Football History 101: Weapons of Mass Formation

Good morning, class. You're all looking a bit less than alert today. Some of you look particularly pained. Perhaps another long Friday night with that beer bong didn't treat you so well...

I assure you, though, that none of you experienced the pain that many a college football player suffered in the 1890s. This was also the result of a rule change by Walter Camp, whom we discussed last week. In 1888, Camp recommended a rule change that would once and for all eliminate the last trace of rugby from American football; he recommended allowing tackling below the belt.

Yes, have a good snicker and make your jokes about how you were tackled below the belt last night. Judging from the looks of you lot, I'm stunned that you can recall last night. Think for a minute about the ramifications of this rule, though. Think of all the shoestring tackles you've seen in your lifetime. Without this rule change, that's a penalty. Tackling below the belt made American football very different -- and a lot more dangerous...


A bronze recreation of the infamous "flying wedge" formation,
on display at the NCAA Hall of Champions in Indianapolis.
With defenders suddenly able to dive at a running back's feet to drag him down, coaches discovered that their running backs could not gain consistent yardage anymore, and many of the wide open running plays of the past just weren't going to work. To combat this change, coaches ordered their offensive linemen to line up shoulder-to-shoulder and form tighter blocking formations. Some coaches, like Yale's Amos Alonzo Stagg and Harvard's Lorin E. Deland, took this concept one step further with the creation of the mass formation play.

On kickoffs, Stagg would have one player perform an "inch kick" -- this was well before the onside kick rule, obviously -- then have the other players form a V-shaped pattern in front of the ball. The kicker would then hand the ball back to the team's fastest runner, and the mass of players would take off in unison down the field, attempting to obliterate anything in its path until it could open a clear hole for the runner to break through and take off down the field.

Deland took this idea a step further with the infamous flying wedge, which Harvard introduced in 1892. The flying wedge, which often locked as many 10 players together in a V formation, made no attempt to open a hole for the runner. With every player holding on to each other and moving in unison, the flying wedge ran over just about every defensive line that came into its path. Soon coaches would design other offensive plays that utilized some type of mass formation, often with players locking arms and bull rushing opponents.

The flying wedge was a perfect formation, save for one small problem -- it was killing people.

It was nigh impossible to break up a mass formation play without someone getting terribly maimed, and as its use increased, so did deaths on the football field. After all, simple physics will tell you that the more mass an object has, the greater its momentum, and thus the harder it will be to stop. Try to imagine 10 large men locking arms and running right at you. Think you have enough strength to break them up? Most football players didn't. In fact, if you couldn't leap over the wedge, you didn't have a chance in hell of stopping it.

By 1905, the nightmare of mass formation plays was at its peak. As many as 18 players were killed in college football games, and scores more were injured badly. The outrage reached all the way to the White House, where Teddy Roosevelt ordered colleges to clean up the game or face a legislative ban. With football becoming a huge revenue generator for so many schools, college presidents needed to make sure that would never happen.

Eliminating mass formation plays, however, wasn't enough. College football's rulemakers had to do something to open up the game again. Some had suggested widening the field. Others suggested disallowing tackles below the waist again. One man, though, had a vision of football's future a decade earlier, and his idea would revolutionize the game.

His name was John Heisman.

Ah, you recognize that name, don't you? And now you all want to head out to the stadium to see if your quarterback will win that award, don't you? Go on, then. Class dismissed. Enjoy the games, everyone.