#walter camp

[detroitlib]

Portrait of Walter Camp. Caption on front: "Eye of the world for August 7, 1910. Walter Camp, football authority."

Ernie Harwell Sports Collection, Detroit Public Library

"the great football authority", no, wait, Walter, you finished last in our fantasy football league, we're just gonna cross out "the great"...

[sudden-stops-kill]

burrow

[scholarofgloom]

[spockvarietyhour]

Here's Free Poof you can become gloriously fit - In ten minutes fun a day (1924)

[thewordwideweb]

I want my quarter back!

If you’ve ever lost a small-change bet to a sports-loving friend, today’s Word of the Day might help you win your quarter back. The Word of the Day is “quarterback.” 

It’s probably a safe bet that your football fanatic friend won’t know why the quarterback is called that (or why halfbacks and fullbacks carry those names along with the pigskin). 

You might think it has something to do with how often the player in question carries the ball. A fullback, for instance, is a big bruiser who just plows straight ahead, and isn’t adept at catching passes, so he runs it “full” time. A halfback, on the other hand, might spend half his time running and half catching passes. A quarterback wouldn’t run or catch passes more than a quarter of the time. 

You might think that…and, of course, you would be totally wrong. 

Actually, it all goes back to famed Yale football player and coach Walter Camp, the “Father of American Football” (Take that, John Heisman!). Camp is credited with creating the “line of scrimmage,” the system of “downs,” and even the two-point “safety.” 

Under Camp’s rules, the quarterback, halfback and fullback got their names as a result of where they were positioned behind the line of scrimmage. The fullback set up in the backfield farthest away from the line; the halfback was halfway between the fullback and the line of scrimmage, and the quarterback was halfway between the halfback and the scrimmage line – or a quarter of the way to the fullback. Clear? 

Okay, let’s say your hard-drinking gambling buddy already knew all that. Don’t worry. We can still win you that quarter. For example, I’ll bet he doesn’t know that in the original rules, the center didn’t “hike” the ball to the quarterback with his hands. No, the center would kick the ball back to the quarterback. The game was, after all, FOOTball. Using the hands to snap the ball wasn’t legal until a rules change in 1890. 

You might win another quarter with this one: Under the original rules, the quarterback was not allowed to carry the ball past the line of scrimmage. If he did, it would result in a penalty! Mostly, the quarterback would just toss the ball back to the halfback or fullback and then act as a blocker for them. The forward pass wasn’t made a legal play until 1906. It wasn’t until the 1940’s that teams started routinely racking up more passing yards than rushing yards in a game. 

Finally, here’s your bonus Word of the Day: “scrimmage” – a “confused struggle among players” – is an alteration of the word “skirmish” (a minor battle, brief period of fighting). Since Walter Camp was adapting American football rules from rugby, he proposed changing the scrum or “scrummage,” the point at which the ball was placed down and players would begin to battle for it, to “scrimmage.” 

You didn’t know that? Then give me my quarter back!

[realcleargoodtimes]

Here's what sports looked like during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic

The 1918 influenza pandemic impacted every facet of life.

The 1918 college football season also forged forward and changed the game for the next century to come.

“The football season of 1918 was one of the most peculiar in the whole history of the game and yet it will stand as an epoch-making one in the progress of the sport,” Walter Camp wrote for the “Spalding’s Official Foot Ball Guide,” per The Athletic.

Games didn’t start until October and November and teams played a condensed season. At least 18 teams did not play college football that season. Charity games were also popular.

[yesyoushould]

[yesyoushould]