June 21 Quote

Walter Camp

April 7, 1859 - New Britain, Connecticut - Walter Camp the great player and coach from Yale was born. Camp is known as the father of American football because of his suggested innovations of the line of scrimmage, a series of downs and the creation of the player positions of snapper and quarterback to handle the transitions of scrimmage. These revisions set American football on a course to be a sport all its own and peel away from the already established games of soccer and rugby. Camp also was an innovative coach who spearheaded some of the most dominant college football teams of all time. Walter Camp was the Yale Bulldogs coach from 1888-1892, and the Stanford Cardinal coach, 1892, 1894-1895. According to Jay Abramson of the History of College Football Podcast in the 1888 season the average margin of victory was by a score of 54-0 therefore Yale went 13-0. In fact the Bulldogs shut out every opponent and scored over 60 points 6 times. They even knocked around an outmatched Wesleyan team 105-0 with their closest game was a 10-0 shutout over Princeton. That 1888 team amazingly outscored their opponents 698-0! It wasn’t a fluke either as Camp and the Bulldogs repeated the feat in 1888-1892 they had a 68-2 record, posting 3 un-scored upon, undefeated teams in his 5 years. When not coaching Camp officiated games and even started the Walter Camp All-American awards at the end of the season. Walter continued to go to the rules meeting all the way until 1925 when he died at a rules convention.