History Of American Football.
Another College (Rutgers College) also established a set of rules
in 1867 , and with the relatively short distance between it and
Princeton, a game was decided upon by both universities. A date was
chosen, November 6th, 1869; Rutgers won by a score of six goals to
four, and played what has become known as the very first
intercollegiate football game.
In 1873, representatives from Columbia, Rutgers, Princeton, and Yale
met in New York City to formulate the first intercollegiate football
rules for the increasingly popular game, played with many of the
rules of soccer. These four teams established the Intercollegiate
Football Association, and set as fifteen the number of players
allowed on each team.
The coach at Yale (Walter Camp )and a dissenter from the IFA
over his desire for an eleven man team, helped begin the final step
in the evolution from the rugby-style play to the modern game of
American football. The IFA’s rules committee, led by Camp, soon cut
the number of players from fifteen to eleven, and also instituted
the size of the playing field, at one hundred ten yards. In 1882
Camp also introduced the system of downs. After first allowing three
attempts to advance the ball five yards, in nineteen six it was
changed to ten yards. The fourth down was added in 1912. Tackling
below the waist had been legalized in 1888.
A decade later, concern over the increasing brutality of the game
led to its ban by some colleges. Nearly one hundred eighty players
had suffered serious injuries, and eighteen deaths had been reported
from the brutal mass plays that had become common in practice. In
1905, President Theodore Roosevelt called upon Harvard, Princeton,
and Yale to help save the sport from demise. Reform was agreed upon,
and at a second meeting, attended by more than sixty other schools,
the group appointed a seven member Rules Committee and set up what
would later become known as the National Collegiate Athletic
Association.
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