The game began to return to college campuses by the late 1860s. Princeton,
Rutgers University, and
Brown University began playing the popular "kicking" game during this time. In 1867, Princeton used rules based on those of the London
Football Association. Football games were brought back to Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard and Yale following an 1870 tour of these universities by
Thomas Hughes, author of the popular and celebrated novel ''
Tom Brown's Schooldays''. During his visits, Hughes emphasized that football had to be regulated to promote
physical culture rather than brutality. Hughes' defense of football likely resonated with returning Civil War veterans who were used to vigorous competition. American football historian
Parke H. Davis described the period between 1869 and 1875 as the 'Pioneer Period'; the years 1876–93 he called the 'Period of the American Intercollegiate Football Association'; and the years 1894–1933 he dubbed the 'Period of Rules Committees and Conferences'.
Pioneer period (1869–1875) Rutgers–Princeton (1869) On November 6, 1869,
Rutgers University faced
Princeton University (then known as the College of New Jersey)
in a game that was played with a round ball and used a set of rules suggested by Rutgers captain
William J. Leggett, based on London's
The Football Association's first set of rules, which were an early attempt by the former pupils of England's public schools, to unify the rules of their public schools games and create a universal and standardized set of rules for the game of football and bore little resemblance to the American game which would be developed in the following decades. By tradition more than any other criteria, it is usually regarded as the first game of
intercollegiate American football. Princeton Captain,
William Stryker Gummere, conceived the idea of an intercollegiate game between Princeton and Rutgers. He invented a set of rules and convinced
William J. Leggett to join him. The game was played at a Rutgers field. Two teams of 25 players attempted to score by kicking the ball over the opposing team's goal. Throwing or carrying the ball was not allowed, but there was plenty of physical contact between players. The first team to reach six goals was declared the winner. Rutgers won by a score of six to four. A rematch was played at Princeton a week later under Princeton's own set of rules (one notable difference was the awarding of a "free kick" to any player that caught the ball on the fly, which was a feature adopted from the Football Association's rules; the
fair catch kick rule has survived through to modern American game). Princeton won that game by a score of 8–0.
Columbia joined the series in 1870, and by 1872 several schools were fielding intercollegiate teams, including Yale and
Stevens Institute of Technology. Later in 1870, Princeton and Rutgers played again with Princeton defeating Rutgers 6–0. This game's violence caused such an outcry that no games at all were played in 1871. Football came back in 1872, when Columbia played Yale for the first time. The Yale team was coached and captained by
David Schley Schaff, who had learned to play football while attending
Rugby school. Schaff himself was injured and unable to the play the game, but Yale won the game 3–0 nonetheless. Later in 1872,
Stevens Tech became the fifth school to field a team. Stevens lost to Columbia, but beat both
New York University and
City College of New York during the following year. By 1873, the college students playing football had made significant efforts to standardize their fledgling game. Teams had been scaled down from 25 players to 20. The only way to score was still to bat or kick the ball through the opposing team's goal, and the game was played in two 45 minute halves on fields 140 yards long and 70 yards wide. On October 20, 1873, representatives from Yale, Princeton, and Rutgers met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City to codify the first set of intercollegiate football rules. Before this meeting, which founded the first
Intercollegiate Football Association, each school had its own set of rules and games were usually played using the home team's own particular code. At this meeting a list of rules, based more on The Football Association's rules than the recently founded
Rugby Football Union, was drawn up for intercollegiate football games. Harvard's refusal made the tentative agreement untenable. Harvard was the most well-connected and influential of the elite universities, and it had a tradition of alumni
philanthropy and an unrivaled
school spirit. For the greater purpose of building intercollegiate networks through sport, Harvard's approval was sought by the other colleges. In 1874, Harvard agreed to a challenge to play
McGill University, from
Montreal, in a two-game series. Inasmuch as rugby football had been transplanted to Canada from England, the McGill team played under a set of rules which allowed a player to pick up the ball and run with it whenever he wished. Another rule, unique to McGill, was to count
tries (the act of grounding the football past the opposing team's goal line; it is important to note that there was no end zone during this time), as well as goals, in the scoring. In the Rugby rules of the time, a touchdown only provided the chance to kick a free goal from the field. If the kick was missed, the touchdown did not count. The McGill team traveled to
Cambridge to meet Harvard. On May 14, 1874, the first game, played under Harvard's rules, was won by Harvard with a score of 3–0. The next day, the two teams played under "McGill" rugby rules to a scoreless tie. The games featured a round ball instead of a rugby-style oblong ball. In October 1874, the Harvard team once again traveled to Montreal to play McGill in rugby, where they won by three tries.
Harvard–Tufts, Harvard–Yale (1875) Harvard quickly took a liking to the rugby game, and its use of the
try which, until that time, was not used in American football. The try would later evolve into the score known as the
touchdown. On June 4, 1875, Harvard faced
Tufts University in the first game between two American colleges played under rules similar to the McGill–Harvard contest, which was won by Tufts. The rules included each side fielding 11 men, the ball was advanced by kicking or carrying it, and tackles of the ball carrier stopped play. Further elated by the excitement of McGill's version of football, Harvard challenged its closest rival, Yale, to a game which the Bulldogs accepted. The two teams agreed to play under a set of rules called the "Concessionary Rules", which involved Harvard conceding something to Yale's soccer and Yale conceding a great deal to Harvard's rugby. They decided to play with 15 players on each team. On November 13, 1875, Yale and Harvard played each other for the first time ever, where Harvard won 4–0. 2,000 spectators watched the first playing of
The Game—the annual football contest between Harvard and Yale—including the future "father of American football"
Walter Camp. Camp, who would enroll at Yale the next year, was torn between an admiration for Harvard's style of play and the misery of the Yale defeat, and became determined to avenge Yale's defeat. Spectators from Princeton also carried the game back home, where it quickly became the most popular version of football. The Intercollegiate Football Association represents the first comprehensive effort to organize and standardize American football.
Walter Camp: Father of American football , the "Father of American Football", pictured here in 1878 as the captain of the
Yale University football team
Walter Camp is widely considered to be the most important figure in the development of American football. Later changes made it possible to snap the ball with the hands, either through the air or by a direct hand-to-hand pass.
