Football History 101: Let's Get Campy!

All right, settle down, class. I know all of you are eager to see how many yards Rich Rodriguez spread offense can gain today in Greenville and how many 3rd down sacks the Wolverines get on Wisconsin today, but let me ask you this -- do you know where 3rd down comes from? Have you ever wondered why players line up in a scrimmage after every tackle, as opposed to a scrum in rugby?

After all, despite what some random lunatics in Kansas might tell you, our football game wasn't just some divine creation that dropped out of the sky in its current form. Football evolved, and it continues to evolve today. Someone had to rewrite the rules of the game before the game could change.

Someone did. His name was Walter Camp. That's not just some random name on a random trophy on Reggie Bush's mantle, either. Walter Camp was, for all intents and purposes, the father of American football...
Walter Camp pictured as Yale's Captain, 1878-79
(Courtesy of Project Gutenberg)
We mentioned last week that Anglophobia was settling in after that famous Harvard v. Yale game in 1875. The American centennial was coming. We were about to celebrate 100 years of independence from the British Empire, and yet here were the Brits invading our shores with this rugby nonsense. This just wouldn't do -- especially at Yale, a school which had wanted to change the rules of rugby from the moment it became popular.

Enter Walter Camp, who couldn't have arrived at a better time. Camp enrolled at Yale in the fall of 1876 and immediately became the big man on campus. He made every varsity athletics team he tried out for -- baseball, football, swimming, track, tennis, you name it -- and he became the starting halfback for Yale's football team almost instantly, because he was not only strong and fast, but also a fantastic kicker, something much more valued in rugby than in American football today. Chicks dug the goal scorers.

For all Camp's physical prowess, however, he was best known among his peers for his mental abilities. He loved problem-solving and strategic thinking, and by 1878, he was not only captain of the Yale football team, but also its assistant coach. By 1880, his name became synonymous with Yale football, and he commanded so much respect among his peers that he could walk into any rules meeting and own the room.

And that's exactly what he did in October of that year. With the backing of a large Yale contingent, he convinced the rules committee to reduce the number of players on the field from 15 to 11 -- something Yale had wanted to do from day one. Camp didn't stop there, though. A lover of strategy and tactical maneuvering, Camp hated that rugby teams never really had orderly possession of the ball. So he invented the scrimmage. Any time a player is tackled, the ball would be placed at that spot, snapped back to a "quarter-back," and play would resume until the player with the ball was tackled. This gave Camp and his fellow coaches the opportunity to design plays and out-think their opponents, rather than just letting players outrun them.

The room loved the idea. It was unique to all forms of football, and it set the American game apart from its English roots. American football was born -- but it still needed a few tweaks.

The biggest of those tweaks came in 1881, when Princeton played Yale in the famous "block game" -- as in, "block the opponent from ever getting the damn ball." Princeton used a strategy of holding the ball as long as possible. Princeton rushed for no gain, waited a long time to line up again, rushed for no gain again, and kept on doing this for an entire half. Why? Because they could. Yale had to take the ball away from them, and Princeton wouldn't let them. When Yale used the same strategy in the second half, the crowd started booing and throwing whatever vegetables were nearby. Ever try playing football on a field full of tomatoes? Not that easy.

The next day, as some schools called for a return to traditional rugby, Camp the problem-solver proposed a new rule: after 3 downs, if the team with possession of the ball hasn't advanced it at least five yards, the other team gets possession. Just like that, you had your down & yards-to-go rule. You also had a change in how the field was painted, as teams drew demarcation lines on the field every five yards -- prompting one professor to say, "Hey, that looks just like a gridiron."

You probably don't think about these things when you watch American football today, do you? You probably can't fathom that one man could have that much impact on any game, but Walter Camp, with his respected athletic prowess and his tactical mind, practically built American football in his own image -- a game for athletes and strategists alike. Camp's game, however, was far from perfect, and little did he know in the early 1880s that football's darkest days were just around the corner...

Ah, but today's kickoff is just around the corner, too, and you're all eager to see just how far Camp's game has progressed, aren't you? Class dismissed. Enjoy the games, everyone.