Touchdown: The Power and Precision of Football's Perfect Play
TOUCHDOWN make for a fine new game If a player was allowed to carry the ball then it only seemed fair that his opponents should be allowed to pull him to the ground And since the ballcarrier had little chance of outrunning an entire team shouldn t his teammates be allowed to protect him These rules formed the foundation of tackling and blocking The old game of foot ball soon became two new sports The kicking game turned into what we know as soccer Outside of the United States and Canada it is still called football The carrying game was called rugby after the school where it started In North America a third game developed that was a little bit of both Some called it American football American football was played mostly in boarding schools and universities During the 1800s travel could be very difficult and expensive School teams did not play against one another as they do now As a result each school made up its own rules for football At some schools it was a very violent sport At others penalties were given for rough play Two schools in New Jersey played by very similar rules Princeton University and Rutgers University were only a few miles apart For many years their students had competed over an enormous cannon left over from the American Revolution 1775 1783 The strongest boys from Princeton would sneak onto the Rutgers campus and steal the cannon The strongest boys from Rutgers would then steal it back Many injuries occurred during these pranks Princeton stopped this dangerous game by sinking the cannon into concrete Looking for a new way to compete the boys decided to hold a football contest On November 6 1869 the first football game took place between two colleges A modern football fan would barely recognize the Princeton Rutgers game There were twenty five players to a side on the field at the same time A point could be scored only by kicking the ball which was round between two posts at either end of the field A team moved the ball forward by dribbling it with the feet A player was
not allowed to carry the ball However a wall of blockers was able to protect the dribbler When a team could no longer move the ball forward it had to kick to the other team Rutgers beat Princeton in that first game 6 4 Two weeks later the schools played again Princeton won this time 8 0 There were no touchdowns only one point goals Other North American colleges soon began playing football The sport grew in popularity In 1874 the football teams from McGill University in Montreal Canada and Harvard University in Cambridge Massachusetts squared off for two games The games were played with an egg shaped rugby ball The first game was played by McGill s rules The second was played by Harvard's rules Harvard was known for its slow rugged playing style McGill favored a faster game that was very close to British rugby This made sense because Canada was part of the British Empire at the time The Harvard players liked McGill s style They enjoyed running with the football They were also amazed how straight the oddly shaped ball flew when it was kicked The play they liked most of all was when a runner crossed the goal line and triumphantly touched the ball down on the ground The McGill players called it a touchdown Thanks to this meeting more than a century later American football and Canadian football are almost identical games Canadian football is played on a slightly larger field and a team has three tries instead of four to make a first down Many football stars from U S high schools and colleges end up playing in the Canadian Football
In 1876 captains from several U.S. universities met to form the Intercollegiate Football Association They agreed a set of rules everyone could follow A touchdown was worth 1 point A goal kicked from the field was worth 4 points This is the origin of the term FIELD GOAL These rules meant that a player running toward the goal line would score more points by stopping and kicking the ball instead of continuing forward Imagine a running back such as Adrian Peterson sprinting for the end zone and then stopping short to boot the ball between the goalposts During the next few years the value of a touchdown changed So did the sport of football itself For a time a touchdown did not count for any points it simply gave the scoring team a free kick in front of the goal This probably was the origin of the extra point Today teams that score touchdowns get a free kick from a few yards away which is worth 1 point They can also try to carry the ball into the end zone for 2 points During the 1880s more rules were added Football started to look a little more like the modern game A coach at Yale University named Walter Camp introduced many of football s innovations Camp is considered by many to be the father of football By the end of the 1800s however football still had a way to go Most games were decided by brute force instead of exciting scoring plays Ballcarriers worked their way down the field behind a wall of blockers The blockers linked their arms and formed a V shaped wedge They trampled anyone who tried to run through them Another popular play was known as the turtleback The ballcarrier stayed inside a round shell of blockers that moved slowly down the field The only way to make 10
a tackle was to jump over the shell or try to crash through it Hundreds of players suffered serious injuries each season and a few even died while playing football By the turn of the century many colleges thought football was too violent They shut down their teams President Theodore Roosevelt had played and loved football as a student at Harvard Even so in 1905 he threatened to ban the sport The top schools held a meeting to discuss the future of football The most dangerous plays were outlawed The number of yards needed to make a first down and keep the football was doubled from 5 to 10 This forced a team to open up its offense and spread out its players Another rule that was changed drew almost no attention Before 1905 if a player threw the football through the air it had to travel backward This was one of the main rules of rugby But in 1905 the forward pass became legal During the next thirty years modern football began to take shape Kicking was still an important part of the game However now a team could put points on the board in many SNS different ways Plays were invented to get a fast runner into the open field and across the goal line Passing became more popular Even thought throwing the ball was risky more and more games were being won with thrilling touchdown passes There were more punts in the early 1900s than there are in modern football That meant there were more daring punt returns Nothing brought fans to their feet like a punt returned the length of the field for a touchdown The biggest change in the game was how fans began viewing the best players In the old days football players were seen as brutes They relied on brawn rather than brains They were often covered in mud Their sport was very dangerous and they 11