Interference (1893). The last, and arguably most important innovation, which would at last make American football uniquely "American", was the legalization of interference, or
blocking, a tactic which was highly illegal under the rugby-style rules. Interference remains strictly illegal in both rugby codes to today. The prohibition of interference in the rugby game stems from the game's strict enforcement of its
offside rule, which prohibited any player on the team with possession of the ball to loiter between the ball and the goal. At first, American players would find creative ways of aiding the runner by pretending to accidentally knock into defenders trying to tackle the runner. When Walter Camp witnessed this tactic being employed during a game he refereed between Harvard and Princeton in 1879, he was at first appalled, but the next year had adopted the blocking tactics for his own team at Yale. During the 1880s and 1890s, teams developed increasingly complex blocking tactics including the interlocking interference technique known as the
Flying wedge or "V-trick formation", which was first employed by Richard Hodge at Princeton in 1884 in a game against Penn, however, Princeton put the tactic aside for the next 4 years, only to revive it again in 1888 to combat the three-time All-American Yale guard
Pudge Heffelfinger. Heffelfinger soon figured out how to break up the formation by leaping high in the air with his legs tucked under him, striking the V like a human cannonball. In 1892, during a
game against
Yale, a Harvard fan and student
Lorin F. Deland first introduced the flying wedge as a kickoff play, in which two five man squads would line up about 25 yards behind the kicker, only to converge in a perfect flying wedge running downfield, where Harvard was able to trap the ball and hand it off to the speedy All-American Charley Brewer inside the wedge. Despite their effectiveness, the flying wedge, "V-trick formation" and other tactics which involved interlocking interference, were outlawed in 1905 through the efforts of the rule committee led by
Parke H. Davis, because of its contribution to serious injury. Non-interlocking interference remains a basic element of modern American football, with many complex schemes being developed and implemented over the years, including zone blocking and pass blocking.
Alex Moffat Alex Moffat was the early sport's greatest kicker and held a place in Princeton athletic history similar to Camp at Yale. American football historian
David M. Nelson credits Moffat with revolutionizing the kicking game in
1883 by developing the "spiral punt", described by Nelson as "a dramatic change from the traditional end-over-end kicks". He also invented the
drop kick.
Henry "Tillie" Lamar The
1885 season was notable for one of the most celebrated football plays of the 19th century – a 90-yard punt return by
Henry "Tillie" Lamar of
Princeton in the closing minutes of the game against
Yale. Trailing 5–0, Princeton dropped two men back to receive a Yale punt. The punt glanced off one returner's shoulder and was caught by the other, Lamar, on the dead run. Lamar streaked down the left sideline, until hemmed in by two Princeton players, then cut sharply to the middle of the field, ducking under their arms and breaking loose for the touchdown. After the controversy of a darkness-shortened Yale-Princeton championship game the year before that was ruled "no contest", a record crowd turned out for the 1885 game. For the first time, the game was played on one of the campuses instead of at a neutral site, and emerged as a major social event, attracting ladies to its audience as well as students and male spectators. The Lamar punt return furnished the most spectacular ending to any football game played to that point, and did much to popularize the sport of college football to the general public. One source lists Princeton captain
C. M. DeCamp as the player of the year.
Arthur Cumnock Harvard end
Arthur Cumnock invented the first nose guard. Cumnock's invention gained popularity, and in 1892, a newspaper article described the growing popularity of the device: He is also credited with having been the person who developed the tradition of spring practice in football; in March 1889, Cumnock led the Harvard team in drills on Jarvis field, which is considered the first-ever spring football practice. In 1913, an article in an Eastern newspaper sought to choose the greatest Harvard football player of all time. The individual chosen was Cumnock, who "the sons of John Harvard are pretty well agreed" was "the greatest Harvard player of all time." As for his individual performance in the 1890 Yale game, the writer noted: "Such tackling as Cumnock did that day probably has never been equaled. He played a star offensive game, but on the defensive he was a terror.
Lee McClung would come around the end with the giant Heffelfinger interfering, and the records read: 'Cumnock tackles both and brings them down. Note: For brief periods in the late 19th century, some penalties awarded one or more points for the opposing teams, and some teams in the late 19th and early 20th centuries chose to negotiate their own scoring system for individual games.
Period of Rules Committees and Conference (1894–1932) Expansion (1894–1904) College football expanded greatly during the last two decades of the 19th century. Several major
rivalries date from this time period; examples include
Michigan–Notre Dame (1887),
Army–Navy (1890),
California–Stanford (1892), and
Oklahoma–Texas (1900). November 1890 was an active time in the sport. In
Baldwin City, Kansas, on the 22nd, college football was played in the state for the first time as
Baker beat
Kansas, 22–9. On the 27th,
Vanderbilt played
Nashville (Peabody) at
Athletic Park and won 40–0. It was the first time organized football was played in the state of
Tennessee. The 29th saw the first instance of the above noted Army–Navy Game, a 24–0 win by
Navy.
East Rutgers was first to extend the reach of the game. An intercollegiate game was first played in the state of
New York when Rutgers played
Columbia on November 2, 1872. It was also the first scoreless tie in the history of the fledgling sport.
Yale football started the same year and had its first match against Columbia, the nearest college to play football. It took place at
Hamilton Park in
New Haven and was the first game in New England. The game used a set of rules based on
association football with 20-man sides, played on a field 400 by 250 feet. Yale won 3–0, Tommy Sherman scoring the first goal and Lew Irwin the other two. After the first game against Harvard, Tufts took its squad to Bates College in
Lewiston, Maine for the first football game played in
Maine. This occurred on November 6, 1875.
Penn's Athletic Association was looking to pick "a twenty" to play a game of football against Columbia. This "twenty" never played Columbia, but did play twice against Princeton. Princeton won both games 6 to 0. The first of these happened on November 11, 1876, in
Philadelphia and was the first intercollegiate game in the state of
Pennsylvania.
