Football History: How 1912 Marked the Arrival of Modern Football Through Final Major Rules Changes

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7 ай бұрын

This KZfaq description summarizes the evolution of American football from its early days to the major rule changes of 1912. Initially resembling a brawl, football transformed significantly in 1910 with rule changes to reduce injuries and deaths, emphasizing the forward pass. Despite confusion among fans, officials, and coaches in 1911, the game gradually moved away from mass play tactics.
Major changes in 1912 included allowing forward passes to score touchdowns, expanding the permissible pass range, and introducing end zones and a standardized football size. These changes, advocated by figures like Walter Camp, aimed to increase scoring and strengthen the offense. The touchdown's value increased, and the extra point became crucial in encouraging touchdown attempts over field goals.
The onside kick rule was revised, and the kickoff position changed. These changes marked the last major alterations in American football, shaping it into the form we recognize today.
Jon Johnston of Hardcore College Football History presents this historical journey, inviting viewers to subscribe and share for more insightful content on the sport's evolution.
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Пікірлер: 43

@nickhill934 6 ай бұрын

As an Iowa fan, I can confirm that I heartily endorse bringing back the original “onside kick” concept. Iowa would become the new Bama overnight, I see no downside!

@CollegeFootballHistory 7 ай бұрын

This video concludes a series that started with 1869 and finishes with the major changes in 1912 that establish modern football as we know it today. If you like this video, I encourage you to watch the the others. And please give me some feedback!

@extragoogleaccount6061 23 күн бұрын

I just wanted to say that this series is amazing and you will have explosive growth here soon! Also, I found the first ones on the Corn Nation channel, but the link in your comments to get to this was broken. I think it was the 1906 vid. Luckily I found the correct link in your profile.

@jpok626 6 ай бұрын

In addition to the 110 yards length, it seems that the "onside kick" has somewhat survived (albeit with major adjustments) in the CFL. Great work with these videos. They're very informative about the history of American football.

@lordmikethegreat 5 ай бұрын

CFL football made some significant additions from the 1906 rules, and then they went on their separate way (except for the forward pass, which they adopted later). They stuck with the 3 downs, the 110 yards, etc., reduced players per team (although to 12). The fork after that was never rectified, although many schools in Canada play by US rules.

@goodmaro 5 ай бұрын

Not only the CFL, but also Canadian amateur football. But the rule that existed 1906-1912, and in 2000 in the XFL, putting players of the kicking side onside by the ball's touching the ground, was sui generis to American rules.

@jag985 5 ай бұрын

OMG! What a series! Binged every episode. to the last one. Thanks.

@Guevon_Pajaro 7 ай бұрын

First time coming over from your other videos/live, you finally bugged me enough lol. I love history. Love this work you're doing here. I believe it's important work for big CFB fans and documentation perhaps. Keep it up!

@CollegeFootballHistory 6 ай бұрын

Thank you!!!!

@salt1956 7 күн бұрын

Most sports fans don't know the history of their favorite game. I'm a rugby league fan living in Australia. Americans don't know you can't pass the ball forward in the either rugby union or rugby league. They can't imagine a game without forward passing. In fact, Americans don't know that forward passing didn't happen in gridiron until, I think, 1912. Rugby league further broke from rugby union in 1967 when the 'limited tackles rule' was introduced. This concept was borrowed from American Football's four downs, except that after four 'downs' or 'tackles' the offensive team hands the ball over to the other team, rather than earning more downs if you make 10 yards in four downs (because 10 yards is not far). It's now six tackles instead of four.

@CollegeFootballHistory 6 күн бұрын

I've had a lot of comments from Rugby fans. Honestly, I didn't know it was that complex - that there were many different rules, forms, different clubs. Wow.

@touchstoneaf 5 ай бұрын

Thank you so much for this series, this was incredible!

@matthewk1017 6 ай бұрын

Love your videos! Thankyou GBR!

@CollegeFootballHistory 6 ай бұрын

Glad you like them!

