Football History 101: How The Stadium Shaped the Game

Yes, yes, I know. You were all good little students who came to class last week and waited the required 15 minutes for me to show up. You didn't just run off to the stadium and get drunk. I'm touched, really...

Now let's get down to today's lesson, which happens to involve the stadium. Your environment shapes your sports. Think about that concept for a moment. If James Naismith couldn't find any peach baskets, would we be playing basketball today? If Scotland didn't have so many lush green fields, would we be playing golf?

Football is no different. Back in the middle of the 19th century, when the English were writing the rules to their various football games, the fields on which they played shaped their games. Schools that had open fields favored handling and tackling games, while schools that played inside cloisters favored kicking games, because rugby-style games inside cloisters often resulted in heads getting smashed on stone. That's one reason why we ended up with soccer.

The stadium is the environment that shapes the game. In 1903, with college football at the apparent height of its popularity, Harvard built a huge stadium for football. Little did anyone know that this monument to American football would have such a huge impact on the game for which it was built...



Harvard Stadium
(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)
After its well-heeled alumni spent $310,000 to have Harvard Stadium built, Harvard president Charles William Eliot expressed his concern that the giant concrete horseshoe would become a "white elephant," an archaic ruin to a game whose popularity might subside one day. Obviously, that didn't happen, but at the time, with the violence growing in the game, that concern was valid. Two years later, American football struggled through its most brutal season; 18 football players died in action, and 159 more were seriously injured. Concussions and spinal injuries were all too common.

With that in mind, President Teddy Roosevelt, who enjoyed football but didn't enjoy watching young men get killed in a game, told college presidents, "Brutality and foul play should receive the same summary punishment given to a man who cheats at cards! Change the game or forsake it!" Eliot agreed, and all the leaders of the game convened to discuss what they could do to improve the game. Walter Camp -- a Yale man, mind you -- suggested that the field of play be widened to open up the game.

Well, Eliot was having none of this. His school's alumni poured huge amounts of money into a giant concrete bunker, and now Camp's rules changes threatened to make Harvard Stadium obsolete after three years. Eliot probably had visions of his alumni storming his office and forcibly removing him if this were allowed to happen. So Eliot quickly voiced his disapproval for this rule and started looking around for other options...

Hey, look, there's John Heisman and his forward pass! That will open up the game just as much widening the field, won't it?

Heisman saw Eliot's dilemma as his opportunity to form a coalition that would finally get Camp to take his forward pass seriously. Harvard held clout in college football in 1905, and so did Heisman. All they really needed was one more big name to convince football's leaders to legalize the forward pass. They found it in Navy head coach Paul Dashiell. Now the forward had the backing of a military commander, too. That committee became an unstoppable force that broke through Camp's offensive line, and in 1906, the forward pass was legalized, and American football was changed forever.

Think for a moment, though -- if Harvard Stadium hadn't been built two years, what would American football look like today? Would it still be as popular as it is? That stadium you fill today couldn't accommodate what Walter Camp, the father of this game, really wanted. If it weren't for the stadium, John Heisman might not have been able to form the coalition that legalized the forward pass, the thing that makes American football unique among all football games around the world. Today, the game shapes the stadiums, but in 1903, the stadium shaped the game.

Ponder that as you head out to the stadium today. Class dismissed. Enjoy the games, everyone.