Thanks for the video! Since every change described in this video is part of the differentiation of gridiron football from Rugby, you'll find plenty of examples of these concepts still used in Rugby Union: 15 players on a side, stretching the offense across the field with backs far behind the ball; the modern scrum and maul are both flying wedges, and the center (hooker) still must kick the ball back in a scrum while being supported by the guards. Rugby League, a different rules variant of the game, also includes the concept of downs. All these sports evolved from common roots, so each difference can be traced. No need to animate!
Fascinating stuff. You should have a lot more views. American football is kind of an odd game, with it's complicated, situational rules. People have been tweaking the rules to try and make it less dangerous from the beginning. -
I feel like pointing out that wedge blocking is still legal in NCAA and Federation rules; it's just that the blockers aren't allowed to use hands or arms to hold onto either teammates or opponents. And IMO the best way to stop an opposing wedge -- which is still a viable tactic in children's football -- is to crab across the apex player just as or before the wedge starts forming and moving. What we coach is for a DL in an adjacent gap or a full position away to step to the side and get the side of hir body across the waist of the apex wedger, causing the whole thing to come down. There are countermeasures to that defense, but they're coached only on teams that rely heavily enough on wedge plays to make practicing them worthwhile. One such countermeasure is to have the option of having a different position as apex. Another delays formation of the wedge slightly and steps over or onto the back of the crabber.
Great video! Grew up playing football then Rugby in the military for many years. Made me 😂 about the center kicking the ball back with his foot. I played “hooker” in rugby being the man in the middle of the scrum, hooking the ball back with your foot back to the scrum half.
As a 12 year Center in football, the idea of snapping with my foot feels icky. Love seeing the history and similarities of both games. Truly hooligan sports played by the most esteemed gentleman.
It's not obvious why allowing contact below the waist would've discouraged open play, but the process can be reconstructed (and I've seen this analysis by another source I've forgotten). Generally you'd think going low would help the defense most against *inside* rushing. However, the rule change wasn't applied solely to tackling. The common types of outside plays at that time had been passing movements similar to those seen among the three-quarters in rugby today -- extension plays, as they were called in Canadian football. But there was no prohibition on interfering with (i.e. against) the teammates of the ballcarrier, so you could get to them before they received the pass. Ordinarily that sort of tactic could be beaten easily if the rule against holding is enforced, just by timing the passes to adjust for whether a defender was in the receiver's face. But when contact below the waist was allowed, you could knock down what would today be called the pitch man pretty easily and reliably. You'd both go down together, and such a 1-1 trade benefited the defense, because the ballcarrier would find no teammate to pass to.
If you want to understand the turtleback play as described, with the ballcarrier spun off away from the original point of attack, look up some RUclipss, particularly instructional ones, on rolling mauls in rugby. The play described is like a rolling maul that, instead of making a complete spin, turns to get the ballcarrier at the back where he can slip off around the defense. There are also many videos on driving mauls in some cases showing another, not really legal but hard for the referee to see, way to spring the ball away from the original point of attack.
Thanks for that! One thing I'm trying to wrap my head around, is how much, or how little did American FB evolve from rugby. Did our game copy rugby, or did we just basically start something more or less completely different after the Rutgers / Princeton game? For instance, I just realized that rugby league has something very similar to our "downs", where they have six tries to score, or else they can punt on the fifth. Was this originally in rugby, and we adopted it, or did they both evolve this rule independently?
Thank you for this. I don't know rugby that well and if I'm gonna cover this period more, I probably should. I keep thinking I should start moving forward more into the 1920s and 1930s.