@RyanBrown-hr7ct Ай бұрын

Great info!

@lincolnsteeler 4 ай бұрын

Great series - thanks for putting it together. really well done

@gregdavis19 6 ай бұрын

Thanks, these videos are a lot of fun! Go Huskers!

@wadegregerson8743 6 ай бұрын

Thanks for doing these videos. GBR!!!

@damianholmes3049 6 ай бұрын

Loving the content!!

@CollegeFootballHistory 6 ай бұрын

Thank you!

@gwickle1685 5 ай бұрын

Thank you. I had heard an hour long NPR show on the history of early football. Specifically on Pop Warner's time with the American Indian school. I wanted to know more but after a rigorous 30 minute internet search, I gave up. You have not only given me so much information on the subject but you presented it very well. Are/were you a teacher professionally? One may only wish for such a teacher.

@CollegeFootballHistory 5 ай бұрын

I am an IT Consultant, but I have done a fair amount of public speaking in the past. Also mentoring of younger IT people. And MANY years ago I taught at a community college at night for a couple years. But, thank you. I appreciate knowing I'm doing a decent job presenting. It's important!

@CollegeFootballHistory 5 ай бұрын

Oh, I do plan on doing a Carlisle series, but it will take a while to get that together because it's a subject that deserves it's own special treatment.

@mikebronicki8264 5 ай бұрын

Rule: cross the goal line for a touchdown. New rule: you can throw a forward pass, but not over the goal line. New new rule: now you can throw a pass over the goal line for a touchdown, but only within 10 yards. OMG! There was no need for an endzone until this new new rule. MIND BLOWN.

@goodmaro 5 ай бұрын

Well, actually, there sort-of was. In the case of a ball kicked or carried back behind the goal line, play was allowed to continue up to what was sometimes stated as "the natural limit of the ground". That is, the sidelines continued beyond the goal lines, though they were sometimes chalked only a short distance, and although there was no end line specified by the standard rules, ground rules applied. That is, some distance behind the goal line there might be a ditch, a fence, a pavement, or some other hazard that made "dead ball" obvious. For some time even after end zones were added, if you look at pictures of fields, you'll see the sidelines continued some token distance beyond the end line -- because although it was not possible to complete a pass beyond the end line, there were other types of loose or held ball that could still be in play there, with ground rules as to their limit still applicable. Eventually the end lines were made field boundaries for all purposes, so that today, for instance, a punter is limited as to the space he has in which to receive the snap.

@nickdarr7328 Ай бұрын

If you can bounce a ball off the field through the goal post on a kick it should absolutely count as a field goal

@lordmikethegreat 5 ай бұрын

The onside kick rule is in place in canadian football, and there has been controversy last year when a team was abusing it.

@goodmaro 5 ай бұрын

The "abuse" to which you refer -- tap-kicking the ball just across the line of scrimmage and recovering it for a cheap first down -- had been done decades earlier as well. Anybody who looked at the rules could see that potential. About 40 years ago I wrote to the rules editor of what was then the Canadian Amateur Football Association (now Football Canada) to point out that a team could do that, and that they'd better close that loophole soon, he wrote back that it was too late and gave me an example of its having been done a couple seasons earlier. The rule used to be in both American and Canadian football -- same wording, until American football abolished the onside kick in 1923 -- that the continuity of downs was broken when a team by kicking the ball had given fair and equal chance for the other team to gain possession. Canadian football later changed that requirement to merely kicking the ball across the line of scrimmage, and I'd thought it to have been a mere oversight, but by this time obviously not! I don't think kicking the ball should break the continuity of downs unless the opposing team touches the ball on their side of the neutral zone. Others would like to reform the requirement, to make a minimum distance of the kick.

@lordmikethegreat 5 ай бұрын

You should do a video on how the extra point used to be done before 1918, where it was more like Rugby, with a catch... the defense could run at the kicker unblocked from the goal line.

@lordmikethegreat 5 ай бұрын

And, of course, the punt out to set the location of the ball for the extra point!

