The Historical Significance of Ball Rotation in Football

Yeah, so this is one of these things, like, I just, you know, published another one recently that just kind of gets at the.

Just such basic elements of the game that you just assume we're always there and they weren't right.

And so this is one where it's like, okay, how do you spot the ball?

It's a great question if you go back in antiquity and think about people.

That were just starting to form the rules of the game.

The football archaeologist Timothy B.

Brown is our guest today and he's going to tell us exactly how they learn to rotate the ball and spot it.

Tim's up in just a moment with this revelation.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren.

He's a pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your poor little puzzle, football history.

And welcome to another evening where we get to sit down and talk with Timothy Brown@footballarchaeology.com about one of his recent tidbits on football history.

Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pennsylvania.

Hey, Darren, looking forward to chatting about this one.

You, as a former official, I'm guessing you've had coaches tell you to rotate it a few times.

Yeah, yeah, they told me to rotate it, but maybe not what the story's about, maybe something else they wanted me to rotate.

But, yeah, this is really a cool story of how, you know, the evolution of spotting the ball came about.

And I, I really wasn't super clear on what, you know, what they were doing when they were talking about rotating the ball back in antiquity until I read your story.

And maybe you can enlighten us on this.

Yeah, yeah.

So this is one of these things, like, I just, you know, published another one recently that just kind of gets at the.

Just such basic elements of the game that you just assume we're always there and they weren't right.

And so this is one where it's like, okay, how do you spot the ball?

Right.

I mean, now it's very regimented and we have this process where the referee, you know, moves the ball, puts it in a particular spot, and they've got these linesmen and computers and everything, you know, checking out where they are.

But, you know, it wasn't like that, you know, back in the day.

So, you know, when football started, I mean, it was basically, the rules did not specify, you know, where to spot the ball, you know, at the end of a, at the end of a given play.

And, you know, I mean, it, it was rugby, right?

And you didn't need, you know, you didn't have down in distance, you know, you didn't have the system of downs yet.

So it was free flowing games.

You know, if you were a couple inches this way or that way and maybe even a foot this way or that way.

You know, as we watch World cup soccer, we see the same thing.

Guys, you know, scooting, scooching up a couple, you know, yards along the sideline, you know, which you can't get away with in football, but in their, their game it doesn't matter that much.

Right?

You didn't have, you don't have to be.

And the officials back then didn't have a can of spray foam like the soccer guys?

Yeah, no, no, they didn't.

Um, yeah, I mean, I mean they didn't have whistles either.

You know, so it was like a, it was a much more basic game.

So.

But basically, you know, so the ball got spotted by custom, which was mostly that whoever was downed, you know, the ball carrier who's downed, he left the ball or gave it to a teammate who then spotted it.

You know, basically it was a teammate or the ball carrier who put the ball down.

And you know, the referee didn't really have much of a role in that.

You know, it was their job to make sure that it was spotted correctly.

Right.

And so if there was a dispute, then, you know, they, they'd intervene.

But again, you know, initially, the first six years of football you didn't need to worry about it because we didn't have the system of doms.

You didn't have to gain five yards, you know, in three downs.

So, so, you know, the, you know, the game was much more, you know, real quick.

You know, the pace of play was quite quick.

So now there's not kind of another flow in football, football's rules that ends up coming into play with the, where to spot the ball.

And that was what's a touchdown?

Like at what point is a ball carried across the line considered a touchdown?

And, and it had to be, you know, you had to plant the ball on the ground, you know, the ball carrier, which is why they had, you know, in some old films you see a guy score and he puts the ball down on the, on the ground.

You know, that's from that, you know, by then that rule had disappeared.

But that, that kind of old habits die hard.

And so, you know, you had to put the ball on the ground.

He could potentially push him back across the goal line so that a touchdown wasn't scored.

So there'd be these big battles going on.

There's a famous one about Amos Alonzo Stagg as a freshman at Yale seeing, you know, seeing one of these battles go on for like 10 minutes, guys wrestling to try to push the ball out.

And say the ball was.

It's a touchdown when the ball is carried, kicked, or passed across the goal line.

So what does that mean?

You know, it still isn't.

Still a little bit imprecise.

What does it mean to.

To be passed across the goal line?

Now, there was also, you know.

Well, I, I should.

It wasn't really that imprecise, but it was because it.

The touch line is in touch and the goal line is in goal, which means the goal line is part of the.

What we now call the end zone.

So goal line is, you know, part of the goal area, and the touch line is what we now call the sideline.

So the sideline is out of bounds.

Right.

Touchdown or goal line is in goal and the touch line is in touch.

Okay.

So.

So that it had.

There was.

The precedent was that if you kind of cross the ball over the.

The goal line, then it's a touchdown.

They had another level of precision by saying if the ball is on, over or behind the goal line, it's a touchdown.

Right.

So which.

Which is, again, tell us it just has to be over the goal line.

There was a schism in football.

So that there was.

The east coast had a set of rules, and then the Midwest and others played under a different set of rules.

By and large, the same game.

But there were a couple things different.

But under the eastern rules, if any part of the ball was over the line, over the goal line, then it was touchdown.

Whereas for the western rules and Ema Salon's, a stag kind of led that whole effort.

Their rule was the center of the ball had to be over the goal line.