Brown enters the intercollegiate game in 1878. The first game where one team scored over 100 points happened on October 25, 1884, when
Yale routed
Dartmouth 113–0. It was also the first time one team scored over 100 points and the opposing team was shut out. The next week, Princeton outscored Lafayette by 140 to 0. The first intercollegiate game in the state of Vermont happened on November 6, 1886, between
Dartmouth and
Vermont at
Burlington, Vermont. Dartmouth won 91 to 0. The first
nighttime football game was played in
Mansfield, Pennsylvania on September 28, 1892, between
Mansfield State Normal and
Wyoming Seminary and ended at halftime in a 0–0 tie. The Army-Navy game of 1893 saw the first documented use of a
football helmet by a player in a game.
Joseph M. Reeves had a crude leather helmet made by a shoemaker in
Annapolis and wore it in the game after being warned by his doctor that he risked death if he continued to play football after suffering an earlier kick to the head.
Harvard Law School student and football
center William H. Lewis became the first African-American to be selected as an All-American in 1892, an honor he would receive again in 1893.
Midwest and the University of Michigan In 1879, the
University of Michigan became the first school west of Pennsylvania to establish a college football team. On May 30, 1879, Michigan beat
Racine College 1–0 in a game played in
Chicago. The
Chicago Daily Tribune called it "the first rugby-football game to be played west of the
Alleghenies." Other Midwestern schools soon followed suit, including the
University of Chicago,
Northwestern University, and the
University of Minnesota. In 1881, Michigan scheduled games against the top American football teams—the Eastern powerhouses of Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Organized intercollegiate football was first played in the state of
Minnesota on September 30, 1882, when
Hamline was convinced to play
Minnesota after a track meet. Minnesota won 2 to 0. It was the first game west of the
Mississippi River. The first western team to travel east was the
1881 Michigan team, which played at Harvard, Yale and Princeton. football team, 1903 Organized intercollegiate football was first played in
Indiana on May 13, 1884, when
Butler defeated
DePauw. Michigan's 1894 victory over Cornell marked the first victory by a Western football school against one of the Eastern football powers. Up to that point, no Western player had been selected for the annual
College Football All-America Teams selected by Eastern football authorities. Michigan lobbied for
Fatty Smith as an All-American. The nation's first college football league, the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives (also known as the Western Conference), a precursor to the
Big Ten Conference, was founded in 1895. Led by coach
Fielding H. Yost, Michigan became the first "western" national power. From 1901 to 1905, Michigan had a 56-game undefeated streak that included a 1902 trip to play in the first college football
bowl game, which later became the
Rose Bowl Game. During this streak, Michigan scored 2,831 points while allowing only 40. Stars on the team included
Willie Heston and
Al Herrnstein. November 30, 1905, saw
Walter Eckersall and
Chicago defeat Michigan 2 to 0. Dubbed "The First Greatest Game of the Century", broke Michigan's 56-game unbeaten streak and marked the end of the "Point-a-Minute" years. Eckersall was selected as the
quarterback for
Walter Camp's "All-Time All-America Team" honoring the greatest college football players during the sport's formative years. After his playing days, Eckersall remained a prominent figure in football. He had a successful dual career as a sportswriter for the
Chicago Tribune, and as a referee. As an official, Eckersall was considered one of the best and officiated at many high-profile games.
South South Atlantic Organized intercollegiate football was first played in the state of
Virginia and the south on November 2, 1873, in
Lexington between
Washington and Lee and
VMI. Washington and Lee won 4–2. Some industrious students of the two schools organized a game for October 23, 1869 – but it was rained out. Students of the
University of Virginia were playing pickup games of the kicking-style of football as early as 1870, and some accounts even claim it organized a game against Washington and Lee College in 1871; but no record has been found of the score of this contest. Due to scantness of records of the prior matches some will claim
Virginia v. Pantops Academy November 13, 1887, as the first game in Virginia. between
VMI and
Virginia Tech. On April 9, 1880, at
Stoll Field,
Transylvania University (then called Kentucky University) beat
Centre College by the score of –0 in what is often considered the first recorded game played in the
South. The first game of "scientific football" in the South was the first instance of the
Victory Bell rivalry between
North Carolina and
Duke (then known as Trinity College) held on
Thanksgiving Day, 1888, at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds in
Raleigh, North Carolina. On November 30, 1882, cadet
Vaulx Carter organized a game between the
Naval Academy and the Clifton Athletic Club (in fact
Johns Hopkins University) and won 8–0, the first intercollegiate game in
Maryland. It snowed heavily before the game, to the point where players for both teams had to clear layers of snow off of the field, making large piles of snow along the sides of the playing ground. Both teams also nailed strips of leather to the bottom of their shoes to help deal with slipping. The field was 110 yards by 53 yards, with
goalposts apart and high. During play, the ball was kicked over the
seawall a number of times, once going so far out it had to be retrieved by boat before play could continue. The following season,
Gallaudet college and
Georgetown played twice; the first intercollegiate games in
Washington, D. C. The deaf-mute Gallaudet players sewed their own uniforms, made of heavy canvas with black and white stripes. On November 13, 1887, the
Virginia Cavaliers and Pantops Academy fought to a scoreless tie in the first organized football game in the state of
Virginia. Students at UVA were playing pickup games of the kicking-style of football as early as 1870, and some accounts even claim that some industrious ones organized a game against
Washington and Lee College in 1871, just two years after Rutgers and Princeton's historic first game in 1869. But no record has been found of the score of this contest. Washington and Lee also claims a 4 to 2 win over
VMI in 1873. On October 18, 1888, the
Wake Forest Demon Deacons defeated the North Carolina Tar Heels 6 to 4 in the first intercollegiate game in the state of
North Carolina. The first "scientific game" in the state occurred on Thanksgiving of the same year when North Carolina played Duke (then Trinity). Duke won 16 to 0. Princeton star
Hector Cowan traveled south and trained the Tar Heels. The 116–0 drubbing of
Virginia by
Princeton in 1890 signaled football's arrival in the south. On September 27, 1902, Georgetown beat Navy 4 to 0. It is claimed by Georgetown authorities as the game with the first ever "roving center" or
linebacker when
Percy Given stood up, in contrast to the usual tale of
Germany Schulz. The first linebacker in the South is often considered to be
Sewanee's
Frank Juhan.
