Football for Player and Spectator

Preface

Between the covers of "Football for Player and Spectator" the author has endeavored to gather from his experience as a player and a coach the advice which is best suited to the needs of the young men in high schools, preparatory schools and colleges who desire to participate in the greatest of all the competitive athletic sports.

Acting on the principle that example is, after all, the very best teacher, an endeavor has been made to thoroughly illustrate the various positions, plays and formations, the photographs from which the reproductions have been taken being posed with this especial end in view.

As the title of the work implies, the book aims also to make the game plain to the spectator who may not have enjoyed the advantage of close acquaintance afforded the man who has taken an active part in the play on the field.

Above all, however, should a perusal of the work give the reader, be he player or spectator, an adequate idea of the spirit in which the game is both played and viewed in its best form, the author will feel adequately rewarded for his labor.

F.H. Yost.

ANN ARBOR SEPTEMBER, 1905.

Chapter 1

Football, although indefinitely known as a sport to Greek and Roman antiquity, did not come into existence as a school or college game until the eighteenth century. During the three or four centuries prior to this time football, in a vague way, figured in English inter-town and county contests. It first appeared as a distinct school game in the early part of the eighteenth century, but at this time was in more or less disfavor on account of the strict Puritanism of the period.

It is to the English schoolboy that the game of football really owes its origin. During the middle of the nineteenth century there was an athletic revival throughout England and football became the favorite pastime of the winter months in such schools as Rugby, Eton, Harrow, Charterhouse and others. The game came to its present important position through a gradual evolutionary process in which both a standard of play and of rule were developed together. In the growth of the two principal forms of modern play, "Association" and "Rugby", the size of the particular school ground was the determining factor. In 1850 the only school playground in England large enough to permit the running and tackling game was connected with Rugby. At Harrow, kicking and fair catching were allowed. A game was developed at Eton peculiar to this school and called the "wall game", while at other schools the play consisted almost entirely of so called "dribbling", in which carrying the ball and tackling were unknown.

The two systems of play, outgrowths of environment, have ever since retained their individuality, constantly increasing along well defined lines to the present day.

Originally each school was bound only by self-made rules. Not until 1863 was there any attempt at codification. At that time a number of Rugby clubs in London met and attempted the adoption of laws governing their play. During the next ten years several attempts were made by the exponents of the two forms of football to formulate a code which would unify the two systems. At this time the followers of the dribbling game greatly outnumbered their rivals, but, notwithstanding this fact, Rugby retained its individuality and the numerous attempts at consolidation were without success.

In 1871 the clubs of London met and agreed upon a code out of which the present Rugby game of England and the intercollegiate game of America developed.

Prior to this time, however, a crude sort of football was being played on this side of the ocean. As early as 1840 at Yale, contests resembling to a certain extent the early game at Rugby were in vogue between the freshman and sophomore classes. In reality this series of games was, however, little but the prototype of the modern class rushes which are prevalent in most colleges at the present time. The so-called football soon assumed so strenuous a form that the faculty at Yale was obliged to abolish the custom, and the game was not revived at this institution until the early seventies.

Through the influence of a Yale undergraduate who had previously attended Rugby, inter-class football games were inaugurated in 1873, under a modified system of Rugby Union rules. In the meantime the game was also being developed at other seaboard colleges in America. Harvard, Rutgers, Princeton, Columbia and others were doing their share toward its development. At first the contests were of an inter-class or inter-hall variety. In the progress of the play, however, the desire for intercollegiate competition grew, and in October, 1872, representatives of Yale, Rutgers, Princeton and Columbia met in New York and adopted a set of rules which formed the first intercollegiate football association in America.

While throughout the New England towns and villages at this period a "dribbling" game was being played, the American colleges naturally adopted a form of play resembling that in progress under the English Rugby rules. Running with the ball and tackling, in fact every feature which tends to make the game a vigorous one, have subconsciously moulded the game in America. College football in the United States now stands as an exemplification of the athletic instincts of its younger generation.

