 2/1/13 at 12:37 pm to BluegrassBelle
quote:
Could you imagine watching football then and seeing those kind of changes?
The changes didn't seem that drastic at first. Most of the teams anybody cared about didn't use the pass. People thought of Carlisle, Michigan, and Pitt the same way a lot of people think of Boise State or Hawaii today - gimmicky.
Probably the biggest short-term change was the prohibition of the flying wedge. That made the game a lot safer.
But I get your point - if you loved football back then you'd probably have been up in arms about the rules changes.
This post was edited on 2/1/13 at 12:40 pm
Posted on 2/1/13 at 12:47 pm to BluegrassBelle
An incomplete pass resulted in a 15-yard penalty, and a pass that dropped without being touched meant possession went to the defensive team.
Read more: LINK
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
wow. this would be cool now.
Read more: LINK
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
wow. this would be cool now.
Posted on 2/1/13 at 12:52 pm to BluegrassBelle
Another reason for the reforms were the allegations surrounding Walter Camp and his dominance of the rules committee. Apparently, he had a slush fund to pay Yale players. The concepts of "student-athlete" and "eligibility" were arguably born during this time.
Before the reforms, there was no NFL, so players became "professional students," often enrolling in grad school so they could play at multiple colleges - and getting paid to do so.
The reforms didn't stamp this practice out, however. In 1908, LSU was accused of paying Doc Fenton (who came from the heartland of football - Pennsylvania - to play for a backwater Southern team). He was the reason LSU was any good at all in 1908 - that and our "point a minute" offense we adopted from Michigan's Fielding Yost. Of course, we were an afterthought back then - another Boise State, if you will.
Before the reforms, there was no NFL, so players became "professional students," often enrolling in grad school so they could play at multiple colleges - and getting paid to do so.
The reforms didn't stamp this practice out, however. In 1908, LSU was accused of paying Doc Fenton (who came from the heartland of football - Pennsylvania - to play for a backwater Southern team). He was the reason LSU was any good at all in 1908 - that and our "point a minute" offense we adopted from Michigan's Fielding Yost. Of course, we were an afterthought back then - another Boise State, if you will.
Posted on 2/1/13 at 1:01 pm to BluegrassBelle
Somebody send this link to Les-he still seems unaware that the forward pass is legal.
Posted on 2/1/13 at 1:05 pm to BluegrassBelle
From the Smithsonian articles as well:
Top 11 Football Artifacts:
Had one. Ahh, the memories.
Top 11 Football Artifacts:
Had one. Ahh, the memories.
Posted on 2/1/13 at 1:10 pm to TxTiger82
quote:
Great article. Thanks for posting. Interestingly, the same set of reforms - prompted by Teddy Roosevelt's involvement - created the organization that would become the NCAA.
I've read that one of the reforms presented was to widen the field to 50 yards.
However, Harvard had just completed building the largest concrete stadium in the world and they would have basically have had to tear it down if the field would have been widened. So, the 40 yard field width is with us today.
And, Harvard Stadium still stands --
This post was edited on 2/1/13 at 1:13 pm
Posted on 2/1/13 at 1:33 pm to ProjectP2294
Probably
Zamoro, I like the one they did on the evolution of the ball as well.
How Did the Pigskin Get It's Shape?
Zamoro, I like the one they did on the evolution of the ball as well.
How Did the Pigskin Get It's Shape?
Posted on 2/1/13 at 2:06 pm to BluegrassBelle
quote:
"The forward pass is a cowardly, immoral play."
-Jock Sutherland
Posted on 2/1/13 at 2:27 pm to Newbomb Turk
quote:
However, Harvard had just completed building the largest concrete stadium in the world and they would have basically have had to tear it down if the field would have been widened. So, the 40 yard field width is with us today
Umm a football field is 53 yards wide
Posted on 2/1/13 at 2:32 pm to Newbomb Turk
quote:
However, Harvard had just completed building the largest concrete stadium in the world and they would have basically have had to tear it down if the field would have been widened. So, the 40 yard field width is with us today.
Yes, I have heard that story before, too.
Posted on 2/1/13 at 3:27 pm to TxTiger82
quote:
Another reason for the reforms were the allegations surrounding Walter Camp and his dominance of the rules committee. Apparently, he had a slush fund to pay Yale players. The concepts of "student-athlete" and "eligibility" were arguably born during this time.
I love how two of the biggest issues in college football today—safety and defining the student-athlete—are the exact same issues that they had over 100 freaking years ago. Now that's tradition!
Posted on 2/1/13 at 3:33 pm to TxTiger82
quote:
Yes, I have heard that story before, too.
No you haven't.
The story goes like this....Teddy proposed a change to make the field 40 yards wider than what it was. Harvard said no because of the new stadium, so the 53 yard wide field remained. And thank God, cause football would basically be rugby with lots of sideways running and passing.
Posted on 2/1/13 at 5:00 pm to 3HourTour
quote:
And thank God, cause football would basically be rugby with lots of sideways running and passing.
and you still would like it just as much had that gone down b/c you would have grown up watching it played on those types of fields.
quote:
As the first of the great football fields, the Stadium influenced the shape and size of every other arena, and even made its mark on rules of the game. When public indignation over football's "roughness" forced President Theodore Roosevelt to institute a new set of rules in 1906, one of the proposed changes was to make fields a full 40 yards wider. This move would have changed the whole character of football, turning it into a Rugby-type game, with more lateral passing and sideways running. Harvard protested, however, that such an innovation would outdate its six-year-old Stadium, and the rule-making body decided to institute the forward pass instead of the wider field.
LINK
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