Friday, February 4, 2011

A Modest Discourse on the Origins of American Football

It’s Superbowl weekend, so I thought I would talk about something that is often brought up during the festivities, usually by somebody who’s not really interested in the game or sports in general, for that matter. Still, it gets the rest of us thinking. The insinuation is that we’ve named a sport ‘football’ when kicking is only a marginal aspect of the game. To deepen the controversy, there’s an older sport by the same name that uses feet almost entirely and hands are in fact a little-used body part. Instead, we refer to that sport as ‘soccer.’ So many people mistake our usages of the terms as a fault of American arrogance or ignorance. However, there’s an interesting explanation for all of this. Please note that for the remainder of my spiel, I will refer to American football as ‘football’ and Association/European football as ‘soccer.’
            The root of American football lies in soccer. That’s right, the granddaddy of the hard-tackling game you watch every Sunday is the same sport you bemoan for its foul-acting. Similar foot-to-ball sports have been played for centuries around the world, but modern soccer is derived from a particular English medieval variety. Records reach as far back as the 12th century of a sport called ‘football’ that was played between whole towns trying to force a ball as much as a few miles toward one end or another. Ironically, records indicate that the sport was played with the hands perhaps more than the feet, so that the sport resembled American football more so than soccer, or at least a lawless form of it. In actuality, a match of medieval football was probably more like the fans of two football teams climbing out of the stands to square off and do battle in the streets. Games were basically mob-oriented and little could be done to enforce penalties, so for the most part, anything went. Games were often violent and certainly destructive. On numerous occasions, the sport was banned by local and royal edict.
It is important to note that, early on, this was a sport for commoners. Those who considered themselves noble would not have stooped to playing in the streets with the vulgar classes. In fact, some scholars believe that the name ‘football’ derived from this social distinction. The elite sported on horseback (polo, hunting, jousting, etc.) because they were wealthy enough to own horses. In general, the peasantry was too poor to afford all the upkeep that came with equine ownership. Thus, they played their games on foot, hence football.
            Whatever the case, mob football proved to be irrepressible fun. No law could squelch it, and it persisted into the sixteenth century when it underwent a revolution. Though still starkly there, that hard border of aristocrat and peon was blurred somewhat by a developing middle class. Boys from the middle and upper classes mingled in the academies that were also becoming more commonplace as the importance of education extended. A love for the game transitioned to the posh and developed structure to adapt to scholastic and aristocratic convention.
For tactical reasons, kicking became a more prevalent part of the game since the leg is stronger than the arm and more capable of the distance and power needed to pass or shoot long spans of the field. Over the next few centuries the use of hands was relegated from a standard of the game to rare instances such as blocking. Eventually, only one individual could be designated to stop the ball with his hands and he was limited to do so only in front of the goal. As hands were used less and team sizes shrunk, tackling had less to do with the game. These days only slide tackling and a healthy dose of contact is allowed in soccer.
Though soccer went through middle and upper class English boys’ schools to earn its current arrangement, it has proved to be a sport for the masses. Since the game is simple, and all that is needed to play is a ball and a few willing pairs of legs, the popularity of the sport is widespread including some of the most underprivileged areas of the world.
So, that’s soccer, but what about American football? How did it go from a medieval tackling sport to one fixated on kicking? Rugby is the missing link.
Once more the transformation occurred at an English academy. Early in the nineteenth century, every school played soccer with slightly different systems because the rules had still not been standardized. Matches between schools were often played with the home team’s rules in the first half and the visiting team’s rules in the second. Rugby School began to play a particular variety where you could run forward with the ball in hand and punt it in stride. Also, tackling was a major facet of its mechanics. Thus the game of rugby was born.
When football began in America, it was played between universities. These colleges found the same problems of varying rules between institutions as the English academies. Initially, there were teams playing with rules more similar to soccer, others to rugby, and some with an odd breed of hybrid. During the late nineteenth century when football began to become more organized and standard rules were adopted to better allow inter-school competition, those using rugby-based rules won out. Even after, there were teams that competed with soccer-oriented rules, but, perhaps for aligning to one of the most prestigious universities at the time, they all eventually adopted the rugby rules that Harvard used. Many of football’s current rules came years later from Yale coach Walter Camp who initiated a line of scrimmage, a stoppage of play on downs, and a set number of downs before turnover.
Personally, I love both soccer and football, and have even had the pleasure of playing rugby while studying in Scotland. It’s harder to see how football evolved from soccer until you see how rugby evolved from soccer into football. If you’re a football fan and you get the chance, I recommend that you watch a match of rugby. Even if you can’t make out the rules for all of their Harry Potter vocabulary, you can glimpse how something like a line of scrimmage or a quarterback came from a tweak of the rules.
There’s tons of different kinds of football today. If you’re interested to see what soccer might have looked like in the interim stage of limited tackling and handling check out Australian football or Gaelic football. Sometime early in the competitions between American universities, Canada developed some different rules like only allowing three downs instead of four before turnover. I was baffled watching footage of what I thought was a minor league football game where a player received a punt only to immediately punt the ball back to his opponents who kicked it back again. My bafflement was answered when the commentator said ‘aboot’ and I realized that it was Canadian football.
So this weekend while you’re sucking on your wing stained fingers, eyes glued to the TV, take a second to soak in the spectacle of centuries of athletic innovation and marvel how different football could be if its path to the present had varied even the slightest degree, if just one thing different had occurred to transform its millennial legacy of competition. Or you could pass me the Doritos.

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