The Fumble Fiasco Out-of-Bounds Oddities in Early Football

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In the hazy days of early American football, before forward passes soared and helmets resembled leather buckets, a curious rule reigned supreme: the fumble out of bounds. Unlike today's automatic touchback, a loose ball crossing the sidelines triggered a bizarre dance of possession.

Fumbles were not over until they were possessed by a player, even if they went out of bounds. This led to some crazy plays that Timothy P Brown of Football Archaeology discusses.

If the offense fumbled near their own end zone, the opposing team gained the ball at the point of recovery, no matter how deep it sailed out. Imagine the frantic scramble, desperation dives into sideline bleachers, and potential chaos as defensive players chased a wayward pigskin like oversized puppies after a chew toy.

However, if the fumble happened near the opponent's end zone, the offensive team retained possession even if it bounced through the stands and landed on a passing pigeon. This paradoxical scenario rewarded sloppiness near enemy territory, potentially turning fumbles into first downs through sheer serendipity.

This strange rule, abolished in the 1930s, reflected the nascent nature of the sport, where improvisation and quirky quirks abounded. While it introduced an element of slapstick into the game, it also highlighted the ever-evolving nature of football's laws, constantly adapting to the growing complexity and athleticism on the field. So, the next time you see a fumble careen towards the sideline, remember: it could have been a winning lottery ticket in the gridiron gamble of a bygone era.

-Transcription of Timothy Brown on Live-Fumbles-Out Bounds

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And we have another great evening with Timothy P. Brown of Football Archeology, discussing one of his great tidbits that he shares with us each and every evening on Twitter and on email.

Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, thank you, Mr. Hayes. Looking forward to chatting once again about oblate spheroid stuff.

Wow, we're getting into the geometry of the game a little bit. That's right. I got an A in high school geometry.

Did you really? Well, I believe you did because this topic that you have tonight involves a little bit of the geometry of the ball, I'm sure. You never know which way that ball is going to bounce. And you have a very interesting subject of football from yesteryear that we probably wouldn't recognize today.

If we saw this happen and officials let it go, we would be screaming and ripping our hair out from the stands and throwing things at our TV set. So why don't you share with us the topic tonight and the story behind it? Yeah. So the issue here is that when football began, they basically adopted a rule from rugby that when the ball went into touch, what we now call out of bounds, the ball remained live.

So for us now, we think, oh, the ball is out of bounds, so it's dead. Well, no, that wasn't the case. And so, if you think about it, it's comparable to the original rules for scoring a touchdown.

When you got into the end zone, the guy with the ball had to touch the ball down to the ground, which is why we call it a touchdown. And so until he did that, the ball remained live. And so they had much the same rule in place for the ball crossing the boundary line and on the sidelines, not just the end lines or the goal lines, that in order for the ball to become dead, somebody on one of the two teams had to be out of bounds and touch the ball to the ground.

So that's when the ball went dead. So it's just one of those things that we can't fathom. But when you think about it, the consequences of that rule mean that if the ball tumbles out of bounds, there could be obstacles.

Depending on the field, there could be trees. There could be players on your side or on the opposing side. There could be water buckets.

There could be carts and cars and horses and buggies and running tracks. A lot of the fans, you see some of those games where the fans are right on the sidelines. This could really cause some calamity there.

Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of fields. Virtually every field early on, where the sidelines, and I've got a bunch of pictures of these, the sidelines are just ropes.

There's a rope. And even the rule book talks about people behind the ropes. They're talking about fans behind the ropes.

Because they were just roped off, anyway, there's even a great story. In 1892, the University of Chicago took a train across the country, went out to play Stanford a couple of times, and they got a couple of other games in there.

But they were playing Stanford in San Francisco, and the ball went out of bounds and bounced over a fence. And one of the Stanford players would start to go for it. And Chicago had a guy who was a hurdler on the track team, and he hurdled the fence.

And ended up getting the ball before the Stanford guy could. But if you just think about it, in the tidbit itself, I've got some images like you described of the fans and the perimeter. I've got a picture of the University of Maine.