The assimilation of the Rugby game and its evolution into the form in which football is now played in the United States were matters of considerable time and no small amount of deliberation. The English rules were found to be ambiguous in some cases, and difficult of comprehension in others. The novelty of the game, also, was productive of many suggested alterations and it was one of these which is really accountable for the wide difference which now exists between Rugby and American football. This was the adoption of a clause which permitted the forwards to heel or pass the ball out from the scrimmage where it could be grasped by one of the backs, who could then advance it. This was a procedure not tolerated in the original form of the game, but the additional interest which it imparted was immediately seen and the superiority of this plan for putting the ball into play, over the English method of kicking it about in scrimmage, was so apparent that it was eagerly embraced.

In logical order then followed the selection of one man to do the passing, through the greater accuracy which was thus secured, and the alignment of the men in the forward positions, instead of the old form of helter-skelter. Naturally, the heavy men were grouped about the center to protect him and the man immediately behind who was to receive the pass, while the lighter and faster men were as signed to duty on the ends.

Other provisions of the English game were altered to suit the new conditions and a rules committee, composed of prominent sportsmeti of the leading institutions where the game was played, made numerous other changes in finally placing the game on a uniform basis. But one kind of intercollegiate football is now played the whole country over, and of recent years the changes in the rules have been comparatively slight and unimportant. The desire of the men who have from time to time served on the committee has been to develop a game which is clean and manly, and only a reference to the present code of rules is needed to demonstrate the stringent penalties placed upon any tactics even bordering on the unfair. The safety of the individual players has always been carefully looked after by the committee and the most important change made in the rules in recent years was the abolition of the flying wedge and its variations of mass play, an action taken in 1894.

In recent years as well, the rule makers have been endeavoring with continued success to cultivate the attractive features of the game by bringing kicking and open field running into greater prominence, a purpose which is being steadily accomplished without the sacrifice of any of the former attractions which the game has always possessed for both player and spectator.

To a great extent the rapid progress of the game has been due to the natural rivalry manifested between the elevens in the various institutions which took up the game at about the same time. Since the very earliest days of the game the contests between Yale and Princeton have roused the interest, not only of the students and alumni, but of a constantly increasing proportion of the sports-loving public. Yale and Harvard have maintained their annual competition almost every year. Pennsylvania has long been one of the best known homes of the game. West Point and Annapolis, the national schools for army and navy offlcers, have always been supporters of rival football teams. Numerous other institutions, natural rivals, have assisted in the development of the game, urged to increasing efficiency by the progress of the competitor, and the west has in more recent years taken a position of enthusiastic support until now the game is practically general in all parts of the United States, not only in the colleges, but in preparatory schools as well.

Chapter 2

The necessity which impelled the English schoolboy at Rugby a century ago to inaugurate some healthful, clean and interesting outdoor sport and the felicitous choice of this form of recreation are the factors which have caused the growth of football until now it is the leading college game of America. It originated in a simple, Anglo-Saxon desire for clean, energetic sport and the participants in the game were the only spectators. It lives now through the same desire, but the interest in the game has so developed that hundreds of thousands throughout the country annually witness its play, not as mere spectators but as ardent votaries. From Maine to California, from Minnesota to Texas, wherever there are schools or colleges, football, during the crisp, autumn days, is the magnet which draws people from every walk of life from offices and shops for a few hours in the open air.

History shows us that college life, before athletics had been so universally adopted, was very often a detriment to the physical development of the student. Formerly two ideals, diametrically opposed, met the student at his advent. There was the bookworm, with his high forehead and stooping shoulders on the one hand, and the gilded youth who sought and enjoyed the reputation of being the best billiard and card player in the institution, on the other. There was no middle course open to him if he aspired to distinction as a popular idol among the underclassmen. The billiard hall, with its poor light and poorer ventilation, or the stuffy card room, where its peculiar accomplishments were taught, offered the gravest menace to the physical well being of the student at this most critical period of his existence. Nor was the life of the bookworm better in this particular.

This condition does not exist at the present time. Before the prospective college man has finished his preparatory course necessary to an entrance into the higher scholastic field, the college athlete, the football player, the nearest approach to the all-round man, is the central figure in his ambitious dreams. Into his visions of physical supremacy there has been dexterously inserted by his older brother, his father and his different school teachers the absolute necessity for study. He realizes and regards it more seriously than did his active, young prototype thirty years ago. He is imbued with the definite ambition and knows that, before its accomplishment can possibly be attained, he must, first of all, he the student.