Deep South On December 14, 1889,
Wofford defeated
Furman 5 to 1 in the first intercollegiate game in the state of
South Carolina. The game featured no uniforms, no positions, and the rules were formulated before the game. 1896 saw the first instance of the "Big Thursday"
Clemson–South Carolina rivalry in
Columbia, another seminal moment in football below the
South Atlantic States. January 30, 1892, saw the first football game played in the state of Georgia when the
Georgia Bulldogs defeated
Mercer 50–0 at
Herty Field. The
1892 Vanderbilt Commodores were the first team in the memory of
Grantland Rice. Rice recalled
Phil Connell then would be a good player in any era. The beginnings of the contemporary
Southeastern Conference and
Atlantic Coast Conference start with the founding of the
Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association. The SIAA was founded on December 21, 1894, by Dr.
William Dudley, a chemistry professor at
Vanderbilt. The original members were
Alabama,
Auburn,
Georgia,
Georgia Tech,
North Carolina,
Sewanee, and
Vanderbilt.
Clemson,
Cumberland,
Kentucky,
LSU,
Mercer,
Mississippi,
Mississippi A&M (Mississippi State),
Southwestern Presbyterian University,
Tennessee,
Texas,
Tulane, and the
University of Nashville joined the following year in 1895 as invited charter members. The conference was originally formed for "the development and purification of college athletics throughout the South". 's 1899 "Iron Men". It is thought that the first
forward pass in football occurred in the SIAA's first season of play, on October 26, 1895, in a game between Georgia and
North Carolina when, out of desperation, the ball was thrown by the North Carolina back Joel Whitaker instead of punted and
George Stephens caught the ball. On November 9, 1895
John Heisman executed a
hidden ball trick utilizing quarterback
Reynolds Tichenor to get
Auburn's only touchdown in a 6 to 9 loss to
Vanderbilt. During the play the ball was snapped to a half-back who was able to slip it under the back of the quarterback's jersey and who in turn was able to trot in for the touchdown. This was also the first game in the south decided by a field goal. Heisman later used the trick against
Pop Warner's Georgia team. Warner picked up the trick and later used it at Cornell against Penn State in 1897. He then used it in
1903 at
Carlisle against Harvard and garnered national attention. The
1897 Vanderbilt Commodores won the team's first conference title. The mythical title "champion of the south" had to be disputed with
Virginia after a scoreless tie. The next season, the
Cavaliers defeated
Vanderbilt at
Louisville 18–0 in the South's most anticipated game of the season. The Cavaliers ended the season with a loss to
North Carolina, which finished what is to-date its only undefeated season. The
1899 Sewanee Tigers are one of the all-time great teams of the early sport. The team went 12–0, outscoring opponents 322 to 10. Known as the "Iron Men", with just 18 men they had a six-day road trip with five shutout wins over
Texas A&M;
Texas;
Tulane;
LSU; and
Ole Miss. It is recalled memorably with the phrase "and on the seventh day they rested".
Grantland Rice called them "the most durable football team I ever saw." The only close game was an 11–10 win over
John Heisman's
Auburn Tigers. Auburn ran an early version of the
hurry-up offense. A documentary on this team was released in 2022 called,
Unrivaled: Sewanee 1899.
Unrivaled: Sewanee 1899 Organized intercollegiate football was first played in the state of
Florida in 1901. A 7-game series between intramural teams from Stetson and Forbes occurred in 1894. The first intercollegiate game between official varsity teams was played on November 22, 1901. Stetson beat Florida Agricultural College at Lake City, one of the four forerunners of the University of Florida, 6–0, in a game played as part of the Jacksonville Fair. On
Thanksgiving Day 1903 a game was scheduled in
Montgomery, Alabama between the best teams from each region of the
Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association for an "SIAA championship game", pitting
Cumberland against Heisman's
Clemson. The game ended in an 11–11 tie causing many teams to claim the title. Heisman pressed hardest for Cumberland to get the claim of champion. It was his last game as Clemson head coach. 1904 saw big coaching hires in the south:
Mike Donahue at Auburn,
John Heisman at Georgia Tech, and
Dan McGugin at Vanderbilt were all hired that year. Both Donahue and McGugin just came from the north that year, Donahue from Yale and McGugin from Michigan, and were among the initial inductees of the
College Football Hall of Fame. The undefeated
1904 Vanderbilt team scored an average of 52.7 points per game, the most in college football that season, and allowed just four points. One publication claims "The first scouting done in the South was in 1905, when
Dan McGugin and Captain
Innis Brown, of Vanderbilt went to
Atlanta to see
Sewanee play
Georgia Tech."
Southwest The first college football game in Oklahoma Territory occurred on November 7, 1895, when the 'Oklahoma City Terrors' defeated the
Oklahoma Sooners 34 to 0. The Terrors were a mix of Methodist college students and high schoolers. The Sooners did not manage a single first down. By next season, Oklahoma coach
John A. Harts had left to prospect for gold in the Arctic. Organized football was first played in the territory on November 29, 1894, between the Oklahoma City Terrors and Oklahoma City High School. The high school won 24 to 0. As a result of Camp's late arrival, Stanford played just three official games, against San Francisco's
Olympic Club and rival
California. The team also played exhibition games against two Los Angeles area teams that Stanford does not include in official results. Camp returned to the East Coast following the season, then returned to coach Stanford in
1894 and
1895.
