The Anatomy of a Game: Football, the Rules, and the Men who Made the GameUniversity of Delaware Press, 1994 - 599 pages "This is the first football history to chronicle year by year how playing rules developed the game. Football - a four-dimensional game of rushing, kicking, forward passing, and backward passing - has had more playing rule changes since its inception than any other sport. The Anatomy of a Game follows football rules from the game's European roots through its beginning in the United States to its position as the number-one spectator sport in the 1990s. Highlighted are details of the crisis years that changed the character of the game, with coaches and rules committee members the featured players. David M. Nelson, who served on the NCAA Rules Committee longer than Walter Camp, provides personal insight into all Rules Committee meetings since 1958, as well as an appendix - chronological and by rule - listing every change since 1876." "Ever since the first two human beings kicked, threw, or batted an object competitively, there have been playing rules. Games are mentioned in the Bible, and the Romans brought football's forerunner to Britain, from where it was exported to the United States. It was in the United States that college students decided to make their game rugby rather than soccer. Although the students invented United States football and made the first rules, their ruling power was eventually lost to the faculty, administrators, coaches, rules committees, and the NCAA." "Beginning as a brutal sport, football survived several crises before and after the turn of the century, eventually becoming respectable. The 1931 injury crisis split the high school and college rules and the same year the professionals went their own way, with rules largely based on spectator appeal." "Today the sport is a national treasure primarily because of its playing rules, over seven hundred in total, which make college football unique among the world's team sports. Moreover, football remains an American game, never having the same impact in other countries as do baseball and basketball." "Rules make the game, but people make the rules. Football survived the major crises that threatened the game because committee members adhered to the precepts that had governed football since its inception. The game began with an attempt to have a consistent code of justice, personal accountability, and equality. In some sense the playing rules are a type of moral precept that explains in the simplest terms what can and cannot be done. The Football Code, which first prefaced the rules in 1916, makes the game - more than any other sport - a moral one because it sets standards for coaching, playing, sportsmanship, and officiating."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
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Contents
9 | |
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33 | |
Who Is Making the Rules? 18881896 | 63 |
The Road to Three Yards and a Cloud of Dust 19511957 | 253 |
Camp to Stagg to Crisler to Nelson 19581959 | 271 |
General Neyland in Command 19601962 | 294 |
Limited Substitution Is Dead 19631967 | 308 |
Grass Basketball and a Safer Game | 325 |
John Waldorfs Era 19681975 | 327 |
A Second Century of Football Rules 19761980 | 360 |
The Liberal Rules Decade 19811989 | 377 |
The Game Moves toward Its Day of Reckoning 18971905 | 79 |
The Aerial Game the Fourth Dimension | 103 |
The Takeoff 1906 | 105 |
Airborne 19071908 | 127 |
The Second Crisis 19091910 | 141 |
The Modern Era Arrives 19111918 | 154 |
The Roaring Twenties 19191928 | 172 |
The Great Depression to the Fifth Down 19291940 | 194 |
Unlimited Substitution to Recodification 19411947 | 218 |
Ten Rules but No Uniform Code 19481950 | 232 |
The Substitution Wars | 251 |
The Executive Committee Controls the Game 19901991 | 416 |
Epilogue | 431 |
Rule Changes by Year | 433 |
Evolution of American Collegiate Football | 491 |
Appendix 3 Rules Committees | 533 |
Notes | 563 |
Bibliographic Note | 575 |
Works Cited | 577 |
Index | 581 |
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Common terms and phrases
AFCA Amos Alonzo Stagg Athletic backward pass ball in play blocking Chairman cleats coaches college football defensive player deleted disqualification Division E. K. Hall eliminated end zone enforcement fair catch field goal fifteen yards fifteen-yard penalty five yards Football Rules Committee forward pass free kick Fritz Crisler fumble game clock game's goal line goalposts hands Harvard illegal inches injuries Intercollegiate kicker kicking team kickoff line of scrimmage Lou Little mandatory Member-at-Large mouth protector NCAA Football Rules neutral zone offensive officials offside onside opponent opponent's pass interference passer penalized permitted personal fouls placekick playing rules previous spot Princeton problem prohibited punt put in play put the ball recodification referee rule changes rulebook runner running safety score scrimmage kick season secretary side line signal snap snapper substitution rule tackle team area teammate time-out touchback touchdown U.S. Naval Academy University unlimited substitution unsportsmanlike vote Walter Camp William Yale
Popular passages
Page 325 - Bacchus' blessings are a treasure, Drinking is the soldier's pleasure: Rich the treasure, Sweet the pleasure, Sweet is pleasure after pain. Soothed with the sound, the king grew vain; Fought all his battles o'er again, And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain!
Page 34 - ... 3. A PUNT is made by letting the ball fall from the hands and kicking it before it touches the ground.
Page 40 - ... (subject to Rule 48), in a straight line from and opposite to the spot where the ball was touched down, and there make a mark on the goalline, and thence walk straight out with it at right angles to the goal-line, such distance as he thinks proper, and there place it for another of his side to kick.
Page 40 - CHARGING, ie, rushing forward to kick the ball or tackle a player, is lawful for the opposite side, in all cases of a place kick after a fair catch or upon a try at goal, immediately the ball touches or is placed on the ground ; and in cases of a drop-kick or punt after a fair catch, as soon as the player having the ball commences to run or offers to kick, or the ball has touched the ground ; but he may always draw back, and unless he has dropped the ball or actually touched it with his foot, they...
Page 24 - THIS STONE COMMEMORATES THE EXPLOIT OF WILLIAM WEBB ELLIS WHO WITH A FINE DISREGARD FOR THE RULES OF FOOTBALL, AS PLAYED IN HIS TIME, FIRST TOOK THE BALL IN HIS ARMS AND RAN WITH IT, THUS ORIGINATING THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURE OF THE RUGBY GAME AD 1823 This establishment of the running or Rugby game, as contrasted with the earlier, kicking game, had several important results.
Page 36 - A TOUCH-DOWN is when a player, putting his hand upon the ball on the ground in touch or in goal, stops it so that it remains dead or fairly so.
Page 37 - SIDE if he enters a scrummage from his opponents' side, or, being in a scrummage, gets in front of the ball, or when the ball has been kicked, touched, or is being run with by any of his own side behind him (ie, between himself and his own goal-line).
Page 488 - RULE 8. A fair catch is a catch made direct from a kick by one of the opponents (or a punt-out by one of the same side), provided the man intending to make the catch indicates that intention by holding up his hand when running for the ball, and also makes a mark with his heel upon catching it, and no other of his side touches the ball. If he be interfered with by an opponent who is off side, or, if he be thrown after catching the ball, he shall be given fifteen yards, unless this carries the ball...
Page 37 - A player being off side is put on side when the ball has been run five yards with, or kicked by, or has touched the dress or person of, any player of the opposite side, or when one of his own side has run in front of him either with the ball or having kicked it when behind him.