Football History Rewind Part 50

The season of 1922 is our subject of this Football History Rewind segment which is on the rule revision that changed how a point after attempt was done and where it started from. This and the beginning of the Rose Bowl are on the docket for this edition.

This series is intended to pick up where its Football History Rewind Part 49 on the 1921 season left off. This would of course be the 1922 season of football and all of its rules changes and revisions that helped evolve the game into what it would eventually become today. So in the recognition of what our forefathers of football have done, let us whisk you back to the 1922 season of collegiate football!

The punt-out is canned

Okay I know you have looked at the sub-heading and saw the word “punt-out” and said to yourself “well here is a typo that Hayes did not catch.” Well do not believe it for there was a term in football all so many years ago called the “punt-out.”

Short and sweet a punt-out was what teams did after scoring a touch down to establish a place for the scoring team to try and succeed on a point after play. Prior to 1922 a member of the scoring team would stand on the goal line and punt the ball back out into the field of play to his team mates who would attempt to fair catch the kick. The spot at which they caught the ball would be marked by the officials and the try for the point(s) after would commence from that spot. It sounds kind of ridiculous by today’s standards but it was the rule back in that day.

Someone came up with a dandy idea at the rules meeting before the 1922 season and talked everyone into adopting a new rule which would place the ball automatically in front of the goal posts for the point after attempt. It is unknown after our investigation for sure if this point happened to be the two-yard line as it is today but it could have very well have been. We must remember though that the goal posts were stationed on the goal line in those days so a kicking play starting from the two-yard line back then was a real challenge as the ball would be kicked from a point of about ten-yards away from the goal post making a much steeper trajectory than today’s extra-point which ranges in the 20 yard distances. That is of course considering that our assumption of the two yard-line is correct. The scoring team did have the choice of running or passing the ball across the goal line or kicking the ball through the uprights both in the punt-out and post punt-out eras.

A new venue opens          

A very famous stadium opened and held its first football game at the end of the 1922 season. The Rose Bowl held it’s first football contest on January 1, 1923 as Penn State (no Joe Paterno was not at this game contrary to most beliefs) visited Southern Cal. The grand opening game of the “Grand Daddy of them All” also featured a parade which provided a very interesting twist to the game itself.

The very first parade in honor of a game at the Rose Bowl was conducted shortly before kick off. The Penn State squad was late for the game due to their staying at the parade route too long. Southern Cal Head Coach, Elmer Henderson was so angry about the lateness of Penn State and their Coach Hugo Bezdek that the Trojan coach almost went fist-to-cuffs over the situation. Luckily calmer heads prevailed and Henderson satisfied his anger by coaching his team to a 14-3 win over the Nittany Lions.    

Just because this was the first game held at the brand new Rose Bowl does not make it the very first Tournament of Roses football contest and parade. No the first was in 1902 at a field called Tournament Park when the Tournament of Roses Association asked Stanford University to take on a strong Michigan squad. Michigan came and defeated the Cardinal squad so soundly that Association decided to host a polo game in 1903. That idea failed and the next twelve years the group hosted Roman chariot races rather than a football game. The 1915 paid attendance of 25,000 at the races prompted the Tournament leaders to look for a larger booking.

They reverted back to football in 1916 at Tournament Park. The next few years were so successful with football that Tournament directors felt they needed a much larger venue to hold the throng of onlookers for the attraction. In 1920 Director William Leishman enlisted the assistance of Architect, Myron Hunt and builder, William Taylor to construct the west coast version of the Yale Bowl. The brand new stadium featured seats for 57,000 fans in a horseshoe design that was open on the south end. The cost of the project was $272,198.26 and was financed by the Association selling ten-year subscriptions for tickets at a cost of $100 each. Subsequent additions in seating were done in 1928 as the south end was filled in (76,000 seats) and also in 1932 (83,677 seats), 1949 (100,807 seats) and 1972 (104,696 seats).

Newspaper reporter and Tournament press agent, Harlan “Dusty” Hall dubbed the venue as the “Rose Bowl” and the name stuck.

The full story of the Rose Bowl has a very interesting history and we are thankful that the Tournament of Roses Association gave us permission to use the data and photos from the Tournament of Roses Archives for this article. Please visit their website at TournamentofRoses.com to see even more great history on the bowl game the field and the Tournament of Roses Association itself.

The banner photo is of The Punter by Joe Brown (sculptor) installed in 1974 in Veterans Stadium, "moved" to Citizens Bank Park. Bronze sculpture; concrete base. No visible copyright notice, so the work is out of copyright.

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from the following brilliant internet sites: On This Day Sports, the Sports Reference's family of website databases & Stathead.com