Herbert Hoover was Stanford's student financial manager. Future president
Herbert Hoover was Stanford's student financial manager. Chicago won
24 to 4. Stanford won a rematch in Los Angeles on December 29 by 12 to 0. USC first fielded an American football team in 1888. Playing its first game on November 14 of that year against the Alliance Athletic Club, in which USC gained a 16–0 victory. Frank Suffel and
Henry H. Goddard were playing coaches for the first team which was put together by quarterback Arthur Carroll; who in turn volunteered to make the pants for the team and later became a tailor. USC faced its first collegiate opponent the following year in fall 1889, playing
St. Vincent's College to a 40–0 victory. between Stanford and California was played as rugby union from 1906 to 1914. The
Big Game between Stanford and California is the oldest college football rivalry in the West. The first game was played on San Francisco's
Haight Street Grounds on March 19, 1892, with Stanford winning 14–10. The term "Big Game" was first used in 1900, when it was played on Thanksgiving Day in San Francisco. During that game, a large group of men and boys, who were observing from the roof of the nearby S.F. and Pacific Glass Works, fell into the fiery interior of the building when the roof collapsed, resulting in 13 dead and 78 injured. On December 4, 1900, the last victim of the disaster (Fred Lilly) died, bringing the death toll to 22; and, to this day, the "Thanksgiving Day Disaster" remains the deadliest accident to kill spectators at a U.S. sporting event. The
University of Oregon began playing American football in 1894 and played its first game on March 24, 1894, defeating
Albany College 44–3 under head coach
Cal Young. In 1899, the Oregon football team left the state for the first time, playing the
California Golden Bears in
Berkeley, California. Bloss's son William started the first team, on which he served as both coach and quarterback. The team's first game was an easy 63–0 defeat over the home team, Albany College. In May 1900,
Fielding H. Yost was hired as the football coach at
Stanford University, and, after traveling home to West Virginia, he arrived in
Palo Alto, California, on August 21, 1900. Yost led the 1900 Stanford team to a 7–2–1, outscoring opponents 154 to 20. The next year in 1901, Yost was hired by
Charles A. Baird as the head football coach for the
Michigan Wolverines football team. On January 1, 1902,
Yost's dominating
1901 Michigan Wolverines football team agreed to play a 3–1–2 team from
Stanford University in the inaugural
Tournament East-West football game what is now known as the
Rose Bowl Game by a score of 49–0 after Stanford captain Ralph Fisher requested to quit with eight minutes remaining. The
1905 season marked the first meeting between Stanford and USC. Consequently, Stanford is USC's oldest existing rival. The
Big Game between Stanford and
Cal on November 11, 1905, was the first played at
Stanford Field, with Stanford winning 12–5. From its earliest days as a mob game, football was a violent sport. One of the major problems was the popularity of mass-formations like the
flying wedge, in which a large number of offensive players charged as a unit against a similarly arranged defense. The resultant collisions often led to serious injuries and sometimes even death. Georgia fullback
Richard Von Albade Gammon notably died on the field from concussions received against Virginia in 1897, causing Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Mercer to temporarily stop their football programs. In 1905 there were 19 fatalities nationwide. President
Theodore Roosevelt reportedly threatened to shut down the game if drastic changes were not made. However, the threat by Roosevelt to eliminate football is disputed by sports historians. What is absolutely certain is that on October 9, 1905, Roosevelt held a meeting of football representatives from
Harvard,
Yale, and
Princeton. Though he lectured on eliminating and reducing injuries, he never threatened to ban football. He also lacked the authority to abolish football and was, in fact, actually a fan of the sport and wanted to preserve it. The President's sons were also playing football at the college and
secondary levels at the time. Meanwhile,
John H. Outland held an
experimental game in
Wichita, Kansas that reduced the number of scrimmage plays to earn a first down from four to three in an attempt to reduce injuries. The
Los Angeles Times reported an increase in punts and considered the game much safer than regular play but that the new rule was not "conducive to the sport". Finally, on December 28, 1905, 62 schools met in New York City to discuss rule changes to make the game safer. As a result of this meeting, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States, later named the
National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), was formed. One rule change introduced in 1906, devised to open up the game and reduce injury, was the introduction of the legal
forward pass. Though it was underutilized for years, this proved to be one of the most important rule changes in the establishment of the modern game.
Move towards modernization and innovation (1906–1932) '' photograph of
Brad Robinson, who threw the first legal forward pass and was the sport's first
triple threat As a result of the 1905–1906 reforms, mass formation plays became illegal and
forward passes legal.
Bradbury Robinson, playing for visionary coach
Eddie Cochems at
St. Louis University, threw the first legal pass in a September 5, 1906, game against
Carroll College at
Waukesha. Other important changes, formally adopted in 1910, were the requirements that at least seven offensive players be on the line of scrimmage at the time of the snap, that there be no pushing or pulling, and that interlocking interference (arms linked or hands on belts and uniforms) was not allowed. These changes greatly reduced the potential for collision injuries. Several coaches emerged who took advantage of these sweeping changes.
Amos Alonzo Stagg introduced such innovations as the
huddle, the
tackling dummy, and the pre-snap shift. Other coaches, such as
Pop Warner and
Knute Rockne, introduced new strategies that still remain part of the game. Besides these coaching innovations, several rules changes during the first third of the 20th century had a profound impact on the game, mostly in opening up the passing game. In 1914, the first roughing-the-passer penalty was implemented. In 1918, the rules on eligible receivers were loosened to allow eligible players to catch the ball anywhere on the field—previously strict rules were in place only allowing passes to certain areas of the field. Scoring rules also changed during this time: field goals were lowered to three points in 1909 Star players that emerged in the early 20th century include
Jim Thorpe,
Red Grange, and
Bronko Nagurski; these three made the transition to the fledgling NFL and helped turn it into a successful league. Sportswriter
Grantland Rice helped popularize the sport with his poetic descriptions of games and colorful nicknames for the game's biggest players, including Notre Dame's "
Four Horsemen" backfield and
Fordham University's linemen, known as the "
Seven Blocks of Granite". Thorpe gained nationwide attention for the first time in 1911. He scored all his team's points—four field goals and a touchdown—in an 18–15 upset of Harvard. The
1912 season included many rule changes such as the 100-yard field and the 6-point touchdown. The first six-point touchdowns were registered in
Carlisle's 50–7 win over
Albright College on September 21. At season's end, Jim Thorpe had rushed for some 2,000 yards. Thorpe also competed in
track and field,
baseball,
lacrosse and even
ballroom dancing, winning the 1912 intercollegiate ballroom dancing championship. In the spring of 1912, he started training for the Olympics. When
Army scheduled
Notre Dame as a warm-up game in 1913, they thought little of the small school. The end
Knute Rockne and quarterback
Gus Dorais made innovative use of the forward pass, still at that point a relatively unused weapon, to defeat Army 35–13 and helped establish the school as a national power. By 1915,
Minnesota developed the first great passing combination of
Pudge Wyman to
Bert Baston.
