The Origins of the Huddle
When witnessed for the first time, many spectators will question why there are so many “meetings” between plays. In what is both criticized and beloved by fans, the huddle before the play is a hallmark of American Football, rendered in images that promote the sport of being the ultimate unified team game. It is a formality of football that seems to have been as old as the football itself, but on the contrary, it came nearly two decades after football’s inception. In fact, it’s a part of the game that is widely accepted to be a method born of necessity to prevent the defense from identifying their adversary’s plays.
While there is varying information to officially credit a specific school, coach or player for the idea of the huddle, the lore regarding the creation of this pre-snap tradition often finds it‘s way back to Paul D. Hubbard, quarterback of Gallaudet University in the nation’s capital of Washington D.C. Gallaudet, a private university for the deaf and hard of hearing, established their football program in 1883, and Hubbard would join the squad in 1892. He then became a captain the year after and remained so all the way up until his graduation in 1895.
Prior to the 1890, quarterbacks, using coded terminology, would often call the plays while their teammates were getting set in their formation and then shift upon the call, similar to the no huddle, hurry up offense revolutionized by Fielding H. Yost at the University of Michigan in the early 1900s, and perfected at the professional level by the Cincinnati Bengals in the 1980s and the Buffalo Bills of the 1990s. Since the Gallaudet squad weren’t able to verbally communicate plays, Hubbard relied on sign language to relay the plays to his offense.
Hubbard suspected that their opponents, most of which were also deaf schools such as the Pennsylvania Deaf School and the New Year Deaf School, were stealing signals from Hubbard and were predicting which plays were about to commence. To counteract this, Hubbard instructed his teammates to form a circle around him to prevent the defense from seeing which signal he was providing. Thus, this legend has come to be recognized as the birthplace of the huddle.
The lack of legitimate news articles or written statements, however, prevent this claim from being absolute. In fact, todayifoundout.com posted an article in 2016 that references a different theory to the huddle:
“As for an alternate origin story, it is noted by Dr. I. H. Baker in the 1945 work Football: Facts and Figures that the huddle was used by the University of Georgia in 1896 in a game against Auburn University. Baker’s claim here is in turn derived from the History of Southern Football, written by Fuzzy Woodruff in 1928. In it, Woodruff gives an account of the game in question and describes a huddle being used.”
Woodruff’s account of this game takes place three years after Hubbard became a captain for Gallaudet University. This could either indicate that the huddle could have spread organically to other universities, or that there was simultaneous innovation occurring. However, one of Hubbard’s former classmates, Herbert C. Merill, wrote a letter to Hubbard in 1942, recapping a column he read in the newspaper:
“The item ascribes the origin of the football ‘huddle’ to you. It must have been during the time that the College had that scrub team that made all the teams around Washington, including the Naval Academy, look silly.”
It isn’t clear if this letter was written to congratulate Hubbard on his innovation, or simply just brining it to his attention. Nonetheless, it’s written evidence that does provide some validity to the oral tradition.
Despite this letter, much debate is still centered on who rightfully deserves the credit for inventing the huddle. In the 1890s, other coaches and players were given credit for this creation. In 1895, University of Alabama quarterback Borden Burr claims to have invented the huddle when he was”knocked dizzy and unable to remember signals.” He called for the team to surround him to discuss the next play.
Herb McCracken, the head coach of the Lafayette College from 1924 to 1935, was considered by the legendary coach Knute Rockne to be the huddle’s inventor. McCracken allegedly created the huddle for an upcoming game against the University of Pennsylvania. Paranoid that Penn had deployed scouts to decipher Lafayette’s signals and play calling patterns, McCracken utilized the huddle to conceal the play calls. Ironically, Penn has also claimed authority on originating the huddle. According to Arch Ward, journalist and founder of the All America Football Conference, Penn’s All-American center, Alfred E. Bull, was hard of hearing and couldn’t hear the plays at the line of scrimmage, so the team huddled up so that he could hear them.
University of Chicago head coach Amos Alonzo Stagg has been credited for creating the huddle in a game against Michigan in 1896 when his team had trouble hearing the plays over Michigan’s crowd. Stagg is deservingly credited with many innovations in American Football, but many have expressed skepticism of all the inventions he is credited for, including the huddle (though Stagg is well known for his spiritual opinion of the huddle, viewing it as an embodiment of teamwork).
In the same article on todayifoundout.com, it is revealed that the huddle was used in a1918 match between Oregon Sate University and the University of Washington in Seattle. Oregon Sate head coach Homer Woodson “Bill” Hargiss, a pioneer of the forward pass and halfback option pass, reportedly instructed his players at halftime to gather ten yards behind the line of scrimmage so the quarterback could whisper the play to his teammates when he suspected that Washington was stealing their signals. Hagriss recalls using the huddle and how he discovered it:
“I was refereeing a high school game out there and it was one of those close grudge, battles where the crowd cheered loudly and the band played the same way. The offensive team got down to a do-or-die play and the boys couldn’t hear the quarterback’s signals. So he called them into a huddle to give ’em the play. I thought a lot about that, and I experimented with it at Oregon State…”
Once they began using the huddle sporadically throughout the second half, they achieved great success. This game was documented by Royal Brougham, editor at the Seattle-Post Intelligencer, who claimed that his fellow writers in the press box were puzzled at by the huddle, thinking that they “were holding a prayer meeting or something.”
Upon leaving Oregon Sate, Hagriss coached at Emporia State University in Kansas, where he adopted the huddle there as well. Though Hagriss told his story of the huddle, a more iconic college football coach, Robert Zuppke of the University of Illinois, is the last and one of the most notable names to be given credit for the huddle, using it before nearly every play that left other coaches complaining that he was slowing down the game. While being recognized as having invented the flea flicker and the I Formation, Zuppke, however, admits to not being the fist coach to implement the huddle. Though the huddle was spreading after 1920, an article published in The Frat in September of 1946 claimed Zuppke didn’t himself say he invented the huddle, nor that he got it from Hargiss, but that “he took it from an un-named deaf football team he saw somewhere.” This may provide another validation on behalf of Hubbard.
While the definitive origins may never be known, the huddle is a part of American Football that stands out as much as the snap or the forward pass. Often times players will speak fondly of the moments spent in the huddle, recalling the inspiring, nerve racking and even humorous times before approaching the line of scrimmage. Though innovations have in some cases minimized the huddle, there’s no denying that regardless of who first conjured up the idea, it’s a distinct part of the game that will always survive the test of time.