During that period of life ordinarily spent in college, energy and vitality are generated so abundantly that some legitimate physical exercise of a strenuous nature must be invented as a safety valve. Improperly directed or neglected, this surplus of vitality works an irremediable damage to the after life of its possessor. It is a matter of speculation, of course, but is, at the same time, warranted by our knowledge of what athletics are doing at the present time, that many men of brilliant promise in their early college life of a century ago would have been prominent in football had they lived at the present time, and would have thus avoided many influences which, in some cases, undoubtedly ruined their careers of service to the world.

Objections to football have been heard in certain quarters on account of its alleged brutality and the violence of the exercise demanded in its play. It is certainly not a game for weaklings or improperly trained boys, but statistics show that accidents of a serious nature are no more frequent in football than in horseback riding, hunting, yachting and many other kindred sports, which do not meet with disapproval on this ground. The game is no more violent than is required by the physical demands of the men who play it.

There are no memories which cling so persistently to the mind of the alumnus, always capable of awakening a glow of enthusiasm and always recalled with pleasure, as those interwoven in the football games of his undergraduate days. There are no ties so potent to bind him to the college through the business of after years. The conversations at class reunions invariably drift to football in general and certain games in particular. A comparison of the present with the past, which makes the undergraduate and the alumnus one in spirit, is of necessity drawn in this way. It is loyalty to college--college spirit--which makes the college man a valuable addition to the institution he adopts. It is the self-same spirit or a sentiment that stands for the best in college life and is an absolute essential to its success in its highest meaning, and it is college athletics, of which football is the highest exemplification, which make this spirit possible.

Without athletics the college life is dull and listless and a man leaves the halls of his alma mater, an alumnus, with the relief attending an accomplished task.

But, at the same time, while sentiment and spirit are essentials to success in the life of every man, they cannot lie dormant and accomplish the desired results by their mere existence. In conjunction with them must go other just as valuable attributes and these attributes are fostered and developed in football as in no other known game. Self-reliance, moral courage, "sand", determination, energy, discipline, judgment, self-restraint and enthusiastic interest are all found in the successful football player.

The training the football candidate necessarily undergoes is never wholly forgotten and, in after years, when he has left college and is grappling with the problems of life, it is an inestimable advantage. The player must learn to act for himself and quickly. In the stress of the game he must draw from his own resources in all emergencies. An inclination to falter through timidity or fear of the consequences is a complete disability. He must have a definite object in view in every play and must carry it through with bull-dog tenacity. His own interests must be subservient to the interests of the team. He must carry his whole heart into every play of the game and must never lose his temper. These same rules, properly carried out, bring success in after life.

The same vital points, continually drummed into a player in his training, are sure to influence the spectators who daily gather on the field to witness the practice. These attributes, personified in the ideal football player, dominate the entire student body and create a spirit which reaches out from the athletic field through the campus and into the very recitation room. The influence for good exerted in this way is incalculable.

In many cases students who would otherwise have been failures from the standpoint of physical development have been fired by the example of the football player and have developed ability which has been used for the glory of the college and the physical welfare of the owner in after life. The example of self-sacrifice engendered on the football field often extends in most surprising ways to the entire student body, and even those not participating in the active athletics are moved to habits of temperance and regularity. The perseverance which eventually brings success on the football field is an open book to every member of the undergraduate body and points the way to both athlete and student, not only during the college days but later in life as well. Independence of action and quickness of thought are sharpened by active participation in the game. Almost every college man is a conscientious and studious follower of the game. In no way is the utter futility of incompetence better illustrated than on the football field.

Aside from the better physical health resulting from a few hours spent on the field as spectators of the daily practice or the regular contests, the students return to their books or recitations with a mental exhilaration which is of great assistance.