@ziran80 5 ай бұрын

A great series, and it was a really good way to explore the year by year changes from a Rugby style game to a uniquely North American game. I have a question. When did the rules regarding the sideline/out-of-bounds change? In most sports, including both types of Rugby, if a side puts the ball out of bounds, then the opposition will get the ball (via some means to restart play). However uniquely in American/Canadian Football, when the offense puts the ball out-of-bounds, they still retains possession. This changes the tactics drastically if the sideline is not a place to be feared. When did this change occur?

@goodmaro 5 ай бұрын

What you may not realize is that in rugby as it came to North America, when you carried the ball over the sideline, your side got to put it back in play. Rugby Union late in the 19th Century reversed this rule. (In the *really* old days of rugby football, the ball belonged to whichever side's player touched it down, or just touched it, after the ball crossed the sideline; the rule was similar to resuming play after the ball crossed a goal line. This is why the area beyond the sidelines came to be called "touch". However, I think that by the time the game came to North America, that had changed, even before the RFU.) So this is an example (along with the requirement of immediate release after a tackle) where it was Rugby Union that diverged from the roots, while American and Canadian football stayed with the ancestral rule. The rules were different for when the ball went out of bounds from a kick, and still different from other loose balls. Canadian football still differs from American rules; in Canadian football a ball fumbled out of bounds belongs to the team whose player last *touched* it in bounds, while in American football it belongs to the team whose player last *possessed* it. The various types of football we know about in the 19th Century in Britain had various rules for returning the ball from out of bounds. The adoption of a "turnover" rule, for that, with "fear of the sideline" actually came later.

@Donathon-qx8kq 5 ай бұрын

Sometimes it blows my mind to think this is the game that becomes what it is in 2024... wonder what they would think if they saw the game now????

@Prfdt3 11 күн бұрын

Shocked, they would cringe at the silly unsportsmanlike antics.

@Donathon-qx8kq 11 күн бұрын

@@Prfdt3 yeah, sportsmanship has gone away

@goodmaro 5 ай бұрын

Moving the spot of the kickoff back to the 40 was mostly just in conformity to shortening the field of play. Had they kept it at the center of the field, that would've meant kicking off from the 50. I suppose they could've picked the 45 had they wanted to keep the distance to the opposing goal line the same. However, with the touchback reduced from 25 to 20 yards, do you really want to say that overall they were having the receiving team start any less close to their goal line on average?

@goodmaro 5 ай бұрын

The people who played the game would have disagreed with your opening statement. Of course there were people at the time who expressed that sentiment, and who probably would say the same of today's versions of the game.

@royveteto4134 6 ай бұрын

one penalty i have never understood is intentional grounding. why is there a loss of down included

@goodmaro 5 ай бұрын

Because otherwise, how is it a penalty at all? Why should the offense be any better off throwing a pass intended to be incomplete than if they'd simply made it dead there?

@mikebronicki8264 5 ай бұрын

You have to understand that generally speaking, a penalty nullifies the down that just took place. So "loss of down" only replaces that play.

@goodmaro 5 ай бұрын

@@mikebronicki8264 I'm not sure what you mean by "replaces that play". What "loss of down" does is *prevent* the nullification of the down, so the down counts.

@lordmikethegreat 5 ай бұрын

The ball crossing the opponents goal line in the air being a touchback for the other team is still in place in both college and the NFL. It royally screwed the Cleveland Browns in a divisional playoff game against the Kansas City chiefs in 2020, when the receiver was tackled (illegally in the had that was never called, of course), and he fumbled the ball into the endzone which bounced out of bounds after. The chiefs got the ball as a touchback. There has been a movement to change that antiquated rule.

@CollegeFootballHistory 5 ай бұрын

Different rule. The rule pre-1912 did not allow teams to score a touchdown pass. With regards to the touchback... boy that rule leads to a lod of arguments. I favor it as it stands since in today's game the defenses have been so neutered..