jrn 362 - lecture six

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of FootballRich Hanley, Associate ProfessorLecture Six

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football


Review• In 1905, the brutality of the

game led U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt to convene a meeting among football authorities headed by Walter Camp to make the game safer.

• Two colleges – California at Berkeley and Stanford – had already banned football after the 1905 season.


Review• Over the course of several months in Fall 1905 and winter 1906,

representatives from 60 colleges modified the rules to permit, among other things, the forward pass beyond the line of scrimmage for the 1906 season.

• The thinking? To open the game, so players would not mass at the center on both offense and defense, reducing the frequency of injuries and death.

• In short, wrote one commentator, “most of the old football was abolished.”


Review• Still, the “old football” would not

go quietly.

• Eastern teams clung to the running game, keeping the game squeezed in the middle of the field.

• Meanwhile, critics said the changes eliminated manliness.


Review• The humor magazine Puck

interpreted the new rules in a different perspective.

• The rules to open the game would lead to a new day for football, one that would shine brightly for all time.


Football Ascending • A combination of eastern tradition and western ease with change

meant that the innovative element in football would shift away from where the game incubated at Yale, Harvard and Princeton to the west toward central Pennsylvania and beyond.

• Colleges outside the cradle of football adapted to the new rules with creative flair, in part because the game lacked the tradition of the east – and alumni who would criticize change. After all, many were new schools.


Football Ascending • Spectators and many commentators applauded.

• “For spectators, the open game meant that the “ball is always in sight,” presenting opportunities to track the action more closely and in clear view.

• “The game is the thing, and the new game so far as we have seen it is vastly more open and interesting,” one columnist wrote.


Football Ascending • Scholars continue to debate when the first forward pass was

thrown in a college game but it is clear that in 1906, St. Louis University integrated the passing game into its offense.

• St. Louis completed four touchdown passes in a game against Iowa that year en route to an 11-0 record under coach Eddie Cochems.

• Yet because the press focused on eastern schools, word of this new passing offense was slow to get out.


Football Ascending • Coaches were reluctant to use the pass because the rules at first

penalized incomplete passes, as a pass that wasn’t touched by the offense would be ruled a turnover.

• In addition, new rules created a narrow zone where passes could be thrown.

• Still, the main reason why eastern coaches did not want to install a passing offense was that they simply did not consider it strong football.


Football Ascending • But one coach changed all that

and gave the pass a certain legitimacy because his team used it to great effect.

• The coach was Glenn “Pop’ Warner, one of the most innovative coaches in the history of the game.


Football Ascending • Warner attended Cornell (he is

fourth from the right, second row, in the team photo from 1890s, left.)

• Teammates called him “Pop” because he was the oldest player on the team.


Football Ascending • Warner was a restless football

lifer whose innovative approaches to the game often stretched the rules.

• But his teams won, and that meant he always had job offers dangled in front of him.


Football Ascending • Warner coached Georgia in 1895 and 1896, winning 12 games and

losing 8, before returning to Cornell in 1897 and 1898.

• In 1899, Warner accepted the job at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, and he stayed there until 1903. After that, he again returned to Cornell for the 1904, 1905 and 1906 seasons.

• Warner went back to Carlisle in 1907.


Football Ascending • Carlisle was a boarding school

for Native Americans funded by the U.S. government, located in central Pennsylvania.

• And by the early 20th century, it fielded one of the top football teams in the nation under Warner.


Football Ascending • In fact, during Warner’s first tour

of duty with Carlisle, he deployed the hidden ball trick in a game against Harvard in 1903.

• The great writer Sally Jenkins described a play in a book she wrote about how Carlisle changed the game of football:


Football Ascending • [Johnson gathered the ball in, and the Indians formed a wall in

front of the quarterback. Ducking behind the cluster of teammates, Exendine pulled out the back of Dillon's jersey. Johnson slipped the ball beneath it.

