The Pioneer Years - From Scrummage to Scrimmage
The Pioneer Years is a series chronicling the development of American Football in the pre-forward pass era. This article traces the evolution of the Rugby scum to the line of scrimmage.
Although football is a universal term, the definition will vary from one end of the world to the other. Football, to most European and Latin countries, refers to the kicking game that is America knows as Soccer. In the United Kingdom, football could also refer to Rugby football, a carrying game that features running, backwards passing and scrummages that determine possession for the ball. The Australians have produced a game centered on the art of the punt kick and on batting the ball with the fist.
And in North America, the United Sates and Canada share an intersected history in the evolution of gridiron football that now includes over seven hundred rules and a style of play that visually secedes itself from other codes of football.
While gridiron football does share some elements of it’s game with other codes of football, such as tackling, placekicking and punting, it by and large has become distinct from the other games due to its abandonment of the free flowing style of play. Often times, people who aren’t accustomed to watching American or Canadian football will comment on the slow pace of the game, asking why the teams stop and huddle after a tackle is made, or ponder what exactly a “play” is.
The answer to these questions can be traced back to a single rule that brought about the tactically complex nature of the gridiron football that requires coaches to design choreographed sequences of motion to advance the ball downfield: the line of scrimmage
It is true that other rules have contributed greatly to the game’s character, such as the forward pass and unlimited substitution. But the creation of the line of scrimmage is what gives football it’s distinct identity and makeup, for the nature surrounding this innovation increases the tension amongst the players and the fans before the snap of the ball to see which coach has crafted a more brilliant play that can only be superseded by a player’s brilliant execution.
Without question, football in North America is defined, and would not be possible, without the line of scrimmage. And as with many great innovations, the inspiration behind the line of scrimmage came through trial and error. But before one can learn about the line of scrimmage, understudy the concept of the idea that predated it.
The Scrum
There are six or seven football codes that are globally recognized as a form of football, but there are many other variations of these popular rules (or laws) that don’t receive much attention, some of which are still played today, while others have descend into obscurity. Most of these football codes, regardless of the rules or gameplay, typically descend from the “mob football” games played between villages as early as the 13 century. These contests were violent and played with little rules, granting the team with the ball the right to do whatever was necessary to bring the ball into his opponent’s village, including shoving, punching and tackling opponents to create opening paths for the ball carrier.
Along the way, English public schools began to adopt football as a collegiate pastime, creating rules that varied between universities, but nonetheless established a limited number of players per side, offsides rules, and player positions. Some of these schools preferred the kicking game, such as Eton, Harrow and Winchester, while others took a liking to the carrying game, which would later be popularized at the Rugby School.
Whether it followed the kicking or carrying code, a fair amount of these schools incorporated a “scrum” into their gameplay, maintaining a crucial aspect of the ancestral mob football games to signify the fight for possession of the ball. Though “scrummaging” was first documented in Tom Hughes’ novel Tom Brown’s Schooldays in 1857 that takes place at the Rugby School, a few intramural university games featured a scrum-like contest well before the rules of association or rugby football were codified.
One such school, Eton College, was home to the Eton Wall Game. Played on a narrow strip of land that is about 5 yards wide from a brick wall and runs 120 yards long, the Eton Wall Game features 11 players that form a “bully,” a rugby style scrummage, against the wall to contest possession of the ball. Once a team secured possession, his teammates would either congregate around him to push him forward, or kick the ball on ground downfield. Eton later developed an open field game based around the kicking game known as the Eton Field Game, which also featured a bully with 11 players per side. Winchester College played their own unique kicking game with a scrum as well.
After failing to unify all English schools to create a game, the eventual lawmakers of Association Rules Football would abandon the scrum, but Rugby would make it the centerpiece of it’s identity, as it was the primary method for advancing the ball. Though Rugby today is a game of systematic lateral and backwards passing that stretches across the vast field of play, the early days of Rugby, played with 20 men per side, was a very compact game, with 15 man scrums that would last up to 10 minutes. Once the ball was put into the scrum, the forwards (men in the scrum) would try and kick the ball through their opponents’s legs. The backs would then race down field to dribble the ball toward the goal, or tackle the opponent who obtained possession of the ball, igniting another scrum.
The style of play would come under immense criticism from the press that felt Rugby had become one big shoving match. The Rugby Football Union, established in 1871, gathered to reform some of the rules, most notably the reduction of 20 players to 15, which reduced the number of players in at the scrum and allowed the ball to come out more frequently, creating a more open style of play.
Though having to overcome criticism, the scrum was a unique element to rugby’s anatomy and major factor in it’s popularity in Britain. It would be sometime, however, before Rugby and the scrum would be travel across the pond to America.
football’s migration and development
Since the American population comprised of English colonial settlers upon it’s founding, it stands to reason that remnants of English culture would migrate to the United States, including a handful of football games played at the universities. Along with the British immigration, many Americans had gone to study at the flagship universities of Britain at the eve of the 1800s, and upon their return brought back the games and customs found at the universities that would influence collegiate football in their homeland.