@@Stickyburrs American football was the style of rugby *as existed at that time.* Don't assume that Rugby Union today is the same game it was then. In my opinion the change that caused those games to diverge was made, not by American football, but by the Rugby Football Union in 1878, with the requirement that the ball be returned to play immediately after a tackle. Until then the pace could be as slow as American football today. The Rutgers-Princeton series should be ignored completely as concerns the *technical* development of the game. All it did was help establish intercollegiate football *institutionally,* and I know of one source that says it wasn't even the first intercollegiate game -- that Princeton and Princeton Theological Seminary (then an independent college-level institution) had played in the 1850s! Also, I think our host had one detail wrong; batting or punching the ball by hand was allowed. The 1869-70 series established a desire to institutionalize college football competition, which led eventually to that type of game being dropped in favor of rugby. It's not as if the game they played (basically the type of football that was popular with adults in the NY metro area) *evolved* into a rugby-style game; it was a clean break. It did not immediately follow, however; took a few years and then a few more to get wider acceptance among colleges playing some kind of football with each other or even intramurally. It's not clear whether that switch would've happened without the 1873-4 Harvard-McGill series, but rugby had already been established in Canada. The factors leading to this switch may also have kept soccer from becoming the premier type of football in North America. Rugby League's count of tackles came about same as downs -- a fairly obvious solution to an obvious problem. It's not like they looked around the world for a model to copy.
@@CollegeFootballHistory Rugby is tricky to look at as input to this history, because today's rugby is not the game of that time. I can recommend Titley and McWhirter's centenary history of the Rugby Football Union.
@@Stickyburrs All of the games diverged from the original Rugby football ancestor game into all of these various sports. Rugby split into Rugby Union and Rugby League. The game then evolved in North America and then split into Canadian and American Football. Canada still called their game Rugby Football until mid 20th century. All of the games have then borrowed concepts from each other as they evolved like the forward pass in North America. The fixed 6 tackles in League was borrowed from gridiron as there used to be unlimited possession, until dominant teams in the UK and Australia kept possession for long periods, so forced the opposition to wait for a mistake.
Ha! I covered that in my very first history video which was... well, my very first video in the Early American College Football History - How Football Began playlist. There's always decisions about what goes in and what doesn't.... do I get bonus points for skipping Harvard or not?
I’m struggling with why they are called “tackles”. I guess at that time there was no holding penalties, so would the tackles just immediately tackle the defender in front of them? Like, was their job just to tackle as many defenders as possible?
Everyone played both ways. So, the same guys who played offensive centers, guards, tackles, etc, played those same positions on the defensive line. There was no substitution unless you were injured or removed from the game. I should have mentioned that!
Holding an opponent other than the ballcarrier was illegal from early on, so, no, they couldn't do what you're supposing, legally. It's just as our host says, a description of their role on defense, and since they went both ways, they just kept the name they had from that. On offensive plays from scrimmage, tackles would have assignments similar to the ones they still do, but with a few extra possibilities. They could form interlocked interference with an adjacent teammate, and they could get behind and interlock with the ballcarrier, executing what became known in Canadian football as a tandem buck.
At the time of the Princeton V, the defensive center and guards would take the brunt of the forward push, and the defensive tackles could hit the V from the sides, getting penetration and bringing the ballcarrier down.
No, it's not. Momentum was defined by several players moving before the ball was snapped. Now only one person can be in motion at a time and everyone must be set a full second before the play starts. Mass play was outlawed when they made the rule to require 7 men on the line.
I wish we could see these plays demonstrated somehow. I would do anything to go back in time and witness these games. What a spectacle indeed!
I am trying to work on how I could animate this and show it better than just a 2D diagram.
Thanks for the video! Since every change described in this video is part of the differentiation of gridiron football from Rugby, you'll find plenty of examples of these concepts still used in Rugby Union: 15 players on a side, stretching the offense across the field with backs far behind the ball; the modern scrum and maul are both flying wedges, and the center (hooker) still must kick the ball back in a scrum while being supported by the guards. Rugby League, a different rules variant of the game, also includes the concept of downs. All these sports evolved from common roots, so each difference can be traced. No need to animate!
@@CollegeFootballHistoryThat would be amazing!
@atree2k 10:40 never seen this in rugby, NEED TO ANIMATE
Fascinating stuff. You should have a lot more views.
American football is kind of an odd game, with it's complicated, situational rules. People have been tweaking the rules to try and make it less dangerous from the beginning.
