Footballs Fantastic Four

In this edition of the Football Game Changers I want to review whay I celebrate the Gridiron Mount Rushmore of innovation in four men from history.

I am blessed to be exposed to a lot of football history every day. The people I get to chat with, books I read and most of my internet searches are on the topic. With this said I get a lot of great looks on who is important to the games evolution from soccer and rugby. Just look back to that famous 1869 game of Princeton and Rutgers, and the rules they used were not anywhere near what we call football today.

I have said it a few times in some of the most recent podcasts, but I am convinced that most of the basic fundamentals of what we know as football was devloped by four men. I want to dedicate this edition of Game Changers to Walter Camp, Amaos Alonzo Stagg, Pop Warner and Paul Brown. The group that I will label as Football's Fantastic Four!

Here is some of what each brought to the table of gridiron innovation. See if you agree with me and let me know at pigskindispatch@gmail.com.

Walter Camp really started the evolution of the game. After all he is called the Father of American Football, and with good reason. We learned a lot about Camp's contributions when we interviewed author Roger Tamte in 2021.

• The line of scrimmage
• Setting a limit of 11 players per side
• A system of downs & yards to go
• Player positions especially the backs including the quarterback
• Signal calling by the QB
• Special drills and exercises for players by position
• Painted yard lines
• Many Officiating techniques and positions and the first man to publish a football book
• He took responsibility for many administrative aspects of the game from 1876 through his death in 1925
• The All-America team with Caspar Whitney
• He contributed to development of the NCAA
• He responded publicly to college officers criticizing the game
• Increased role of athletics in colleges 
• Wrote books teaching football.
• Wrote informational newspaper articles preceding and after games.
• He developed an annual guide (in about 1883 and continued to be involved in it as editor and writer the rest of his life) containing the game’s official rules, commenting on rule changes, and reporting and commenting on various issues and events involving American football.

We learned much about the great coach of the University of Chicago the better part of five decades, Amos Alonzo Stagg. Stagg was there almost at the beginning of football himself, as he played to Walter Camp at Yale in the 1880s. He was also at the inception of another sport, basketball when his friend and former mentor John Naismith devloped the game. It is the innovation hat that we salute Mr. Stagg for in this article as his contributions are many too as we learned when talking to author Jennifer Taylor Hall about her book Amos Alonzo Stagg: Football's Man in Motion last year.

• Ends-back formation
• Reverse play
• First indoor game
• An early book on football with diagrams in 1893; with Minnesota's Henry Williams
• First intersectional game
• Contributions to the idea of snapping from a center 
• Possible contributor to the idea of an onside kick 
• Huddle 
• Quick kick
• Short punt
• Spiral snap contributor alongside Walter Camp, George Washington Woodruff and Germany Schulz
• Line shift 
• Lateral pass or pitch
• Tackling dummy contributor
• Unbalanced line
• Varsity letters 
• Statue of Liberty play 
• Uniform numbers 
• T formation contributor
• forward pass contributor alongside Eddie Cochems and Walter Camp
• Pre-snap man in motion
• Quarterback keeper
• The linebacker position
• Hip pads
• Numerical designation of plays
• Padded goalposts

Pop Warner is a name that is closely associated with youth football. The name is in honor to the man who not only founded the organization but who forever made his mark on the game we love. Let's take a look at the accomplishments of Glenn Scobee Warner.

To his credit Coach Glenn Warner is repsonsible for such items in football as:

• The three-point stance
• The screen pass 
• Spiral punt,
• Naked bootleg play 
• Double reverse,
• The single-wing formation (what we call it the Wildcat formation today) 
• The double-wing formation 
• Some of the credit for modern day the numbering of players’ jerseys 
• The requirement of wearing shoulder pads by players
• The requirement of wearing thigh pads
• Lightweight uniforms
• Safer helmets
• The use of blocking sleds 
• Practicing withtackling dummies 

Perhaps Pop Warner's biggest contribution to the game was the developement of youth players and their perparation in the fundamentals of the game to be ready to take higher levels of the gridiron to new places with the creation of the Pop Warner Leagues for kids in 1929. Warner himself said this was his biggest achievement in football.

Paul Brown is man that we have spoke about in numerous posts and podcasts including recent conversations with author Jonathan Knight and historian George Bozeka George Bozeka.

• Hiring a full time, around the year coaching staff
• Hiring scouts to go over college talent
• Idea of film study of his players
• He had his players study in class room settings
• Sending plays into the huddle by shuttling guards in and out
• The first to try a radio transmitter in a quarterback's helmet