They had a 25-piece band sitting right along the sideline. So the ball could have gone running in there, and the sousaphone or tuba player or piccolo player or whatever could have gotten in the way. Yeah, your image of the Iowa State game with the fans on it.

I think there are fans like five deep all the way around the field, it looks like. I'm surprised that if you were standing on the outside, you wouldn't be able to see any of the players. That's for sure.

Yeah, and if you went and got concessions, there weren't TV screens up there showing you what was going on either. Anyways, all that continued until 1926. And that's when they finally changed the rule.

And at that point, they made it so that the last person to touch it, their team, got possession of it once it was out of bounds. And then later on, it was the last team to possess the ball while in bounds. So initially it was touch, then it became possession before it went out of bounds.

So anyways, it's one of those old-time rules that you just can't believe was in place. But it made sense based on the game's origins. But I just can't imagine some of the things that must have happened.

You know, the guys fighting and everything to get to the ball amid crowds and fans and teammates and whatever. Yeah, it had to be. Now, I just want some clarification on what you said early on.

The rugby term for being in touch, you're saying that's when the man's on the ground touching the ball. That's when the ball's in touch, or when it goes out of bounds, it's in touch. So, out of bounds, I was in touch.

So, the sidelines were called the touchlines. Okay. So, you know, that was just for whatever reason.

I mean, it gets a little bit confusing, too. Just, you know, but so I'm not sure exactly why they called it in touch, but they did. And then, but that was for the sidelines.

That's the out-of-bounds side. And then, you know, once you cross the goal line, you still, you know, old-time films and even in rugby today, you sometimes you see the guy, he'll kneel down and plant the ball to the ground. That's what was the case in football, too.

You had to, you had to for the touchdown. I was just trying, I was looking more from the sideline, what we call the sideline point of view, seeing in touch it, seeing if there was a correlation to try to understand it better.

So, okay. Hey, that's great stuff, as always. You know, that's definitely a fascinating thing.

And it's a way of really looking foreign to us today. As we said, in the beginning, for a ball to go out of bounds, people, you know, 22 guys were chasing it through the trees, the crowds, the bleachers, and everything else. Yeah.

We remember, you know when this stuff was first happening, and when it was really early on, the rest didn't have whistles yet. So, you know, it was all just, you know, they were fighting in there, and somehow, they figured out who had the ball. Yeah.

Officiating nightmare. Thank God I didn't officiate back then. So that's rude.

Well, Tim, that is some great stuff, as always. And your tidbits are coming out each and every day. Tell us how to share those.

And why don't you tell us also about your book, you know, that's still on sale? You know, the hot, hot hike a little bit about that, where people can get that too. Yeah.

So, you know, you can. The easiest thing is to subscribe, you know, go to footballarchaeology.com, and you know, there is a free process to subscribe. And that'll get you an email every night with the story. And again, you don't have to read it that night.

You can read it two weeks later, or you can read whatever you want. But at least you have access to it. And if you want to read it, you've got it.

Otherwise, follow me on Twitter. And then, you know, the book is available. All three of my books are available on Amazon.

So hot, hot hike, you know, either search for that or search Timothy P. Brown. There are a couple of Timothy P. Browns, but I'm the only one who writes books on football. So you should be able to find me.

And, you know, in particular, if you're somebody, you know, if you've got a Kindle Unlimited plan, you know, you can read it for free. So, you know, it's just like streaming anything else. You know, nowadays you just, it's available.

So, of course, I'm more than happy to sell you a paper copy, which is. Yeah, that's great to have too. It's a great reference, especially, you know, hike and when football became football are great reference points.

I use it all the time to look up things, and people have questions, or I have questions. It's an excellent source. So, it was very well done tonight.

We thank you for your time and for sharing your knowledge, Tim. And we'll talk to you again next Tuesday. Hey, look forward to it.

See you in a week.

-Frequently Asked Questions About an American Football Field:

-How long is a football field? A football field from goal line to goal line is 100 yards long with two ten-yard deep end zones. Want to know more about the evolution of the playing field, you are in the right place as we covered it here:Field Size Evolution.

-How wide is a football field? Most levels of American football play on a field that is 53.3 yards wide.