On Saturday, Nov. 13, 1875, an intercollegiate rugby match between Yale and Harvard was held at Hamilton Park, in New Haven, Connecticut. Among the game’s attendees was said to be a schoolboy named Walter Camp. He watched as both teams, each fielding 15 players, and each dressed in caps, breeches, jerseys, and stockings, scrummed and battled to an eventual Harvard victory.
One year later, Camp was a halfback on the Yale rugby squad and a few years afterward he was captain of the team. He soon became a part of the game’s rulemaking body—and forever changed the character of the popular sport.
Indeed, Camp creatively reimagined rugby union rules and fashioned them into American football. It’s true that a rough form of American football had been played in some form for quite a few years. Rutgers and Princeton played what is considered to be “the first” American football game on Nov. 6, 1869, a rough, hybridized version of soccer and rugby. Yet, it’s undeniable that Camp created the scaffolding for modern American football.
Camp’s ideas included the following: the idea of 11 players on the field; the “safety” as a scoring play; the notion of the “line of scrimmage,” or the line of play separating offense and defense; the idea of awarding undisputed possession of the ball; the introduction of the “quarterback” position; and a set number of offensive “downs.”
Origins of a Master Mind
Walter Chauncey Camp was born April 7, 1859. He graduated from Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, Connecticut and entered Yale University in 1876. He excelled at rowing and swimming and joined the baseball and track teams. He was also a decent baseball player. At age 17, Camp was speedy and stout enough to make the Yale rugby team as a halfback and was said to be one of the more able backfield runners of his time. He played for Yale against its rival Harvard in 1876, a fertile moment in the galvanization of Camp’s thinking.Well respected among his teammates for his sense of discipline, Yale eventually named Camp captain. But it was his ability to think in broader terms, to think beyond the boundaries of what was, that catapulted him and a new brand of American-style football into a league of its own.
New Game Takes Form
In just a few short years, Camp’s novel ideas shifted the focus of the game that he played at Yale from kicking to running, and included rules that would ensure fairness and balance.
First, he changed the number of players on the field from 15 to 11, an amendment that met great resistance but prevailed in 1880.
In this wildly changeable period, Camp also successfully petitioned the convention committee to modify the rules from the sloppy rugby scrum to the more neatly defined concept of the “scrimmage.” Scrums did not give either team clear possession of the ball nor the chance to implement the ensuing maneuver, resulting in piles of human chaos and, in many cases, culminating in one long, excruciating, scoreless tie.
Previously, a team could keep the ball as long as they were able, sometimes without ever making a single attempt to score. But Camp’s introduction of “scrimmage” provided one team with a clear offensive opening—the undoubted ownership of the ball—a sequence beginning when the holder of the ball placed it on the ground before him.
Teams would now have a set number of “downs” to get a set number of yards or they would be penalized and forced to surrender the ball. That idea required the creation of stripes on the field to mark and gauge progress—the invention of the “gridiron.”
The rule changes would lead to changes in the designation and roles and names of the players. From then on, the player who received the ball from the snapback would be referred to as “the quarterback.”
The Great Dean of Sport
Under the many new rules that he formulated, Camp coached at Yale from 1888 to 1892, winning 67 out of 69 games. He was the gear that made everything run, and his fastidiousness turned Yale into an athletic superstar. A tireless advocate of the sport, he wrote approximately 30 books and an impressively large number of magazine articles, including penning articles for Harper’s Weekly and Collier’s.
Camp called football a tough, vigorous sport that could be used as a tool to develop courageous, sturdy young men. He also it viewed it as a vehicle for hard work and skilled planning, good qualities for American youth.
In some aspects, he took a stance that was too rigid: His opposition to the forward pass was a prime example. But the game that he changed remained subject to perpetual revision. Against Camp’s hope, the forward pass was legalized in 1906. By 1913, the forward pass was used as offense as often as the run option.
To the end, Camp was a popular presence in the pantheon of American sporting life. In addition to all of the aforementioned tweaks to the game that modern football fans now cheer—things taken for granted, such as the law of possession, perhaps Camp’s most notable achievement was that he championed the game at a time when its future was unsure. There were periods when football faced stiff opposition, with very real prospects of becoming outlawed or abolished.
In an era when the sport was oftentimes frowned upon for its barbarism, Camp stuck to his beliefs in the game’s greater importance. It might not seem like much—some would argue, it’s only a sport—but for many, it is more. It fosters bonding, teamwork, and competitive spirit.
When Camp died in 1925, another gargantuan of the sport, Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne (1888–1931), succinctly and astutely summed up the cultural significance of Camp’s value:
“His loss to the sporting world will be irreparable,” Rockne said. “He was not only a leading figure in football, but in all college sports and in physical education as well.”
Still standing, the Walter Camp Memorial Gateway was dedicated at Yale University on Nov. 3, 1928. Of brick and stone, 70 feet wide and 50 feet high, the arch entrance is carved with the inscription “Walter Camp Field.” At the Gateway’s dedication ceremony, E.K. Hall, chairman of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, spoke, honoring the man who, he said, “was for 50 years the central figure in the greatest of all games—a game in which he, more than other man, developed and gave to the schools and colleges of the country.”
Camp had a unique breed of optimism in the face of long odds and developed something original with the vast potential to grow. Over time, American football clearly developed into its own game, and moved a great distance from its rugby and soccer origins. Even Camp could not have envisioned the contemporary power and influence and wealth that modern football now generates.
