For anyone interested in what old-time (and I mean OLD!) college football looked like

Parent Cafe
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<p>Since childhood, I’ve had a great interest in the early days of college football and I’ve tried in vain to construct an accurate mental image of what the game was like and what the experience of attending a game may have been. I stumbled across this Youtube video this week and was absolutely blown away:</p>

<p>[YouTube</a> - 1904 Football Michigan vs Chicago](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz1nD4XtJPc]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz1nD4XtJPc)</p>

<p>I’d had no idea that video footage from this era (1904 - the opening frame of the video has the wrong date) existed. There’s also footage of the 1903 Yale - Princeton game on Youtube, and I understand that there is similar footage of the 1905 Chicago – Michigan game, but it’s not posted online. These were filmed by Edison’s American Kinetoscope Company, though not by Thomas himself. The 1904 game in the link above would have featured Walter Eckersall of the U. of Chicago and Willie Heston of Michigan facing one another. These are probably the two greatest players of the pre-1920s era. There’s no way I can see of identifying them on the grainy footage though I assume that on most Chicago plays the ballcarrier is Eckersall and on most Michigan plays, it would be Heston.</p>

<p>You’ll note that there are no huddles - players got off the ground, lined up, and called verbal signals in that position. There is no passing - that was made legal in 1906 but not widely used until several years later. And you’ll also notice that the field has not only horizontal but vertical lines, creating the effect that coined the term “gridiron.” The longitudinal lines disappeared from field markings around 1910. I’ve heard several explanations about their purpose, though I’ve never found any of the explanations completely satisfactory.</p>

<p>In the year after this 1904 game, 19 players across the nation were killed playing football and Pres. Theodore Roosevelt called together representatives from the major football schools with the charge to make the game safer or see it outlawed. The two most notable results of that meeting were the forward pass and the creation of the NCAA.</p>

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<p>Hey thanks (tho you might get busted for posting a youtube vid!!)
I just sent that to my 87 yr old dad. His father played football for Ohio State in '05 and '06.
Wish they had an Ohio State video!</p>

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<p>thats around when notre dame was good.</p>

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<p>gadad, this was fabulous. Thanks so much for posting it. I never knew where the term “gridiron” came from when all I saw were a bunch of parallel lines. Also reminded me that piling on used to be legal !</p>

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<p>Fascinating stuff. Thanks for posting.</p>

<p>In poking around my daughter’s school’s athletic center I discovered that Lafayette College Coach Herb McCraken is credited with inventing the huddle in 1924. I was also surprised to find that Lafayette was a three-time national champion. The last time, admittedly, was in 1926 when schools like Muhlenberg were also national powers.</p>

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<p>Very cool. You gotta go back about another 13 years to get to the start of one of the biggest rivalries in all of sports-- Army-Navy.</p>

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<p>In 1894 some life insurance companies refused to insure college students if they played football.</p>

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<p>Harvard has 8 national championship banners hanging in its stadium (which was built in 1903) . . . and the most recent says “1919.” :)</p>

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<p>don’t have a video, but an alum of D’s high school who broke the color barrier in football ten years before Jackie Robinson broke it in baseball, played football in Iowa.
He wanted to play pro ball after graduation, but that door wasn’t open to him, so he went to medical school instead.
[Homer</a> Harris, 1916-2007: Garfield star was gridiron pioneer](<a href=“http://www.seattlepi.com/preps/308933_obitharris26.html]Homer”>http://www.seattlepi.com/preps/308933_obitharris26.html)</p>

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<p>It’s interesting today to consider that 75 years ago someone would have to leave the Pacific Northwest and travel to the midwest to find progressive social attitudes.</p>

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<p>^^Like Garrison Keillor says, cold weather makes you smarter.
;)</p>