Not exactly how they would figure that one out.

It's beyond me, but.

And then they also specified that you couldn't rotate the ball to get it across the goal line.

Right.

So, like, if you were carrying It.

And somehow you came over the goal line and, you know, the ball wasn't perpendicular to the goal line.

Well, that's.

That's your problem.

And you couldn't rotate the ball to get it to go, you know, like on the ground.

The referee couldn't rotate it to make it cross the goal line.

So it became one of those just stupid little arguments that, that, you know, officials and coaches got into.

And so for.

So if you, you know, if they spotted the ball and it was sideways to the.

To the sideline, you know, if it was.

If the ball was running perpendicular to the.

To the sideline, then that's just where you measured it.

You know, like we think of the ball as always being measured with, you know, right.

With a ball pointed downfield or upfield, however you want to think about it.

But that wasn't the case until 73.

And then they switched it and they said, okay, in 73, they said they, the referee should always rotate the ball.

You know, wherever it's spotted, you rotate the ball.

And then.

And I think the reason I couldn't find a good explanation for that, but I have to believe it was because of television, you know, that people were watching measurements being made and sometimes the ball was turned one win, sometimes it was turned the other.

And it's like, well, they're cheating.

Why didn't they turn the ball?

You know, it makes it more consistent though, too, by identifying that.

Yeah, sure, it's like, you know, moving the ball up to the next yard line, you know, nowadays, you know, that kind of thing, it's so.

Yeah, I mean, it makes perfect.

It made sense to do what they did.

But I gotta believe it was just because of, like, fans not liking the inconsistency as television started focusing in.

On the, you know, the ball, you know, during.

During measurements.

So anyways, you know, the ball started getting rotated in 73 and it's been rotated ever since.

And so, you know, it's just one of those dinky little aspects of how the game works that it took a long time to get there.

Now, okay, maybe you said you weren't sure why they rotated ball.

Now, maybe I interpreted this wrong, but when I read the.

The Story when it came out, the first thing, when you started saying that they were rotating the ball and you.

You talked about how Stag and others in the Midwest wanted the.

The center of the ball to be, you know, you know, most of the ball to be across a goal line.

I guess, for lack of better words, I was interpreting my mind and thinking, okay, they were turning that ball sideways so the points were facing each sideline because it's a shorter.

It's easier to find the center of the ball because you have the seams on the ball.

And, you know, other, you know, there's four.

Four panels on there that you can use to sort of identify that center of the ball.

That's why I was interpreting maybe why they did it.

Maybe.

But you're just saying here, maybe that wasn't the case.

Yeah, I mean, so my.

My understanding of it and I, you know, as you raise the point, you know, it's possible that.

That I'm wrong about.

About it.

But my.

My understanding of it was that if.

If you were crossing the goal line with the ball, like, you know, you're struggling, you're twisting and turning to cross the goal line, and the ball crosses the goal line sideways, right?

Not, you know, with the ends pointed perpendicular to the goal, that the center of the ball had to be across.

And.

Or if you were going.

If you did have it going perpendicular, the center of the ball had to cross.

You couldn't.

If just the tip cross.

That wasn't good enough.

I gotcha.

Center of the ball had to cross.

Now, again, I. I'm doing this.

I'm reading into.

Into it.

You know what.

I.

Whatever.

What I've read into it.

So.

But, you know, and I. I went.

I looked.

You know, I've got all kinds of.

I've got a pretty good archive of old pictures of, you know, all kinds of football stuff.

And.

But I could not find an image of a really old image of measure, you know, the ball being measured.

You know, that.

That would be a good picture of him sitting sideways that are measuring.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I just.

I couldn't.

I never found one.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Well, if somebody out there has one, we would.

We would sure love to have you share it with us and enjoy seeing that.

That'd be really, really a special picture.

I mean, those are also the kind of things where, like, so now I have in my mind, like, I'm always pouring through old college yearbooks and, you know, the football section specifically.

And so now if I spot one of those old pictures, even if it's a drawing, right?

You know, it's like, oh, boy, I got, you know, I'm gonna cut that one out or save that.

Right?

Well, it's, we're glad that you saved these pictures.

We're glad that you saved these stories.

And then you rehash them, research them, and put them into writings to, for us to enjoy, to, to appreciate the way that football evolved and legends of the game and did some special things to make the game what it is today.

And you do this in your tidbits and maybe you could share with folks how they can partake in some of these.

Yep, sure.

Just go to footballarchaeology.com it's a substack site and you can subscribe, in which case you'll get an email every time that I, I, you know, post a new story.

Otherwise, you can follow, you can bookmark and come in.

You know, join us anytime you want.

You can listen to these podcasts every Tuesday and.

Yeah, that's about it.

Yeah.

And you can read the articles anytime and watch a podcast anytime.

They're evergreen, so they're always there for you.

So if you're doing some research of your own or have a question at the water cooler.

Good, good resource.

Go to football.com and use that search button.

Yeah, there's a, there's a search, you know, little panel in the upper right.

And you know, you know, I've got.

Yeah.

So, you know, if you've got a question about something old, there's a chance we've covered something close to it or covered it, so.

Right.

All right.

Well, very good, Tim.

We appreciate you joining us once again and we'd love to talk to you next week.

Very good.

Look forward to it.

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