-
It begs the question when was it decided that the 69 Princeton rutgers game was the first.
Some Yalie who wanted to snub Harvard.
I feel like pointing out that wedge blocking is still legal in NCAA and Federation rules; it's just that the blockers aren't allowed to use hands or arms to hold onto either teammates or opponents. And IMO the best way to stop an opposing wedge -- which is still a viable tactic in children's football -- is to crab across the apex player just as or before the wedge starts forming and moving. What we coach is for a DL in an adjacent gap or a full position away to step to the side and get the side of hir body across the waist of the apex wedger, causing the whole thing to come down. There are countermeasures to that defense, but they're coached only on teams that rely heavily enough on wedge plays to make practicing them worthwhile. One such countermeasure is to have the option of having a different position as apex. Another delays formation of the wedge slightly and steps over or onto the back of the crabber.
Great video! Grew up playing football then Rugby in the military for many years. Made me 😂 about the center kicking the ball back with his foot. I played “hooker” in rugby being the man in the middle of the scrum, hooking the ball back with your foot back to the scrum half.
As a 12 year Center in football, the idea of snapping with my foot feels icky. Love seeing the history and similarities of both games. Truly hooligan sports played by the most esteemed gentleman.
Really enjoyed this video. Well done.
Thank you very much!
Reconstructed diagrams of these old descriptions would help out a ton in visualizing what was occurring at the time.
I am working on how I might animate them with something more than just X's and O's on a flat surface. I think it would be fun and interesting!
Great video Outstanding topic!
Thanks Jon. Top notch!
It's not obvious why allowing contact below the waist would've discouraged open play, but the process can be reconstructed (and I've seen this analysis by another source I've forgotten). Generally you'd think going low would help the defense most against *inside* rushing. However, the rule change wasn't applied solely to tackling. The common types of outside plays at that time had been passing movements similar to those seen among the three-quarters in rugby today -- extension plays, as they were called in Canadian football. But there was no prohibition on interfering with (i.e. against) the teammates of the ballcarrier, so you could get to them before they received the pass. Ordinarily that sort of tactic could be beaten easily if the rule against holding is enforced, just by timing the passes to adjust for whether a defender was in the receiver's face. But when contact below the waist was allowed, you could knock down what would today be called the pitch man pretty easily and reliably. You'd both go down together, and such a 1-1 trade benefited the defense, because the ballcarrier would find no teammate to pass to.
If you want to understand the turtleback play as described, with the ballcarrier spun off away from the original point of attack, look up some RUclipss, particularly instructional ones, on rolling mauls in rugby. The play described is like a rolling maul that, instead of making a complete spin, turns to get the ballcarrier at the back where he can slip off around the defense. There are also many videos on driving mauls in some cases showing another, not really legal but hard for the referee to see, way to spring the ball away from the original point of attack.
Thanks for that!
One thing I'm trying to wrap my head around, is how much, or how little did American FB evolve from rugby.
Did our game copy rugby, or did we just basically start something more or less completely different after the Rutgers / Princeton game?
For instance, I just realized that rugby league has something very similar to our "downs", where they have six tries to score, or else they can punt on the fifth.
Was this originally in rugby, and we adopted it, or did they both evolve this rule independently?
Thank you for this. I don't know rugby that well and if I'm gonna cover this period more, I probably should.
I keep thinking I should start moving forward more into the 1920s and 1930s.
@@Stickyburrs American football was the style of rugby *as existed at that time.* Don't assume that Rugby Union today is the same game it was then. In my opinion the change that caused those games to diverge was made, not by American football, but by the Rugby Football Union in 1878, with the requirement that the ball be returned to play immediately after a tackle. Until then the pace could be as slow as American football today.