As previously discussed in Rutgers vs. Princeton, 1869, football at American universities, as it was in Britain, was an umbrella term that included a variety of different rule sets amongst the colleges. Most of these games were kicking oriented, albeit without organization, rules or frequent contests. Dartmouth College played what they called “Old Division Football,” which was essentially soccer with a large amount of players per side and was one of the first intramural football games to have a set of rules.
Harvard also held an intramural tradition known as “Bloody Monday” between freshmen and sophomores. The game lined up the sophomores and freshmen classes across from each other, and at the signal, the freshman with the ball at the center of the line would dribble the ball with his foot behind his classmates that formed a wedge in front of him as they charged towards the sophomore’s line of defense to score a goal. Yale would adopt a similar tradition for their two lower classes as well. This tradition lived up the violent reputation of it’s nickname, however, and both Harvard and Yale would be forced by their administrators to abandon the game.
Football would not make a resurgence until the late 1860s, and would gain much exposure at the Rutgers-Princeton contest in 1869. As was the case in Britain, if one university proposed a match to another, representatives from each of the school’s teams would meet to negotiate and agree on a set of rules for that match. This was the case for the famed first intercollegiate match between Rutgers and Princeton in 1869 was played under a game known as “Ballown” a game featuring hybrid rules that allowed kicking and batting the ball with the fists, somewhat similar to Australian Rules Football.
The contest between Rutgers and Princeton inspired other Ivy League schools to participate in intercollegiate competition, including Columbia, Harvard and Yale. The universities began to establish a set of rules unique to their school, most of them revolving round the kicking game and catching the ball on the fly. Running with the ball, however, was still illegal, much to the dissatisfaction of Harvard.
Instead of adopting an offshoot of association football, the Harvard students that had studied at the prep schools in Boston revived a game that originated in the secondary private schools at the hands of Gerrit Smith “Gat” Miller. Miller, a seventeen year old student from New York, founded a club with his fellow classmates and students from other schools that would be known the Oneida Football Club. The game, called the “Boston Game,” featured elements from both rugby and soccer, with a minimum of ten but no more than fifteen men per side who were permitted to kick and catch the ball. Furthermore, a player had the right to pick up, run with or throw the ball only if he was being pursed by an opponent, and by doing so made him eligible to be tackled.
Wanting to create a game with a uniform set of rules, Princeton extended an invitation to the four other universities to meet at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City on October 19, 1873. Harvard, however, declined to accept the invitation, believing that it’s game was “so at variance with that played at other institutions that no advantage could come from their attendance.” The meeting ended with a draft of 12 rules for intercollegiate contest that essentially resembled soccer with 20 men per side.
The only game that deviated from these rules was the match between Yale vs. Eton College. As mentioned above, Eton’s field game resembled soccer with a scrum, and also featured 11 per side, instead of the agreed upon 20 per side of the American universities. The two schools made provisions to their respective codes for the sake of this contest, though it isn’t known if the scrum was retained for this match (Yale’s exposure to the 11 man team, however, would prove to be influential in the coming decade).
But while this match may have been the first international collegiate bout, it would’t have the same impact as the game between Harvard and McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
Harvard and Mcgill
While the kicking game was the dominant form of football in America, rugby football had a more of a presence in Canada (though it was far from being a popular pastime). Rugby came by way of British settlers and army troops that were stationed in areas throughout Canada. Montreal, Quebec is where the first official rugby football game took place in Canada in 1865, a match between the British servicemen and Montreal citizens that had played rugby at McGill University. McGill’s brand of rugby wasn’t quite the authentic game that had been developed overseas, however, for even after the Rugby Football Union’s laws had been made known to Canada in the 1870s, McGill eliminated nearly half of the rules found in the original doctrine.
Nonetheless, the Canadian code of rugby football had taken McGill by storm. In 1874, David Roger, captain of the McGill rugby squad, wanted to put Canada’s code of ruby on display in the United States, and extended a courteous invitation to Harvard for a two game series. The first would be played in under the rules of the Boston Game, and the second would be played under the All-Canada code of rugby. Both sides agreed to play at Jarvis Field at Harvard on May 14th and 15th.
Harvard had dismantled McGill in the Boston Game, forcing the match to end early. The following day, however, would not be so swift for Harvard. Now playing under rugby rules, McGill kicked off to Harvard and tackled the runner to the ground. McGill then formed a scrum, throwing the boys of Harvard into a perplexed state of confusion as they tried to imitate their opponents on the fly. Harvard, able to tackle well enough to defend their goal, had trouble adapting to the play of the scrum initially, but began to pick up the concept of the scrummage, and proved to be a worthwhile adversary for a game they were unaccustomed too, forcing the game to a scoreless tie. The crowd of 500 students cheered relentlessly at this new game they were witnessing, igniting Harvard’s student publication, Harvard Advocate, to write: “Football will be a popular game here in the future.”