East The "
Big Three" continued their dominance in the early era of the forward pass. Yale's
Ted Coy was selected as fullback on Camp's All-Time All-America team. "He ran through the line with hammering, high knee action then unleashed a fast, fluid running motion through the secondary." The
Minnesota shift gained national attention when it was adopted by Yale in
1910. In 1910, the Elis suffered early season setbacks at the hands of inferior opponents, and sought an advantage to use in its game against strong
Princeton and
Harvard squads. taught the team the shift. Yale used the Minnesota shift against both opponents, and beat Princeton, 5–3, and tied Harvard, 0–0. Fritz Pollard attended
Brown University, where he majored in chemistry and played half-back on the Brown football team. In 1916 he led Brown to the
second Rose Bowl in 1916, in which he was the first black player to play in the Rose Bowl. He became the first black back to be named to
Walter Camp's
All-America team in 1916, with Camp ranking Pollard as "one of the greatest runners these eyes have ever seen". For his exploits at Brown, Pollard was elected to the National College Football Hall of Fame in 1954 — the first black person ever chosen. The game between
West Virginia and
Pittsburgh on October 8, 1921, saw the first live radio broadcast of a college football game when Harold W. Arlin announced that year's
Backyard Brawl played at
Forbes Field on
KDKA. Pitt won 21–13.
Bill Roper had installed a passing attack at Princeton. In 1925,
Dartmouth beat Cornell 62–13 on its way to a national title.
Swede Oberlander threw for 6 touchdowns and accounted for 477 yards of total offense. Cornell coach
Gil Dobie retorted "We won 13–0. Passing is not football." Chicago won 42–6.
Notre Dame and Iowa Knute Rockne took over from his predecessor
Jesse Harper in the war-torn season of
1918 with a team including
George Gipp and
Curly Lambeau. With Gipp, Rockne had an ideal handler of the
forward pass, and a receiver in
Bernard Kirk. The
1919 team went undefeated and were a national champion. Gipp died December 14, 1920
1920, just two weeks after being elected Notre Dame's first All-American by Walter Camp. Gipp likely contracted
strep throat and pneumonia while giving
punting lessons after his final game, November 20 against Northwestern University. Since
antibiotics were not available in the 1920s, treatment options for such infections were limited and they could be fatal even to young, healthy individuals.
John Mohardt led the
1921 Notre Dame team to a 10–1 record, suffering its only loss to
Howard Jones coached and
Aubrey Devine-led
Iowa. Grantland Rice wrote that "Mohardt could throw the ball to within a foot or two of any given space" and noted that the 1921 Notre Dame team "was the first team we know of to build its attack around a forward passing game, rather than use a forward passing game as a mere aid to the running game". Mohardt had both
Eddie Anderson and
Roger Kiley at
end to receive his passes. The loss to Iowa snapped a 20-game winning streak for Rockne and Notre Dame, which would be the longest winning streak of Rockne's career. One of the criticisms fans had of the previous Iowa coach, Hawley, was that he could not convince talented Iowa players to play at Iowa. Jones succeeded in that respect; the 1921 Hawkeyes started 11 native Iowans. Despite the graduations of many key players, Iowa again posted a perfect 7–0 final record in 1922. Iowa again went 5–0 in the Big Ten, capturing its second straight Big Ten crown. It is the only time in Iowa history that the Hawkeyes have won consecutive conference titles. The
1924 Irish featured the "Four Horsemen":
Harry Stuhldreher,
Don Miller,
Jim Crowley, and
Elmer Layden. The Irish capped an undefeated, 10–0 season with a victory over
Stanford in the
Rose Bowl. Stanford's
Ernie Nevers played all 60 minutes in the game and rushed for 114 yards, more yardage than all the Four Horsemen combined. In
1927, Rockne's complex
shifts led directly to a rule change whereby all offensive players had to stop for a full second before the ball could be snapped. On November 10, 1928, when the "
Fighting Irish" team was losing to
Army 6–0 at the end of the half, Rockne entered the locker room and told the team the words he heard on Gipp's deathbed in 1920: "I've got to go, Rock. It's all right. I'm not afraid. Some time, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are going wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go in there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock. But I'll know about it, and I'll be happy." This inspired the team, which then outscored Army in the second half and won the game 12–6. The phrase "Win one for the Gipper" was later used as a political slogan by
Ronald Reagan, who in 1940 portrayed Gipp in
Knute Rockne, All American. The
1929 and
1930 Notre Dame teams were also declared national champions.
Michigan and Illinois Bernard Kirk transferred to Michigan in
1920, and died in a car wreck after being selected All-American in
1922. Michigan won a national title in
1923, led by the likes of
Harry Kipke and
Jack Blott. In
1925,
Benny Friedman to
Bennie Oosterbaan proved one of the sport's great pass-receiver combinations. Yost proclaimed the 1925 team his greatest. On his next carry, he ran 56 yards for yet another touchdown. Before the game was over, Grange ran back another kickoff for yet another touchdown. He scored six touchdowns in all. Illinois won the game by a lopsided score of 39 to 14. The game inspired
Grantland Rice to write this poetic description:
Ohio State Chic Harley was
Ohio State's first All-American in his freshman year, who in his senior year led the team to its first victory over arch-rival Michigan. In 1941,
James Thurber described Harley's running skills for the New York City newspaper,
PM, "If you never saw him run with a football, I can't describe it to you. It wasn't like
Red Grange or
Tom Harmon or anybody else. It was kind of a cross between music and cannon fire, and it brought your heart up under your ears."
The OSU Marching Band has changed its script "Ohio" formation to spell "Chic" on several occasions, including a Michigan game where Harley was in attendance.
South Fuzzy Woodruff claims
Davidson was the first in the south to throw a legal forward pass in 1906.
Vanderbilt In 1906
Vanderbilt defeated
Carlisle 4 to 0, the result of a
Bob Blake field goal, and the south's "crowning feat". In 1907
Vanderbilt fought
Navy to a 6 to 6 tie. That same season saw Vanderbilt execute a
double pass play to set up the touchdown that beat conference-rival
Sewanee in a meeting of unbeatens for the SIAA championship.
