Football History

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When did American Football actually first start being played? Timothy P. Brown answers the question of when football began, dispelling many of the mainstream experts' erroneous preconceptions.

While there's no single definitive date for the birth of American football, several key events and influences mark its evolution from a blend of other sports to the game we know today:

-1869: The first intercollegiate game played between Rutgers and Princeton using rules heavily influenced by soccer. This is often cited as the "official" birth of American football. It was more like soccer than anything else, though.

-1876: The Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA) is formed, standardizing rules and fostering the development of a more unified game.

-1880s: Walter Camp, known as the "Father of American Football," introduces key rule changes like the line of scrimmage, the snap, and the forward pass, shaping the game into its modern form.

-1892: The first professional game is played between the Allegheny Athletic Association and the Pittsburgh Athletic Club.

-1906: The forward pass is legalized, revolutionizing the game and opening up possibilities for aerial attacks.

-Transcribed Conversation of When Football Started with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes, PigskinDispatch.com. And once again, it's Tuesday. We're going to have another great chat with football archaeology's Timothy P. Brown.

Tim, welcome back. And glad you're here tonight.

Thank you, Darin. I'm glad to be here myself. It's always a good thing, isn't it? Yeah, you know, I'm starting to get to the age where it becomes dope. But I know that I am. Here I am.

I know the feeling. Well, we're certainly glad you're here tonight.

And we're even more happy that you're here to talk a little bit about football history from one of your recent tidbits. And you've got one that really caught my eye, and I think it would be very interesting to all listeners interested in football history. And that's when did the football history really begin? When did the start of football happen? Yeah.

So, you know, I wrote that piece. It was actually the anniversary, the first anniversary of today's tidbits. So that's why I chose that topic to say, OK, what better thing to talk about than where did football begin? And so, you know, the received wisdom would be that football began with the games between Rutgers and Princeton in 1869.

So and then, but you kind of have to go like, well, why do we consider that to be the first football game? What was it about those two games that made it the start of football? And for me, when I look at it, I go, well, though that wasn't the start of football, I don't, you know, I mean, yes. You know, I wrote a book about the hundred first hundred first 50 years of football, and I based it off the ninth or 1869 date. So, you know, I'm part of the problem, but I'm trying to make amends.

So they've got everybody drinking that Kool-Aid. That's right. That's right.

You know, so but, you know, it really kind of comes back to, you know, what was going on back then and, you know, regardless of what was happening. How would you judge? You know, what is the basis of when a new game begins? It's kind of like the difficulty biologists get into in terms of evolution. When does a new species begin? You know, what came first, the chicken or the chicken or the egg? But in this case, I mean, for me, you know, I look at at that the 1869 games.

And it was a, you know, negotiated rule, but it mostly resembled association football or what we call soccer. You know, you couldn't carry the ball. It was a round ball.

There were 25 players per side, and, you know, there were other things going on. So, like, was that really football? I mean, it was an intercollegiate game between two schools, but those had happened before, too. So, you know, in my mind, the main reason it's considered the start of football is that Park H. Davis went to Princeton, whatever, you know, 25 years later than that.

And he is the first football historian. And he decided that that was the first that was the start of football. And so, therefore, you know, given the influence that he has had on football history, that's what it is, you know, and then nobody ever doubts that.

I mean, a lot of other people have, but. And I just look at it and say, OK, so that's not good enough. You know, what would mark the start of the game of football? And for me, I think of it as when did when did football break away from.

Soccer or rugby, it's kind of two, you know, origin, you know, origin games, but it wasn't a wasn't a soccer game. So I'm then saying, OK, get rid of soccer. When did football move away from rugby? And for me, it's it's the 1876 meeting where the IFA set up a new set of rules.

So. The IFA, the Intercollegiate Football Association, was founded three years earlier, but they adopted soccer, you know, I mean, they didn't adopt this specific set of rules; they just said, hey, we're going to follow the association game rules from London. So they were just playing soccer.

Then, the next year, Harvard plays McGill. First in a Boston rules game, then in a rugby game, and they end up saying, hey, we like this rugby game. So they start playing it, and then they play Yale the next year in what they call the concessionary rules game, which is a mix of, you know, an adapted rugby game.

And then in 76, they adopt what are now the basis of they adopted the IFA rules, which is the basis of football. And then. You know, from there, you can trace.

You know, those rules got adopted and then adapted year after year after year, and there's a continuous line of football rules that come from that original 1876 set that are now the rules we play under today, you know, and in the 1890s and early 1900s, there were multiple rules committees, and there were some conflicts because one group didn't like the other. But at the end of the day, you know, all of the all those committees all use, you know, the preceding rules that had come from 1876. So, for me, I look at it as, hey, they created a new set of rules, and they only made a couple of changes from the rugby rules of the day, but they took a different path.

Rugby then went on and made all kinds of changes to their game. You know, so the rugby game of 1876 is not the game that's played today. They made a lot of changes, too.