• Johnson yelled, "Go!" The Indians scattered. Each player hugged his stomach, as if he held the ball. The Harvard players bore down on them.

• As the Crimson slowed, looking for the ball, Dillon ran straight through them and up the field, his arms swinging freely. After thirty yards, Dillon was alone and in the clear.]


Football Ascending • [Johnson, meanwhile, ran for the sidelines with his arms doubled

over his midsection, as if he had the ball. A Harvard man launched himself at Johnson, who tripped. As Johnson went down, another Crimson player fell on top of him, and then another, and then another. "I guess the whole Harvard team hit me," Johnson said later. The crowd roared. But Johnson was empty-handed.

• Suddenly, a roar swept the stadium. Dillon continued to lope in a straight line toward the opposite goal. The hump beneath his sweater had become obvious. The roar deepened: Dillon was the ball carrier.]


Football Ascending • Four years later, on November

23,1907, Warner would unleash the forward pass against the University of Chicago, a major college power at the time, coached by Amos Alonzo Stagg.

• Some 27,000 people gathered at Marshall Field in Chicago to watch.


Football Ascending • Carlisle shocked Chicago when

fullback Peter Hauser, left, threw a 40-yard spiral for a touchdown to Albert Exendine, leading the team to victory.

• A newspaper game chart locates the moment when the forward pass emerged in a big game.


Football Ascending • Warner worked continuously on

perfecting the passing game.

• In 1912, he wrote a technical manual that showed players and coaches how to throw the football.

• He included photographs to illustrate his points …


Football Ascending • … and he configured a variety of

plays featuring the forward pass, often diagramming movement that led to a deep attack against the secondary.

• Meanwhile, he offered precise advice on the passing game.


Football Ascending • Warner’s innovations ranged far

beyond developing techniques for passing the football when few teams tried the play.

• Among other things, Warner created the three-point stance, screen pass, and the single- and double-wing formation.


Football Ascending • He helped to develop lightweight

padding that protected the thighs and other areas of players’ bodies, particularly when recovering from injuries.


Football Ascending • In 1908, Warner offered the first

correspondence course (course by mail) for football coaches and players, which helped to improve technique and tactics in places too remote or too poor to afford paid coaches.


Football Ascending • The innovative Warner, though,

was not immune to the martial spirit that swept through the sport in the 1890s and intensified as the new century unfolded.

• He also preached cleaned living but not for moral purposes. It made players better, he wrote.


Football Ascending • In 1914, Warner was hired by the

University of Pittsburgh where he reeled off 33 straight major wins and three national championships in 1915, 1916 and 1918.

• He later coached at Stanford and Temple before retiring in 1938.


Football Ascending • As noted earlier, not all schools copied Warner’s success with the

pass.

• Risk-averse coaches in the east maintained a running attack that left little room for the open game the 1906 rules were designed to create.

• Even four years after the rules permitted the forward pass, only one ball was thrown in the 1910 Yale-Harvard game.


Football Ascending • Still, the game’s popularity continued to soar.

• The rules committee, meanwhile, kept introducing new rules each year, thickening the rulebook to the point where it became difficult to keep pace.

• Rules allocating points to how teams scored did create the modern system still in place:


Football Ascending

• 6 points for a touchdown• 3 points for a field goal• 1 point for a kick after touchdown• 2 points for a safety


Football Ascending • Yet tension over the motivation for persistent rule changes: were

these for player safety or spectator appeal?

• One commentator wrote:


Football Ascending • “It’s important that this committee, or you, its sponsors (colleges),

decide with sharp distinctness whether its efforts are to be directed chiefly to making the game safe for boys who play it or spectacular for the benefit of the spectators … If the number of spectators who attend our games and their enjoyment is of first importance, then our rules making must be such as to produce a spectacle to please them.”


Football Ascending • The fact remained that for whatever reason, more and more

people wanted to watch football.