Grantland Rice cited this event as the greatest thrill he ever witnessed in his years of watching sports. Vanderbilt coach
Dan McGugin in ''Spalding's Football Guide'' summation of the season in the SIAA wrote "The standing. First, Vanderbilt; second, Sewanee, a might good second;" and that
Aubrey Lanier "came near winning the Vanderbilt game by his brilliant dashes after receiving punts." Bob Blake threw the final pass to center
Stein Stone, catching it near the goal amongst defenders.
Honus Craig then ran in the winning touchdown. In 1910
Vanderbilt held defending national champion
Yale to a scoreless tie, the south's first great triumph against an Eastern power. Commodore fans celebrated by throwing some 3,000 seat cushions onto the field. The game features prominently in Vanderbilt's history.
Georgia Tech Utilizing the "
jump shift" offense,
John Heisman's
Georgia Tech Golden Tornado won 222 to 0 over
Cumberland on October 7, 1916, at
Grant Field in the most lopsided victory in college football history. Tech went on a 33-game winning streak during this period. The
1917 team was the first
national champion from the
South, led by a powerful
backfield of
Joe Guyon,
Everett Strupper,
Albert Hill, and
Judy Harlan. It had the first two players from the
Deep South selected first-team All-American in Strupper and tackle
Walker Carpenter. Strupper, aside from his quickness, overcame
deafness and handled the signals like a regular quarterback. He could also read a defender's lips.
Pop Warner's
Pittsburgh Panthers were also undefeated, but declined a challenge by Heisman to a game. When Heisman left Tech after 1919, his shift was still employed by protege
William Alexander. runs against undefeated and unscored upon
Georgia Tech in the 1918 game at
Forbes Field. Helping Georgia Tech's claim to a title in 1917, the
Auburn Tigers held undefeated,
Chic Harley-led Big Ten champion
Ohio State to a scoreless tie the week before Georgia Tech beat the Tigers 68 to 7. The next season, with many players gone due to World War I, a game was finally scheduled at
Forbes Field with
Pittsburgh. The Panthers, led by freshman
Tom Davies, defeated
Georgia Tech 32 to 0, hurting the south's chances at recognition for many years. Despite this, Tech center
Bum Day was the first player on a Southern team ever selected first-team All-American by
Walter Camp.
Centre 1917 saw the rise of another Southern team in
Centre of
Danville, Kentucky. In 1919,
Centre went undefeated and defeated West Virginia.
Bo McMillin and
Red Weaver were consensus All-America. In
1921, McMillin-led Centre upset defending national champion
Harvard 6 to 0 in what is widely considered one of the greatest upsets in college football history. Vanderbilt's line coach in the undefeated seasons of 1921 and 1922 was
Wallace Wade, a graduate of Brown who ran interference for Pollard. He accepted the job at
Alabama the season after Alabama upset
Penn 9 to 7.
"Game that changed the south" In 1925, Wade coached
Alabama to the south's first
Rose Bowl victory. That Rose Bowl game is commonly referred to as "the game that changed the south". Wade followed up the 1926 season with an undefeated record and
Rose Bowl tie. Wade's Alabama again won a national championship and
Rose Bowl in 1930. 1925 also saw the widespread use of the forward pass in the south for the first time. By 1927,
Vanderbilt's
Bill Spears led the nation in passing. At the time, the future of American football was very much in doubt and these schools believed that rugby union would eventually be adopted nationwide.
Stanford During 12 seasons of playing rugby union, Stanford was remarkably successful: the team had three undefeated seasons, three one-loss seasons, and an overall record of 94 wins, 20 losses, and 3 ties for a winning percentage of .816. However, after a few years, the school began to feel the isolation of its newly adopted sport, which was not spreading as many had hoped. Students and alumni began to clamor for a return to American football to allow wider intercollegiate competition. The game was "broadcast" play-by-play over telegraph to at least 1,000 fans in
Lawrence, Kansas. It ended in a 3–3 tie.
Innovators and Motivators (1894–1932) (1895–98) Although
Walter Camp is widely considered to have been the "Father of American football", the development of the game was collaborative in nature and many different people contributed to the early development of the game.
Parke H. Davis Parke H. Davis played lineman at Princeton for one year in 1889 and then later coached at
Wisconsin (1893),
Amherst (1894) and
Lafayette (1895–98), where he also served as athletic director. He led Lafayette to a National Championship in 1896 on the coattails of his star player, Fielding Yost. Later he also served on the Rules Committee from 1909 to 1915, playing a key role in shaping the evolution of the game. Among the innovations with which he is credited are the division of the game into quarters, numbering of players, abolition of inter-locked interference and the creation of end zones. In 1911, he wrote a book on the early history of American football entitled
Football, the American collegiate game. This book remains an important source of information on the early development of American football. He also authored articles on American football for the
Encyclopædia Britannica and compiled a glossary of American football terms. had both guards pull to lead an end run, and had his center toss the ball back, instead of rolling or kicking it. He was one of the strongest proponents for the legalization of the forward pass in 1906 and he originated the "hike" or "hep" shouted by the quarterback to start each play. The
Heisman Memorial Trophy was named after him, and is now given to the player voted as the season's most outstanding collegiate football player.
William H. Lewis Following his graduation at Harvard law school,
William H. Lewis was hired as a football coach at Harvard, where he served from 1895 to 1906. During his coaching tenure, the team had a combined record of 114–15–5.