From the opening of college in September, in all sections of the country, to its close in June, football is the most potent factor in the moulding of spirit, in the making of men, and in the bringing them together in the democracy of a common cause in the collegiate life. In the autumn, when the candidates for the team are being tried out and selected according to their worth, thousands of healthy young men take their places on the athletic field every afternoon. These hours in the open air are spent in beneficial exercise and, even if the candidate does not succeed in making the team, he is storing up for himself a fund of health from which to draw in later years. Besides, to a candidate disappointed in making the Varsity team, or the second eleven, there are positions waiting on the class teams.

One of the most impressive structures in the country is the Harvard stadium. Massive in construction, with a seating capacity of over 35,000, contributed by a class which has long since left the immediate influences of the institution, it is built essentially for the future and for football. Long after many of the buildings now used for the dissemination of learning at Cambridge have been replaced by newer edifices, the Harvard stadium will stand, impressive and entire, a monument to energetic manhood illustrated in football, and will ring with shouts and songs as rival colleges meet in contests of skill and strength in years to come.

Throughout the country, at the different universities, have been and are being erected structures intended for the same purpose. They are being built with a view to the permanency of the game to which they are adapted. These edifices are being erected at an enormous expense, it is true, with a view to the future, but are nevertheless necessary to meet the present demands of those who desire to witness the playing of the scheduled games of each season.

Wherever the game is being played--and this scope is limited only by the presence of schools and colleges, for these institutions are practically unanimous in their support of football--representative people of that particular section are attracted by football contests as by no other athletic event of the year. If football answered no other purpose than that of drawing the hundreds of thousands into the open air, away from offices and shops, drawing rooms and clubs, for a few health-giving hours, this would be reason enough for its existence.

Anyone who can be present as a spectator at one of the big football games of the year and can look on without enthusiasm as the game progresses is lacking in red blood and can expect no pleasure in outdoor sport. Football has earned for itself a unique place in the life of this country and deserves the position it has acquired. It is the national autumn sport, without a rival, and as such will retain its position as long as Anglo-Saxon blood flows in the veins of the young American.

No better evidence is found of the popularity which football has attained and the natural attractiveness and benefit which it brings, than the rapidity with which the game has swept over the preparatory and high schools of the country. From the colleges, the original homes of football, have gone out each year football players who have adopted teaching as their life work. These men have carried into their new positions a knowledge of the game which has been eagerly received wherever they have gone. Every preparatory school now has one or more instructors, a regular portion of whose labors is the instruction of the pupils of the school, in football, and the development of a team which shall properly represent the school on the gridiron. By this method the game has gained myriads of friends and adherents who in their college and university courses keep up their devotion to football. It also develops the young players along the correct lines and moulds the play of the schoolboys in ways which not only benefit the player, but develop him for the more important contests that will come when he reaches his chosen school of higher learning.

The necessity for an adequate field on which the game may be played in the high and preparatory schools has generally arisen all over the country and often the popularity of the game from the spectator's standpoint has provided the means of equipping the field and paying the expense. Some preparatory schools are far better off than many colleges in this respect and many of them maintain a football field and equipment complete in every particular. It is true that ideals are not always carried out and that the game and its influence are not always for the best. This is true of practically everything in life.

The photographic reproductions accompanying this chapter portray better than is possible by words the great concourse of people regularly attracted to the big football games all over the country. Such crowds, while largely composed of college people, could not be gathered from these alone. The spectators at a football match come from all walks of life and include thousands who love the game solely as a spectacle and an exhibition of concerted pluck and action. There is no crowd so cosmopolitan as that at a football game and this is, after all the most effective testimonial to the hold the game has, east, west, north and south, on the hearts of the American public.

Chapter 3

No American game has won so much praise and, at the same time, so much censure, as has football. The game has been lauded for the scientific play it develops and for the training of mind and body it affords the players. It has been adversely criticised for its roughness and the consequent injuries which the players are likely to receive. From the point of view of some spectators the game seems so dangerous to the players that to allow the game to be played in our colleges seems half-civilized.

Such persons are not really well acquainted with football as it is played today for the game is first in the many forms of athletic competition in the development of the player physically, mentally and morally.

