Thanksgiving, Football, and the Emergence of an American Game

Across the United States each November, millions of people include the game of football in their celebration of Thanksgiving. Whether rooting for a school in its annual rivalry game, playing a family game of two-hand-touch, attending a morning practice before a high school playoff game, or simply watching the professionals play on TV, the game of football is embedded in American Thanksgiving traditions. In fact, football has been linked to Thanksgiving from the game’s very first days. 

In November of 1876, a conference of representatives from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia met to establish common rules for the emerging American version of football. This meeting resulted in the formation of the Intercollegiate Football Association and a set of rules that compromised between Harvard’s early form of rugby called “the Boston Game,” allowing tackling and carrying of the ball, and the version of soccer that was popular at Yale, Princeton, and other American colleges at the time. 

A few days after that conference, on Thanksgiving Day, Yale and Princeton met at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, and played the first game under the Intercollegiate Football Association’s rules. The tradition of Thanksgiving football was born.

In the agreed method of scoring these first intercollegiate games, a goal (a ball kicked between the uprights and over the rope stretched between them) would count as four touchdowns. The teams consisted of fifteen players, and they adopted the oblong rugby ball rather than the round soccer ball used in the Harvard-Yale football game the previous year.

Princeton and Yale continued the tradition of playing each other on Thanksgiving Day from 1876 through 1893. The two teams, supported by students and alumni of the two universities, met in or around New York City to play their big game (which frequently determined the National Championship) in front of crowds that swelled from 4,000 to 40,000 fans.

As media coverage of the annual Princeton-Yale game spread, other college and high school football teams across the country followed suit and scheduled rivalry games for Thanksgiving Day. Although clergy and faculty sometimes condemned football’s disruption of what was supposed to be a national day of solemn gratitude, the game’s popularity overcame those objections, and football became part of America’s Thanksgiving tradition.

In 1879, the Intercollegiate Football Association tweaked its rules to reflect the changes in gameplay that had come to distinguish American football from English rugby. For example, in rugby, the ball can pop out of a scrum randomly to either team, but the American game introduced a set offense with one team in clear possession of the ball. The offensive players took positions at the line of scrimmage and ran designed plays after a “snapback” released the ball backwards to the quarterback.

Books within the Library’s collections document the game’s evolution. An 1879 rulebook provides the first glimpse of the American innovation of the “snapback,” when the center lineman pops the ball backwards from the line of scrimmage. In Henry Chadwick’s Handbook of Winter Sports, rule 32 reads: “A scrimmage takes place when the holder of the ball, being in the field of play, puts it down on the ground in front of him.” Previous printed versions of rule 32 stipulated that a player with the ball must “drive it in the direction of the opposing goal line.” By deleting this part of the rule, the backward “snapback” was now legal. This revision to the rules formalized American football’s abandonment of rugby’s “scrum” in favor of a new, more strategic approach to the “line of scrimmage.” This subtle early change to the rules led to the development of ingeniously designed offensive plays (and equally complex defensive schemes to thwart them) as seen in the game today. 

 

The importance of the “snapback” was highlighted in American Football (1891), written by Walter Camp, a former Yale player widely regarded as the “Father of American Football.” Camp writes, “the feature of the American game in distinction from the English is, just as it was within a year from the time of adoption of the sport, the ‘outlet of the scrimmage.’ In this lies the backbone to which the entire body of American football is attached.” Camp goes on to explain the advantages of the “snapback” from the line of scrimmage over rugby’s random scrum: “the element of chance being eliminated, opportunity is given for the display in the [American] game of far more skill in the development of brilliant plays and carefully planned maneuvers.” In short, the “snapback” allowed a team on offense more time and space to execute set plays. Camp’s book, with its mix of football history and strategic concepts useful to players and coaches, became immediately popular and was released in multiple editions in 1891, 1893, 1894, and 1896. 

Prior to the involvement of professional printers and publishing networks, football’s rules were only published in small print runs by local printers or college newspapers such as the Yale Courant, the Princetonian, the Harvard Advocate, or the Harvard Crimson. With the popularity of Thanksgiving Day football and a rising general interest in the game, a readership emerged for rulebooks printed for wide distribution. In 1883, the American Intercollegiate Football Association allowed Wright & Ditson, a sporting-goods store in Boston, to publish the rulebook for sale across the United States. Print culture assisted football’s growth beyond college competition as children’s books, such as The Sports and Pastimes of American Boys (1884), published football’s rules along with an introduction to the sport. As this new game was evolving year to year, having the most up-to-date rules in wide print distribution was crucial to the spread of a standard, accepted version of the game from the Northeast into the South and Midwest. Across the nation, notable rivalries began with games scheduled around Thanksgiving, including Michigan vs. Notre Dame in 1887, UNC vs. Duke in 1888, and Army vs. Navy in 1890. On Thanksgiving Day in 1893, Howard University charged admission to spectators who turned out in droves to watch the Bison stomp an all-star team of local DC athletes by a score of 40-6. 

Lead by Walter Camp, the Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA) held annual conventions to continue tweaking the game’s rules. For example, the IFA reduced the teams from fifteen players to eleven in 1880. The original “down-and-distance” rule was instituted in 1882, giving teams three downs to advance five yards. This innovation compelled weaker teams to try to advance the ball rather than endlessly stalling and hoping for a 0-0 tie. The rule allowing the forward pass wasn’t introduced until 1906.

Until 1885, football’s rules required a “maul in goal” to occur if the ball-carrier crossed the goal line but the defenders prevented him from touching the ball down onto the ground. In these situations, all other players cleared out of the end-zone except for the ball-carrier and any defenders who had their hands on him as he crossed the goal line. The “maul in goal” was basically a wrestling match or fight between the ball-carrier and these defender(s). It ended one of three ways: 1) when the offensive player somehow got himself free enough to touch the ball down to the ground, 2) when the defender(s) stripped the ball from the ball-carrier for a turnover, or 3) when the defender(s) were able to push, pull, or carry the offensive player back outside of the goal line. The hand-to-hand combat of a “maul in goal” could last up to fifteen minutes!

Because of the frequent injuries to players during a “maul in goal” and its delay of regular gameplay, the Intercollegiate Football Association revised the rules in 1885 to eliminate the requirement of a ball-carrier to touch-down the ball in favor of awarding a touchdown as soon as the ball broke the goal line.

If you are planning to include a backyard Turkey Bowl in your celebration of Thanksgiving, it is always prudent to establish the rules at the outset of the game: One or two-hand-touch? Two or three completions make a first down? Five or seven “Mississippi” before a defender can rush the quarterback? And the holiday meal later in the day will probably be more pleasant if you agree to play without the “maul in goal” as part of the rules of the game. 

 

Sources and Further Information

Camp, W. (1891). American Football. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Campbell, E. C. (1903). “Foot Ball at Howard.” The University Journal, vol. 1, no. 2. Washington D.C.

“Celebrating 145 Years of Thanksgiving Day Football.” www.footballarcheology.com

Francisco, F. (2016). Evolution of the Game: A Chronicle of American Football.

Nelson, D. (1994). Anatomy of a Game: Football, the Rules and the Men Who Made the Game. University of Delaware.

Tamte, R. (2018). Walter Camp and the Creation of American Football. University of Illinois.

 

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