Universities
at which a set of rules was adopted, and the foundation laid for the inter-collegiate matches. In 1872 Columbia played a match with Yale; there were twenty men on a side, and the game was a species of Association. The men wore long trousers and jerseys. The few rules they had were very simple, and forbade anyone picking up, carrying or throwing the ball.
There were no on-side and off-side rules, and goals were made by sending the ball under rather than over the cross bar. Fouls were penalised by compelling the erring player to throw the ball straight up in the air from the place where the foul was committed, and it was regarded unfair to touch the ball on its descent until it struck the ground. This rule developed some clever drop-kicking; the men practising kicking the ball just as it touched the ground. When a man was disabled and retired from the game, his place was not taken by a substitute, but conditions were evened by the other side dropping off a man.
In the year of the Convention, 1873, Yale played a game with eleven Englishmen, captained by an Eton boy named Allen, and beat them two goals to one. At about this time, 1874, Harvard had been playing matches with Canadian teams under the Rugby Union rules; Harvard and Yale had not met. In 1875 Harvard and Yale had a conference which resulted in an agreement for games to be played under compromise rules of the then existing American college game and the Rugby Union. The first Harvard-Yale game, in 1876, recorded the defeat of Yale by 4 goals and 2 touchdowns to nothing, and the result of the contest was a complete dissatisfaction with the compromise rules. This led to the adoption of the regular Rugby Union rules, and thence, from the Rugby Union of 1875, comes the American game.
With the adoption of the Rugby Union rules, there came an end to "shouldering " -a method pursued to put a man "off the ball" and hitting or batting the ball with the fist. In this latter practice, some men had grown so skilled that they could bat the ball almost as far as it is now kicked.
The ball used at that time was the round black rubber one, and the system of play included a great deal of "babying" of the ball with the hand; this "babying" corresponded to the dribbling of the Association game, which early American players seemed unable to acquire to a very skilful degree.
When the Rugby Union rules were first [FOOTBALL adopted, American teams were made up of eleven men; subsequently they were increased to fifteen, continued at that number for several years, and finally changed back to eleven, at which number they have remained. When the sport was first introduced into America, the players were called "forwards," "half-backs," and 66 goal tends," and it was some time before the men received the specific titles by which they are at present known. One of the first to be particularly designated was the man who put down the ball in a scrimmage, namely, the " centre rush," or "snap-back."
After the first game between Harvard and Yale in 1876, immediate effort was made to revise the rules to meet American ideas of the needs of American players. One of the features of the American gameperhaps the most distinctive one is, and has always been since we first began rule revising, the outlet of the scrimmage. In the Rugby Union game, as it came to us, the man who chanced to have the ball when the down was made was the one to place it on the ground in the new line-up. Very little experience convinced Americans that some men were better calculated to put the ball in play than others, and so before long this play was given to one man, forthwith called the "snap-back." In English Rugby the ball may be rolled out by any man, and at no stated opening; in American Rugby one man has entire control of its coming, and does not put it in play until signalled to do so by the quarter-back. In the English game the ball comes out in haphazard fashion, reaches the runner's hands, and off he goes with no especially preconceived plan of play. In the American game one man, the "snap-back," puts the ball in play; one man, the "quarter-back," gives the signal for putting it in play; the same man invariably receives it and gives it to the runner, and when the ball reaches the runner, the latter is only a part of a prearranged play in which the entire team performs a rehearsed and elaborate part. In an American game the ball never goes into play except by signal, and each play is the result of much theoretical study and long and careful practice. The American game is entirely strategic, and each season reveals new plays, the successful execution of which has taken weeks of preliminary work on the chess board as well as on the playing field.
Originally the American game employed the English "scrum," but we shortly found it advantageous to let the other side do the kicking out of the ball, our side leaving an opening at the proper moment through which the ball could escape. This sug- FOOTBALL] gested one man behind the line (afterwards the quarter-back), whose business it would always be to receive the ball from the scrum " and pass it to the backs. When the advantage derived from letting the other side in the 66 scrum" do the kicking became apparent, the rushers began rolling the ball sideways along between the two lines. Then we discovered that a man could snap the ball back with his toe, and hence started the first two divergencies from English play-namely, the same man always game may be said to have become fully established. In 1882 a system of play by which an inferior team was able to escape defeat through getting and keeping possession of the ball (making only a pretence of play), had become known as the "block system," and was so menacing to the interest of the game that the "five yard rule" was introduced. This is the rule that declares a side must advance the ball five, or retreat with it ten yards in three downs, a down being the end of each play, i.e., when a A GENERAL VIEW OF THE GAME. DEFENCE OF GOAL. to snap the ball out of the scrum and the same man always to receive it.
The next development was in specialising the work of the rushers. The centre rush or snap back was at first a light man, chosen for his activity, but it became apparent that heavy men were needed where the fight raged around the ball; hence he became heavier. The next men who received attention were the end rushers. As the American game developed, it was discovered that the men on the end of the line had opportunities to make runs and free catches off short kicks; and so these positions became among the most important on the line. The next of the men named were the guards, who stood to the left and the right of the centre and protected the quarter-back when he passe passed the ball. The next two men on the line were called tacklers, because to them more than to any other of the rushers it fell to get into and break up plays of the opponents.
With the designation of the players, which gave them specific duties, and the return to teams of eleven men, the American