Although to the layman football is primarily a physical game, the bodily benefits afforded the player are by no means the only ones he receives. True, it does afford the player better opportunities for physical development than any other sport. In most other branches of competitive athletics only parts of the body are brought into exercise. In football all muscles are used alike. The arms, legs and back are all required to do their work. The running and swift succession of plays develop the endurance. In every possible way the muscles of the player are hardened. Furthermore, no single part of him is developed abnormally. Football players do not become slow, muscle-hound men. They develop into smooth, enduring athletes. The physical development derived from football is readily shown by the charts of college trainers, giving the physical measurements of football players before and after they have become veterans. In every case the measurements show a remarkable growth in strength, size and symmetry for the athlete.

The physical benefits, while generally admitted, have often been counted of little value, however, because of the roughness of a game which, it has been claimed, injures more players than it benefits.

That football is brutal, no one who is acquainted with the game will admit. All will concede that the game is rough but roughness does not constitute brutality. Liability to injury on the part of the players cannot be entirely eliminated but this is true of every game and occupation in life. In almost every town where football is played it will be found that such sports as boating, hunting, skating and the rest furnish more serious accidents each year than does the game of football. Since our whole lives are made up of physical risks, any game which has no element whatever of roughness or risk is hardly worthy of young and vigorous men.

However, the roughness of football should be eliminated as much as possible and this is done to a great extent among our great teams today. These teams are trained by skilled men whose sole duty it is to see that each player is fit to do his part in the game. Furthermore, the players are usually taught the principles of gentlemanly conduct and much of the roughness of the game is eliminated in this way. Football is being made more and more a game of physical and mental skill, rather than a contest of mere force. The old style of mass plays is giving way to the more scientific and open variety. All this tends to eliminate the liability of serious injury to the player and at the same time affords him the very best opportunity for physical development.

But the physical benefits of football are of no greater importance to the average college man than are its advantages to his mental development. Football is a game of strength, but of strength properly controlled by the mind. Many games are won by the mental superiority of one team over another. This is a phase of football with which the average spectator is entirely unfamiliar. He can easily see the push and scramble on the field but he cannot comprehend the workings of the minds that direct the efforts of both sides. However, any spectator ought to be able to appreciate the severe mental drill given to the player when, in order to be successful, he must learn a mass of rules and be able to understand them all and act accordingly; master a system of signals and carry them out instantly; understand his own play and that of his fellows so that they all work together with the precision of a machine, and do all this with a quickness and accuracy demanded by no other game.

It is very evident that a dullard can never play football properly. Hence it is by no means detrimental to the game to require high standings for all football men in their classroom work, as is the case in most colleges. Almost all the football players who have attained any recognized degree of success are good students. Football not only requires keen-minded men to play it but it makes its players still keener of mind. The regular exercise helps the player and makes his head clearer for study. It makes him quick in thought and able to grasp things with precision. Further, football, by bringing the player into contact with many opponents whom he must watch very carefully and shrewdly, is sure to develop his ability to read character. This is a very important benefit, often overlooked.

Along with the mental benefits of football comes the moral development, of which the most evident characteristic is courage. Every manly man must have a certain amount of courage, physical and mental, and no football player can long be without it. It requires a great deal of mental bravery to run into a foreseen possible physical danger as all players must often do. Then, mental courage is developed in the player in several distinct ways. Every player must learn to have perfect control of his temper, so that he may always play with discretion and never disgrace himself or his school by forgetting what the etiquette of the gridiron demands. A player must learn to be calm and rational in the most exciting moments, for it is at such times that the most is expected of him. He must never get rattled but must use his head all the time. Further, a great amount of self-control and self-denial must be exercised by the ordinary young college man when he begins training. He must yield himself readily to authority and must learn to obey both quickly and quietly.

Obedience must be exercised not only on the field but also off the gridiron, for it is in the latter place that its sway calls for the most will power. Here the player must obey the rule of regular rising and retiring and must learn never to break it, no matter what temptations he may have. The player must also exercise great control in sticking to the diet assigned him. He must never yield to the possible temptations to drink or smoke, but must accustom himself to regular habits regarding his daily nourishment. All these influences toward self-control are very important for college men and, as football brings them all to bear in the fall of the year when many of the players are away from home for the first time, the moral effects of the game cannot be overestimated.