And it is a curious but historical fact that the man most responsible for football’s “red-meat” era, and for the long delay in its passing, was a most refined and gentlemanly sportsman who admired and exemplified speed and skill far more than brawn and violence: Walter Chauncey Camp, Yale ’80. But not until 1906 were wedges outlawed, and the forward pass legalized, thus ending football’s Dark Ages and ushering in its Renaissance.įor that is what the “modern” game really was, a rebirth-a return to the artful, open-field ways of running, kicking, and ball handling which had characterized American football through the years after 1869 when it was evolving out of British soccer and Rugby. The game became gory to a point where even that chesty champion of ruggedness, Theodore Roosevelt, felt that something must be done about it. From then on, as other teams copied and sharpened the wedge, American “redmeat” football was to grow redder and meatier until popular revulsion brought a change. That was the year in which Princeton first rolled out its juggernaut V, or “wedge,” formation as an opening play.

He held the ball hugged to his breast.His chin rested upon it and his white face looked out from the ruck as the face of a man might look who was on the rack.Ī New York reporter thus described the Yale-Princeton football game of 1884 at the Polo Grounds, but he hadn’t seen anything yet.

All the maddened giants of both teams were in it, and they lay there heaped, choking, kicking … gouging and howling. They saw real fighting, savage blows that drew blood, and falls that seemed as if they must crack all the bones and drive the life from those who sustained them.Ĭame a crush about midway of the field. Judges, reporters and so on saw something more. They had a general vision of threatening attitudes, fists shaken before noses, dartings hither and thither, throttling, wrestling and the pitching of individuals headlong to earth and all this was an exceedingly animated picture which drew from them volley after volley of applause. The spectators could see the elevens hurl themselves together and build themselves in kicking, writhing heaps.

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