• That, in turn, led to innovations off the field to keep pace with the growing demand.


Football Ascending • The fact remained that for whatever reason, more and more

people wanted to play and watch football as the 20th century deepened.

• Some 432 of 555 American cities had community or club football teams.

• A study in 1910 revealed that there were:- 20,000 college players - 48,000 prep school players- 5,000 players competing for towns and clubs- 2,000 players competing for military


Football Ascending • Four years later, the numbers continued to astonish:

- 450 college teams- 6,000 high school teams- 1500 club teams- 159,000 players (up from an estimated 75,000 four years earlier)- 31,300 games played


Football Ascending • Another study figured it cost $15

to outfit each player, meaning a national expenditure of $1,125,000 in all per year for equipment.

• The official Spalding football – the J5 - cost $5.


Football Ascending • The largest expense, though, was to build the huge edifices to hold

the tens of thousands of fans demanding to see football, college football.


Football Ascending • As noted, Harvard opened the first large stadium built specifically

for football in 1903.

• Instead of wooden bleachers, Harvard poured concrete and erected massive columns referencing classic Athens, all to project football as an eternal sport.

• It had 27,000 seats with room for 15,000 temporary seats if demand arose.


Football Ascending • Yale, meanwhile, formulated plans for a stadium of its own.

• And it would be massive.

• In June 1913, Yale broke ground on the stadium on its fields west of the downtown New Haven campus.

• The college would call it a “bowl” because of its shape.


Football Ascending • It was initially designed to hold 60,000 spectators but had the

footings to expand to 125,000 if necessary.

• Unlike Harvard, which built a raised structure, Yale carved its stadium out of the very earth, making it, in effect., part of the earth’s crust.

• It doesn’t get more permanent than that in expressing the belief that the game was one to be played eternally in front of thousands of people.


Football Ascending• The field is set so that at 3:00 p.m. in mid-November, the sun

aligns with the five-yard lines, creating a dramatic natural lighting scene.

• The clearance between benches means spectators regardless of seats can see over people in front of them.

• The site also included two large parking lots, anticipating the rise and ultimate triumph of car culture.


Football Ascending • The Yale Bowl opened on

November 21, 1914, with Yale playing host to Harvard.

• More stadiums would be built over the next 20 years, many copies of the bowl as colleges sought to mimic Yale – even if Yale’s days as a collegiate power were numbered.


Football Ascending• Even with new stadiums popping up on or near college campuses

throughout the U.S. (more on that in Lecture Seven), not all who wanted to attend games could.

• For one, travel during this period was sketchy. Trains took spectators to games in the northeast but in the west, spectators were often out of luck. Roads as we know them from coast-to-coast did not exist.

• But new devices emerged to let spectators gather and “watch.”


Football Ascending• Prior to the rise of film and radio in the early 1920s, people who

could not attend games gathered to watch a device called a Play-o-Graph.

• It’s replication of games via telegraph messages showed that the gridiron was visual appealing as spectators could track the movement of the ball.


Football Ascending• The Play-o-Graph listed lineups,

down and distance, total yards, and the score.

• A football field mock up served as its core, and that included a movable football to show possession and scrimmage line.


Football Ascending• The Play-o-Graph required three people to operate:

- One at the game to relay the action to an announcer.- The announcer to perform a primitive version of play-by-play to the crowd.- A third person to move the pieces to update the board.


Football Ascending• Spectators would gather on college

quads to watch their team” play.”

• They would react to board movements as if they were in attendance at the game.


Football Ascending• Students at some colleges gathered

in the gym such as this one at the University of Wyoming to “watch” their team play.


Football Ascending• The Play-o-Graph would soon be rendered obsolete by radio by the

1920s but it underscored football’s appeal and social gravitational pull as a collective enterprise organized around the game.


Football Ascending• And the game’s appeal

continued to create new generations of fans in a country brimming with youth.

• There were some 19,000,000 boys in grammar school in 1910.