But, you know, our football took a different path. And, you know, it's kind of like, you know, maybe anybody who's, you know, Catholic or Lutheran or maybe, you know, Episcopalian, something like that, where there's this whole succession of bishops, you know, from Peter all on down finds that logic attractive, you know, or understands that logic. But it's, yeah, there's a succession from here, you know, from a starting point to now.

And that's kind of the way I see the IFA rules. It was a starting point for football. Let me entertain you.

Oh, wait, you're not going to argue with me, are you? No, I'm not going to argue. I'm just going to propose something to you. All right.

I totally agree with you. The 1869 Princeton Rutgers game. And I agree with your whole theory on Park H. Davis having the influence on it.

Of course, Park H. Davis, in that 1911 book, also had biblical references to football, Roman, and Greek. And he had a bunch of ancient societies football. So the people really hung on to the Princeton Rutgers game.

But I agree with you. Let's take that out of the equation. I don't know.

I mean, I think the IFA rules were important to the development of football. But I think the 1880 rules meeting when Walter Camp proposed the line of scrimmage in the center and the quarterback followed through, players were 11 aside. That was sort of when that got sort of hammered in stone.

And I almost wonder, could we not consider that the birth of American football? 1880. Well, yeah. So, I mean, by your logic, I could argue that 1906 is the birth because that's when the forward pass came in.

So, I mean, you're totally right that 1880 was a big deal. 1884 was a big deal. The whole 1906 to 1912 period was a big deal.

But I would just always go back to the fact that 1876, the rules that they modified and made some like line of scrimmage and things like that in possession in the 1880 or early 80s, those still, they were modifying the rules that they set in 1876. So, it was. I've posted this on an earlier tidbit, but if you go to the Canadian Football Research Association site, they have an 1873 set of rules that they adopted, which are almost word for word, the ones that were the rugby rules at the time and that the Americans then adapted. So, but for me, it's just, they formally said, these are the rules we are going to play under.

The game has been played under those rules since then, subject to annual changes. But that's the point when they said, here's, we're going to play this new game. In fact, in the first half or most of the season of 1876, they played under the kind of a mixture of rules, but the games played after that meeting followed the 1876 rules.

And so, you're saying that because of the standardized rules that were adopted widespread, that's OK. I'm basing it more on 1880 is when American football shot off of rugby and became basically a different game. That's scrimmage from scrummage thing.

That's why I said, but I will, you know, defend what you say to the hilt because that's your right. The standard rules came out, and that's the derivative of what American football came out of. So, yeah.

And I mean, there's lots of things like, you know, the scrimmage thing that was going on before 1876. And I mean, it was just a terminology difference. They were using scrimmage and scrimmage in the UK and here.

So, you know, now the difference is obviously in 1880, you know, you had what we now really consider a scrimmage. So, controlled possession of the ball for multiple downs, right? So, you know, so you retain possession. It wasn't the toss the ball, you know, in the middle kind of thing.

But, you know, I guess I view that as just one rule to change the game, but there have been hundreds and thousands of rule changes. And while I consider that one of the top 11 changes, it's just one of the top 11. Yeah.

But I guess at the end of the day, if you look at those three games that were association football, rugby, American football, they're, you know, probably the three of the most successful athletic ventures of organized sports in the world that has popularity right now. You know, they're definitely in the probably top five. I reached back and grabbed a book that I still hadn't finished, but it was by a guy named Tony Collins.

He's a professor in the UK. The book is called How Football Began. And he basically, you know, goes back to the stew of games that was going on in the UK.

And, you know, I think sometimes we have this impression, or at least I always, you know, used to have the impression that, well, they just had, you know, they just had a couple of different versions. But in fact, you know, in the UK, they had a bunch of different versions of football, and then they kind of started consolidating, and you got into an amateur and professional differences, which is, you know, we're like rugby union and, you know, rugby, you know, anyways. Anyway, it's a really interesting book, and it gets into Australian rules and other things.

So it's just, you know, he kind of goes from where everything was muddled together to how it started breaking off. So it's really a fun read. If somebody's interested in period football, I would say definitely grab that one.

But it's really interesting. Well, Tim, a great subject, great discussion. Really appreciate you being able to talk about that.

Why don't you share with the audience where they can get information like your tidbits that this came out of on a daily basis? Yeah, it's very simple. I've got a site on the Substack platform, but it's just footballarchaeology.com. So you just go on and check out an article and there's a sign up process that you go through. And so you subscribe for free and then you'll get an email every day.

In your inbox is whatever that day's article is. Other people subscribe on Twitter. But if you're interested enough, I'd say just subscribe to the site.

And I have some people that read 10 articles in a row and they just store them up when they're flying or whatever it is. But other people read stuff every day. So either way, do what you want.

All right. Excellent. It's a great investment of time, whether you do it daily or build up 10 of them.

It's a great read and something different every day. And I highly recommend it. Tim Brown of footballarchaeology.com. Thank you very much for joining us.

And we'll talk to you again next week. Thank you, sir. Enjoyed it as always.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.