American Football

by Walter Camp

In this lies the backbone to which the entire body of American football is attached. The English half-backs stand outside the scrimmage, and when the ball pops out it is their duty to seize it and pass it out to a three-quarter, who runs with it. The American quarter-back stands behind the scrimmage and gives a signal, immediately after which he knows the ball will come directly into his hands to be passed for a run or a kick. What is, therefore, in the English game a matter of considerable chance is "cut-and-dried" in the American game; and the element of chance being eliminated, opportunity is given for the display in the latter game of far more skill in the development of brilliant plays and carefully planned man[oe]uvres.

The Americans started with the English scrimmage, kicked at the ball, and pushed and scrambled for a season, until it was discovered that a very clever manifestation of the play was to let the opponents do the kicking—in fact, to leave an opening at the proper moment through which the ball would come, and a man a few feet behind this opening could always get the ball and pass it while the men who kicked it were still entangled in the scrimmage. After a little of this, no one was anxious to kick the ball through, and the rushers began to roll the ball sidewise along between the lines. Then almost immediately it was discovered that a man could snap the ball backwards with his toe, and the American outlet was installed.

At first the play was crude in the extreme, but even in its earliest stages it proved distinctly more satisfactory to both player and spectator than the kicking and shoving which marked the English method.

The same man did not always snap the ball back as he does now, but any one of the rushers would do it upon occasion. The men did not preserve their relative positions in the line, and any one of the men behind the line would act as a quarter-back. Such a condition of affairs could not, however, last long where intercollegiate rivalry proved such an incentive to the perfection of play, and the positions of centre-rush or snap-back and quarter-back became the most distinctive of any upon the field. The centre-rush at that time was selected more for his agility, strange to say, than for his weight and strength; but in case he was a light man he was always flanked by two heavy guards. One season's play convinced all captains that the centre section of the forward line must be heavy, and if any light-weights were to be used among the rushers they should be near the wings.

Quarter-back has, from the very outset, been a position in which a small man can be used to great advantage. The half-backs and backs have usually been men of speed coupled with skill as kickers.

The number originally adopted for matches in this country was eleven on a side. From some silly notion that it would increase the skill displayed, this number was changed to fifteen, although the Englishmen were moving in the other direction by reducing their numbers from twenties to fifteens. A year or two of fifteen on a side drove the American players back to elevens, and there the number has rested.

D. S. DEAN.
Harvard.

In the early days of the sport, while the players individually were courageous, the team play was cowardly; that is, the tacticians were so taken up with a study of defence—how to protect the goal—that the attack was weak. The direct result of this was to place too few men in the forward line and too many behind it. If to-day we were to revert to fifteen on a side, there is little doubt that we should throw eleven of them up into the rush line, and upon occasion even twelve. We now realize that the best defence does not consist in planning how to stop a man after he has obtained a fair start towards the goal, but in throwing all available force up against him before he can get free of the forward line. The only way to effectively defeat this aggressive defence is by means of skilled kicking. It is possible with really good kickers to throw a team playing in this fashion into disorder by well-placed and long punting, followed up most sharply; but it requires nerve and an unfailing accuracy of aim and judgment.