Football History Rewind Part 43

In this episode of the Football History Rewind we discuss more from the 1921 season including rules on how to start the game, put the ball in play and the adventures of the tiny Washington and Jeffereson team that shared the National Title.

Football was and is a very dynamic game especially in the aspect of the rules of the game. Rules revisions have been a very dominant feature of the game since the late 1800's and are still very prevalent today. The year 1921 was no exception to this trend, and as a matter of fact this season featured rules revisions that still have some merit in today’s contests with the pig skin.

The last edition of this series discussed a few of the changes in 1921 in as far as players being “urged” to wear numbers on their jerseys, and the even explored views on cleats and helmets in that era’s rules. This part of our study on football rules history will really hone in on the balance of rules revision from 1921.

They flipped over this one!

Very interesting enough it appears that the first revision to be discussed is that of a portion of the game that happens right from the start, the coin flip. Apparently this is the first year of football rules to officially incorporate the flip of a coin called by a predetermined captain of one of the teams in order to choose how to start the game.

According to the National Collegiate Athletic Association Foot Ball Rules Book of 1921 sponsored by Spaulding Athletics the rules of the coin flip were revised to conform with the most custom way of deciding who got the ball first and at which end of the field. 

RULE VII, KICK-OFF: Section 1, (a) The Referee shall toss up a coin before the game in the presence of the captains of the opposing teams, first designating which captain will call. The winner of the toss shall have the choice of goal or kick-off, which choice shall not be revokable. If the winner of the toss selects the goal, the loser must kick off. The loser of the toss shall have the same privileges at the beginning of the third period as the winner of the toss had at the beginning of the game.

At first glance this procedure is still practiced almost to the letter today but there is a little twist deep in the language. When read carefully this is interesting indeed as it states in the example that if the winner of the coin flip chooses to select which goal they want then that forces the loser of the toss to kick off. That being the case I think it would have been very seldom indeed for a captain to have chosen to kick off as they in essence would have no choices in the matter after that. The captain that chose the goal to defend also received the kick!

Looking down the further into Rule VII of 1921 in the NCAA it states that after a goal was scored upon a team, they had the choice of receiving a kick or kicking off to their opponents. This was an already established rule and not a revision in 1921 but none the less I do not see where the team would willingly choose to give their opponent’s the ball again after they just scored points that team.

Putting the ball in play in certain situations

Rule XIV, section 9 of the 1921 NCAA rules had a revision which again seems almost foreign to a person with knowledge of twenty-first century football. This part of the rules dealt with a ball going out of bounds, other than at a kick-off, and how to put it back in play again. The rule states that a player of the team which is entitled to the ball (not an official) would walk the ball in from the sideline at the point where the ball crossed the sideline the play prior at a right angle to the sideline in the presence of the Referee to a distance of that player’s choice as long as it was more than five yards but less than fifteen yards from the sideline. Clearly the concept of hash marks were not used at this time as in today’s game. It is also very odd that a player would bring the ball in and spot it rather than an official.

The NCAA also revised Rule XIV’s Section 13 where as it mandated that after a touchback the ball would be placed on the twenty yard-line and the team that made the safety would be awarded a first down. This rule revision still stands as written almost ninety years later!

Section 14 of the same Rule XIV had a revised recipe for putting the ball in play after a safety. The team that made the safety would be awarded with a new series from their own thirty yard-line. This revision of 1921 as we well know had to be changed one or more time in the last eight decades to be what it is today, but the fathers of football were trying. They were planting seeds of wisdom and change that would be reaped by later generations of Rules Committees to make football the great game it is today.

We pointed out last time that there was a six-way tie in the record books for who the 1921 Collegiate champion of football was. Officially the NCAA Division I Football Records Book lists the California Golden Bears, Cornell Big Red, Iowa Hawkeyes, Lafayette Leopards, Washington & Jefferson Presidents, and Vanderbilt Commodores all sharing the 1921 title. One of these teams the W&J squad has an interesting story to remember.

The President's Head Coach Earle "Greasy" Neale is a figure that we see come up in football history time and time again. He most famously coached the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1940s and even served as a co-coach with Walt Keisling during the war merged season Steagles team. Greasy Neale made his mark in coaching with the 1921 collegiate W&J team though as they went 10–0 in the regular season, defeating Pitt, the University of Detroit, and Syracuse. The victory over Pittsburgh was celebrated with public speeches, a bonfire, and even classes being canceled at the school! This perfect record and the impressive wins against quality opponents gave Neale and the Presidents to honor of being considered the top team in the East for the year. With that distinction came the invite to play in the Rose Bowl game.  The excitement in the air was electric and intoxicating. School President Robert M. Murphy ended up putting a mortgage against his own home to pay for tickets and transportation to get himself and six family members out to Pasadena to watch the game against the University of California Golden Bears. Heck the school itself could only afford to send eleven players in the trip budget.

The Presidents were good but did not have a very deep roster. The roster situation did get a bit hairy for Washington and Jefferson. During the train ride to Pasadena, in which Greasy Neale continued to prepare his men, Lee Spillers caught pneumonia and could not finish the journey. Not wishing to miss the game, Ross "Bucky" Buchannan, a reserve player not sanctioned by the school as one of the paid tickets to California, had stowed away on the train and was fed smuggled sandwiches during the trip. As luck would have it he was available to fill Spillers' roster spot. As a matter of fact, they were the last team in Rose Bowl history to play only eleven men for the entire game!

The game ended in a scoreless tie, but it is one that the underdog small school Presidents should have and could have won. The first opportunity that slipped through their hands was one of the most controversial plays in Rose Bowl history. An apparent touchdown run for W&J was overturned by an official for an offside penalty called on a Wayne Brenkert dash for the endzone. A second and possibly even more golden chance to score was when W&J's Hal Erickson slipped and fell on his way to a sure touchdown. 

Washington and Jefferson only had an enrollment of 450 students. This earned W&J as the smallest school ever to play in the Rose Bowl. Besides this, the Presidents also made their mark on a couple of other firsts for the "Grand Daddy of Them All" game. W&J's Charles West was the first African-American quarterback to play in the Rose Bowl, while Herb Kopf was the game’s first freshman.
With all of that, perhaps the most interesting portion of the 1922 Rose Bowl Game were the stats. The Presidents rushed for 114 yards to the Golden Bears’ 49, and W&J held Cal to zero yards passing and only two first downs!

We told you that 1921 was a season filled with change, personalities, and entertaing football. The 1921 Rules Book was still very much under the influence of Walter Camp and in the next edition of Football History Rewind, we will examine a portion of the 1921 Rules Book that Mr. Camp really shed some foresight on.

The picture in the banner above is from the Wikimedia Commons of EXTERIOR GRANDSTAND AND SCOREBOARD DETAIL VIEW, FACING NORTH. - Rose Bowl Stadium, 1001 Rose Bowl Drive, Pasadena, Los Angeles County, CA