Football Ascending• Grammar schools, particularly in

the upper Midwest in states adjacent to the Great Lakes, fielded teams.

• It was thought that one in five boys played football (note the football in the store window), setting up football for its golden age when America’s Dream Life really took flight.


Football Ascending• But first reality intruded.

• A war in Europe disrupted football’s ceaseless climb to the top of spectator sports.

• But even that cataclysm would help football grow deeper into America’s soul.


Football Ascending• The U.S. joined the allied war effort in 1917 but Americans had

earlier in the conflict enlisted in volunteer divisions that took part in combat shortly after the start of hostilities in 1914.

• A fresh generation of former college football players followed the template of the Spanish-American War and joined.

• Among the group: former Princeton star Johnny Poe, class of 1895.


Football Ascending• Poe had joined the Black Watch,

a famous Scottish Regiment.

• He was killed in action during the Battle of Loos on September 25, 1915, when shot in the stomach carrying ammunition to the front lines.


Football Ascending• Poe’s death shocked his former teammates and the tight world of

eastern college football when first reported in 1915, at the start of the season.

• A former teammate, William Hanford Edwards, dedicated his book about his football days to Poe.


Football Ascending• Walter Camp himself wrote the

book’s Prologue, featuring Poe.


Football Ascending• As the war dragged on until 1918, the names of former football

players were not uncommon in the casualty lists.

• One name, however, stood out. It was Hobey Baker, of Princeton.


Football Ascending• Baker had been captain of Princeton’s football and hockey teams,

and after graduating joined the war effort as a pilot.

• He was killed shortly after the war ended when his plane crashed in France.

• College men’s hockey honors his name to this day with an annual award for the best player.


Football Ascending• Prior to the war in 1913, a man from England had criticized

American football because of its close relationship to warfare in strategy, tactics and language.

• “The art of football,” he wrote, constantly aspires to the condition of warfare.”


Football Ascending• He continued, “Both, in the beginning, were rooted in

individualism; both went through that stage and emerged into the stage known to military men as ‘shock action;’ and both are today largely given over to what is known as ‘fire action;’

• “In war, the long-range use of rifle and field gun, in football the long-range use of the kicking game and the extreme development of the forward pass and individual interference.


Football Ascending• “In both the deadliest arm of the present day was the slowest of

development: in war the artillery, in football scientific kicking, handling and covering of kicks.

• “In both the final destructive element has remained the same for a long period: in war the infantry, in football the line as it blazes the way for the backs.”

• Other saw great utility in the connection.


Football Ascending• American president Woodrow

Wilson had coached Princeton’s first football team in the 1870s.

• In the 1880s, he coached at Wesleyan while teaching history.

• At Wesleyan, Wilson formulated a new system of offense.


Football Ascending• And at the end of World War I,

the American president who pushed the country into the war and sought to forge an everlasting peace – unsuccessfully – afterward wrote a letter praising the lessons of football in preparing soldiers for combat.


Football Ascending• Wilson wrote, that the U.S. Army

“derived excellent results from the use of elementary football and other personal contact games as an aid in developing the aggressiveness, initiative and determination of recruits, and the ability to carry on in spite of bodily hurts or physical discomforts.”


Football Ascending• He closed with this: “These

qualities, as you well know, were the outstanding characteristics of the American solider.”


Football Ascending• The U.S. military had embedded

football in its training regiment, recruiting former football players to help teach soldiers how to play.

• One was a man named George Halas, who played for Illinois but enlisted to serve in the military in 1918.


Football Ascending• Halas was sent to the Great Lakes Naval Reserve Station in

Chicago with orders to organize a football team.

• During the latter weeks of the war, Halas established the station as a key training ground for football coaches at the intersection of the military and sports but his legacy would not end there.

• After the war, he would go on to help form the National Football League; his initials GSH still grace the uniforms of the Chicago Bears.

jrn 362 - lecture six

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