Fielding "Hurry Up" Yost Fielding H. Yost's biggest contribution was building the first traditional midwestern power at the
University of Michigan. He first played at
West Virginia University as a law student. Yost became a remarkable personification of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." He transferred in mid-season to join Coach
Parke H. Davis's national championship team at Lafayette. Just a week after playing
against Davis in West Virginia, Yost was playing
for Davis in Lafayette's historic 6–4 win over the
Penn Quakers. Yost utilized a
short punt system. In the early days of the sport the ball was often moved up the field, not through offensive plays, but rather through punting. Once the opposing team got the ball, the defense was relied upon to make the other team's offense lose yards or fumble. To confuse the opponent and attain longer punts, the punting was often done on first or second downs and it was not uncommon for a team to kick more than 40 times in a game. Yost also invented the position of
linebacker; co-created the first ever
bowl game, the 1902 Rose Bowl, with then legendary UM athletic director
Charles Baird; invented the fieldhouse concept that bears his name; and supervised the building of the first on-campus building dedicated to intramural sports. Yost retired in 1926. demonstrating "Overhand spiral—fingers on lacing" in "The Forward Pass and On-Side Kick" an article in Spalding's
How to Play Foot Ball, American Sports Publishing, Revised 1907 edition, written by Eddie Cochems, Walter Camp, Editor
Eddie Cochems Eddie Cochems was the head football coach at
North Dakota State (1902–1903),
Clemson (1905),
Saint Louis University (1906–1908), and
Maine (1914). During his three years at St. Louis, he was the first American football coach to build an offense around the
forward pass, which became a legal play in the
1906 college football season. Using the forward pass, Cochems' 1906 team compiled an undefeated 11–0 record, led the nation in scoring, and outscored opponents by a combined score of 407 to 11. He is considered by some to be the "father of the forward pass" in American football. Knute Rockne biographer, Ray Robinson, wrote, "The St. Louis style of forward pass, as implemented by Cochems, was different from the pass being thrown by eastern players. Cochems did not protect his receiver by surrounding him with teammates, as was the case in the East." After the 1906 season, Cochems published a 10-page article entitled "The Forward Pass and
On-Side Kick" in the 1907 edition of Spalding's
How to Play Foot Ball (edited by
Walter Camp). Cochems explained in words and photographs (of Robinson) how the forward pass could be thrown and how passing skills could be developed. "[T]he necessary brevity of this article will not permit of a detailed discussion of the forward pass", Cochems lamented. "Should I begin to explain the different plays in which the pass ... could figure, I would invite myself to an endless task." In a 1932 interview with a Wisconsin sports columnist, Cochems claimed that
Yale,
Harvard and
Princeton (the so-called "Big Three" football powers in the early decades of the sport) all called him in having him explain the forward pass to them.
Henry L. Williams Williams built the
University of Minnesota into a power and developed a famous
shift. It was the forerunner to all quick shifts in American football.
Glenn "Pop" Warner Glenn "Pop" Warner coached at several schools throughout his career, including the
University of Georgia,
Cornell University,
University of Pittsburgh,
Stanford University, and
Temple University. One of his most famous stints was at the
Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where he coached
Jim Thorpe, who went on to become the first president of the
National Football League, an
Olympic Gold Medalist, and is widely considered one of the best overall athletes in history. Warner wrote one of the first important books of football strategy,
Football for Coaches and Players, published in 1927. Though the shift was invented by Stagg, Warner's
single wing and double wing
formations greatly improved upon it; for almost 40 years, these were among the most important formations in football. As part of his single and double wing formations, Warner was one of the first coaches to effectively utilize the forward pass. Among his other innovations are modern blocking schemes,
shoulder pads, and the
three-point stance. Grantland Rice said of McGugin: "I have known a long parade of football coaches ... but I have never met one who combined more of the qualities needed to make a great coach." The Vanderbilt athletics office building, the McGugin Center, bears his name, and McGugin was an inaugural inductee into the College Football Hall of Fame. McGugin retired in 1934, and died in January 1936.
Gil Dobie "Gloomy Gil" Dobie was an inaugural inductee into the College Football Hall of Fame and led
Cornell University to three straight national titles and a 26-game winning streak; he also coached at the
University of Washington and never lost a game, including a 39-game winning streak. He was known as "gloomy" since he was given to pessimistic predictions about his teams.
Dana X. Bible Dana X. Bible won titles at
Texas A&M University as well as brought the
University of Texas to prominence. Bible's
1919 Texas A&M Aggies football team, which was undefeated, untied, and outscored its opposition 275–0, was retroactively named a
national champion by the Billingsley Report and the National Championship Foundation. While at Texas,
University of Chicago coach
Clark Shaughnessy contacted Bible to organize a clinic on the
T formation. Along with
Frank Leahy of
Notre Dame, they helped create the T formation revolution. Bible served on the National Collegiate Football Rules Committee for 25 years, and was president of the
American Football Coaches Association.
Andy Smith Andy Smith coached the "Wonder Teams" of the
University of California, Berkeley which from 1920 to 1924 went undefeated, running up a record of 44–0–2 and winning three NCAA-recognized
national championships. The
1920 Rose Bowl winning team outscored its opponents 510 to 14. Smith was an inaugural inductee into the College Football Hall of Fame. In 1960, the respected
Helms Athletic Foundation crowned the
1920 "Wonder Team", as the greatest American football team in history. The
California Memorial Stadium is still known today as "The House that Smith Built." Smith was famous for his defense-oriented strategy of "Kick and wait for the breaks". Smith also became known for trick plays such as the halfback pass. At the time because of the plump, rugby-like ball, forward passes over 30 yards in length were unanticipated.
Howard Jones Howard Jones led his alma mater Yale to a national title, the
Iowa Hawkeyes to two undefeated seasons, and the
USC Trojans to four national titles and five Rose Bowl victories. Along with Smith, Jones vies for the title of greatest coach of the era on the Pacific Coast. Jones was known for being completely absorbed in the sport and aloof outside of it. USC historian Al Wesson remarks "Howard lived and breathed football. If it were not for football, he would have starved to death – couldn't possibly have made a living in business." Jones was an inaugural inductee into the College Football Hall of Fame.
Knute Rockne Knute Rockne rose to prominence in 1913 as an
end and chemistry student for the
University of Notre Dame, then a largely unknown Midwestern Catholic school. Rockne returned to coach the team in 1918, and devised the powerful
Notre Dame Box offense, based on Warner's single wing. He is credited with being the first major coach to emphasize offense over defense. Rockne is also credited with popularizing and perfecting the forward pass, a seldom used play at the time. Rather than simply a regional team, Rockne's "Fighting Irish" became famous for
barnstorming and played any team at any location. It was during Rockne's tenure that the annual
Notre Dame-University of Southern California rivalry began. He led his team to a 105–12–5 record before his premature death in a
plane crash in 1931. He was so famous at that point that his funeral was broadcast nationally on radio. His biography at the
College Football Hall of Fame calls him "without question, American football's most-renowned coach." == Early history of professional football (1892–1932) ==