[Beginning with this issue, and continuing for four weeks, this Department will be largely taken up by a series of papers an the Science of Football, prepared by Mr. W. H. Lewis, of the Harvard football team of 1893.]
That football is a scientific sport seems to be pretty generally conceded by all. It is more like military science than any other; and it has this in common with all other sciences, that only so much can be learned from the books and blackboard. The student must go to the laboratory for the major part of his knowledge. The laboratory of football is the gridiron.
Football as a science divides itself naturally into the Individual and the Team. The Individual may be subdivided into Fundamentals and Position Play. Fundamentals comprehend passing, catching, dropping on the ball, kicking, blocking, making holes, breaking through, tackling. The Team is divided chiefly into two parts—the offence and defence. The offence comprises the direct attack, the indirect or strategic play, and kicking. The defence embraces the general defence, the theory, styles of defence, defence to particular plays, and defence at given points of the field. In this first paper I shall treat of the Fundamentals of Individual Play.
FIG. 10.
Passing.—-There are three kinds of passes—the straight-arm, the underhand, and the overhand. The straight-arm pass is used generally for long low passes to the open, because of its swiftness and accuracy. The pass is made by taking the ball in the palm of the hand, the ends pointing up and down the arm, the fingers firmly clutched over the end farthest from the body; then extending the arm at an angle with the body of about 65°, using the opposite foot as a pivot, bring the arm and body quickly, with a swing and a snap, directly in line with the object of the throw; then let the ball go, end over end, revolving upon its shorter axis, as in Fig. 7.
The underhand pass is used in passes made by the quarter to the full-back. The ball is held as in the straight-arm pass. The pass should be started from about an angle of 45° to the rear of the body, the arm passing by the body to the front, describing an arc of a circle, letting the ball roll off the tips of the fingers. The body should be well forward and the knees bent, similar to the position of a bowler. See Fig. 8.
The overhand pass starts from the taking of the snap, the arm being carried above the shoulder, going through about a three-quarter circle and then going off on a tangent.
Catching.—The ball should be caught with the arms and the body. The backs may be allowed more latitude in this matter, however. In fact, the more of a baseball catch they can make, the more quickly can they return the ball. For the forward, the ball should be caught in one of two ways: first, take the ball, whether punted or thrown, on either side, letting the arm on the side where you catch the ball be under the ball, and the other arm and hand hooked over the upper end of the ball, as shown in Fig. 4; second, a punt or thrown ball may be caught by receiving the ball in the groin, right-angling the body around it and placing both hands over it.