Sure enough, Harvard had abandoned the Boston Game and fully aligned itself with rugby football. In the fall of 1874, Harvard traveled to Montreal to play McGill, and defeated their opponent 3-0. The fourth contest was held in Montreal again in 1875, only this time McGill recruited players from other Canadian universities to form an All-Canada team to compete against the Crimson. Harvard, however, came with a new wrinkle to the scrum formation: they put no men into the scrum, forcing the All-Canada team kick the ball toward Harvard uncontested, since heeling the ball backward out of the scrum was not practiced in rugby at the time. Harvard again won the match 1-0.
In May of 1876, Harvard would host the All-Canada team in Cambridge, and would again set the stage for a new style of play on their way to a victory. Harvard placed only two men in the scrum in this match, while the remainder of the team lined up laterally to the scrum line, or formed a second line. The Harvard forwards heeled the ball back toward their teammate, who then picked it up and passed it laterally to the man beside him. The ball carrier began to run and would toss the ball to the man next or behind him as he was about to be tackled. Canadian football historian Ian Speers said, “This ‘open formation’ was no minor tinkering with the game of Rugby, bur rather something that heralded the emergence of a distinct game.”
Harvard’s experimentations were taking on a form of their own, and this newfound rugby football variation was quickly gaining ground amongst other Ivy League schools.
The Scrimmage
Between the two matches with the All-Canada team in 1875, Harvard played the first two intercollegiate rugby football games in American history. Tufts University, inspired by Harvard to adopt their code of football, challenged Harvard to a match and played hard in a 1-0 losing effort. Harvard then extended an invitation to Yale to play a rugby football match, to which Yale accepted only if certain concessions were met in regards to scoring. The game, fittingly known as the “Concessionary Game” saw Harvard defeat Yale 4-0, but nonetheless exposed the Bulldogs to this code of football, to which the spectators welcomed with thrilling cheers and chants. A pair of Princeton players that attended the game were enthusiastic about the game as well, and despite still playing under soccer rules, Princeton, along with the other universities, agreed to adopt rugby football in their curriculum.
Although soccer would still continue to be played by a handful of schools going into the 1876 season, there was little doubt that the carrying code of football was surpassing the kicking game in popularity. This would be on display in the Harvard-Yale rematch that drew a crowd of 4,000 spectators on November 18th. Yale, led by team captain Eugene Von Voy Baker, requested that only goals would count toward scoring, and that 11 men per side would be played instead of the standard 15, a possible inspiration that came from Yale’s match against Eton College three years earlier. Harvard agreed to these provisions.
Unlike the prior contest, Harvard’s open style of play and scrum proficiency was no longer exclusive, as Yale’s tackling and aggressive play had kept Harvard in check on their way to a 1-0 triumph. This would mark Yale’s first victory over Harvard, and featured a young seventeen year old freshman halfback named Walter Camp, later dubbed as “The Father of American Football.”
Six day later, representatives from Columbia, Harvard, Yale and Princeton met to form the Intercollegiate Football Association and adopted, with slight modifications, the British Rugby Union code of rules. Yale, adamant on having 11 men per side, declined to join the association, but was allowed to play members of the IFA if rule agreements could be made. This would be the case for another two year until Eugene Baker passed the role of team captain to Walter Camp in 1878.
Camp, now a junior with a reputation as a fast and exciting player in college football, decided to adopt the 15 men per side rule to keep peace with their rivals Harvard and Princeton. Yale would join the IFA by 1879, and by the 1880 IFA convention on October 12, Camp would be advocating for a variety of rules, including the eleven men per side election, and eliminating the scrummage and replacing it with a “scrimmage,” thereby eliminating the gamble of who would win possession from the scrum and introduce the use of prearranged strategy. The rule would read as follows:
A scrimmage takes place when the holder of the ball, being in the field of play, puts it down on the ground in front of him and puts it in play while onside, first, by kicking the ball; second, by snapping it back with his foot. The man who first receives the ball from the snap-back shall be called the quarterback, and shall not then rush forward with the ball under the penalty of foul.
The Association agreed to adopt these two rules, creating a sport that would take on a life of it’s own.
As mentioned above, Harvard had utilized the heel back technique against the All-Canada team back in 1875. While this technique did predate Camp’s contribution to the game, the heel back in this match was still a method of gaining possession in a scrummage, therefore not granting one side possession to formulate tactics that would serve as the nucleus in America football’s makeup. As football historian Parke H. Davis states, “It is true that in defining the scrimmage the convention did not invent it, but merely extended to it the recognition of the rules. The play itself had been evolving gradually through the genius of the collegians in actual play.”
With the line of scrimmage now established, a new American tradition would take form and lead to a decade of experimentation that served as the groundwork for the modern formation, blocking schemes and positions we see today.
Referneces
Collins, Tony. “The Past, Present and Future of the Scrum.” Tony Collins, Tony Collins, 27 Sept. 2016, tony-collins.squarespace.com/rugbyreloaded/2016/1/30/the-history-of-the-scrum.The Saga of American Football, Alexander M. Weyand, The Macmillan Company, 1955
Football: The Intercollegiate Game, Parke H. Davis, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911
Anatomy of a Game, David M. Nelson, University of Delaware Press, 1991
The Development of the American Scrimmage System: A Discussion, Ian Speers, The Coffin Corner of the Pro Football Researcher’s Association, 2002.