The Rutgers-Princeton series should be ignored completely as concerns the *technical* development of the game. All it did was help establish intercollegiate football *institutionally,* and I know of one source that says it wasn't even the first intercollegiate game -- that Princeton and Princeton Theological Seminary (then an independent college-level institution) had played in the 1850s! Also, I think our host had one detail wrong; batting or punching the ball by hand was allowed. The 1869-70 series established a desire to institutionalize college football competition, which led eventually to that type of game being dropped in favor of rugby. It's not as if the game they played (basically the type of football that was popular with adults in the NY metro area) *evolved* into a rugby-style game; it was a clean break. It did not immediately follow, however; took a few years and then a few more to get wider acceptance among colleges playing some kind of football with each other or even intramurally. It's not clear whether that switch would've happened without the 1873-4 Harvard-McGill series, but rugby had already been established in Canada. The factors leading to this switch may also have kept soccer from becoming the premier type of football in North America.
Rugby League's count of tackles came about same as downs -- a fairly obvious solution to an obvious problem. It's not like they looked around the world for a model to copy.
@@CollegeFootballHistory Rugby is tricky to look at as input to this history, because today's rugby is not the game of that time. I can recommend Titley and McWhirter's centenary history of the Rugby Football Union.
@@Stickyburrs All of the games diverged from the original Rugby football ancestor game into all of these various sports. Rugby split into Rugby Union and Rugby League. The game then evolved in North America and then split into Canadian and American Football. Canada still called their game Rugby Football until mid 20th century. All of the games have then borrowed concepts from each other as they evolved like the forward pass in North America.
The fixed 6 tackles in League was borrowed from gridiron as there used to be unlimited possession, until dominant teams in the UK and Australia kept possession for long periods, so forced the opposition to wait for a mistake.
Great video
Thank you!
Top notch content as always.
A similar idea for defense plays would be cool when those first got established in the 1800's.
Another fine video, thank you. I guess we’re still trying to eliminate momentum plays by some of the kickoff rules
Kickoffs have been deemed dangerous for over 100 years, so it's not surprising they're trying to limit this again.
Ten Thousand Men of Harvard would like a word with you about 15 May 1874, today.
Ha! I covered that in my very first history video which was... well, my very first video in the
Early American College Football History - How Football Began playlist.
There's always decisions about what goes in and what doesn't.... do I get bonus points for skipping Harvard or not?
@@CollegeFootballHistory Sorry, I'm with the Crimson on this one.
Awesome video
Thanks!
No helmets, no pads, vague rules, good thing players couldn't carry guns.
17:36 Was Eugene Byrne an ancestor of Peyton Manning? 😁
now that you mention that I'll never unsee it!
I’m struggling with why they are called “tackles”. I guess at that time there was no holding penalties, so would the tackles just immediately tackle the defender in front of them? Like, was their job just to tackle as many defenders as possible?
Everyone played both ways. So, the same guys who played offensive centers, guards, tackles, etc, played those same positions on the defensive line.
There was no substitution unless you were injured or removed from the game.
I should have mentioned that!
Holding an opponent other than the ballcarrier was illegal from early on, so, no, they couldn't do what you're supposing, legally. It's just as our host says, a description of their role on defense, and since they went both ways, they just kept the name they had from that.
On offensive plays from scrimmage, tackles would have assignments similar to the ones they still do, but with a few extra possibilities. They could form interlocked interference with an adjacent teammate, and they could get behind and interlock with the ballcarrier, executing what became known in Canadian football as a tandem buck.
At the time of the Princeton V, the defensive center and guards would take the brunt of the forward push, and the defensive tackles could hit the V from the sides, getting penetration and bringing the ballcarrier down.
I understand what they mean by the oval unfurls and creates a path for the runner, I don’t think it’s the same thing as that turtle play
So is the tush push a mass momentum play?
No, it's not. Momentum was defined by several players moving before the ball was snapped. Now only one person can be in motion at a time and everyone must be set a full second before the play starts.
Mass play was outlawed when they made the rule to require 7 men on the line.
@@CollegeFootballHistorySo is there a precedent for it in football history?
A good addition would be the size of the field? When was it regulated? Is that whole nother video? 😂
Yeah I haven't done much with that yet..... there were so many changes to football fields, especially in the early years.
Very similar to rugby in the beginning.