Old Football Arrives in the New World

When we last visited this series, a new game called rugby was shipped across the sea to America from England. Rugby was a brutal game, and many schools in England decided not to play it and instead enjoyed a sport called association football or soccer. The soccer name obviously stayed here in the States, but Great Britain and much of the world call soccer football.

The History of Football Timeline Continues in the New World

Pigskin Dispatch's Part 4 in the Series on American Football History

America transforms the game

Rugby though seems to be the sport that became popular early in America. But by 1860 the game was abolished in many American schools due to its rough nature. Football was revived though in 1862 by Gerritt Smith Hiller when he organized a group at Yale students to play again, using rules that were a reasonably close imitation of soccer. Still, the game was often more an excuse to beat up freshmen in a hazing activity than anything else.
The game stuck around and became popular at the eastern colleges though and on November 6, 1869 an inter-collegiate game was played between Princeton and Rutgers. The game played this day was very similar to rugby and had twenty players on the field for each team during the action.
In 1871 Harvard University started playing a variation to the game called “the Boston Game” which differed from the others by allowing a player to pick the ball up and run if he was chased.

In the fall of 1873 Yale decided to invite representatives from Harvard, Rutgers, Columbia and Princeton to a convention of sorts in New York City to draw up a set of rules for an intercollegiate football association. ( a precursor to the NCAA) Harvard declined to attend due to the fact that the other schools had no intentions of honoring any of the rules of the Boston game. The four remaining schools established the Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA) and set 15 as the number of players allowed on each team.

Harvard players still had a very real desire to play other schools so in 1874 Harvard challenged Yale to a game using the Boston rules. Yale declined the challenge due to the rule differences because the game under IFA rules that Yale played was more similar to soccer. Harvard’s team captain, Henry Grant, still was not discouraged. He was anxious for his football team to engage in competition and had heard that a similar game was played just over the Canadian border at McGill University. Consequently, Grant got in touch with the captain of the McGill team, David Roger, and invited them to play two games in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 13 and 14, 1874.

Harvard until this time was still playing the Boston game and the rules also resembled soccer more than it does today’s game of American football. The Boston rules differed from the IFA version of rules though because in the IFA a player could never pick up the ball and run. Boston rules allowed him to pick it up and tuck it only when he was being chased by an opponent. Harvard players were in for a surprise when the McGill squad came to Cambridge a few days early and practiced in front of them. The McGill players kicked the ball and subsequently ran with it under their arms. Harvard’s Grant pointed out politely that this violated a basic rule of American football. The McGill captain replied that it did not violate any rule of the Canadian game. When the Harvard captain asked the McGill leader, "What game do you play?"  David Roger replied, "Rugby." They then managed to agree to play the forthcoming games with half-Canadian, half-American rules. Harvard normally played their game with 15 players to a side but McGill could only manage to bring 11 with them for the contests, so both sides used an 11 on 11 format.

The Harvard University newspaper printed the following excerpt the next day: "The McGill University Football Club will meet the Harvard Football Club on Wednesday and Thursday, May 13th and 14th. The game will probably be called at 3 o'clock. Admittance 50 cents. The proceeds will be donated to the entertainment of our visitors from Montreal."

The May 13 contest started with the Canadian colleges' rules and was to have the second half be the Boston rules. Harvard players enjoyed the Montreal version so much they requested their opponents to play the remainder of the game with the rules McGill brought. Harvard won the first game 3-0. The next day’s game ended in a scoreless tie between the two schools. Harvard adopted a lot of elements from the game their Canadian friends had shown them including tackling, the use of downs and kicked field goals.

These changes to Harvard’s football rules were setting the table for something much bigger and better though. When we resume in part 5 of this series we will introduce the true mastermind and founder of American football, Walter Camp, and his gang over at the Yale campus in “A New Authoritative Organizational Body and Leader for Football.”  Right here on PigskinDispatch.com, your place for the good news about football.

We are able to give this in depth look from so long ago in history by careful research. Using someone who was contemporary to the period is the best source. So a very special shout out to our main source of reference information for this article is from Parke H. Davis in his 1911 book Football-The American Intercollegiate Game.