Unit 6 · School Fields and World Pitches

On 6 November 1869, students from Rutgers met students from Princeton in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Each side had 25 players. Rutgers won, six goals to four. This game is often called the first intercollegiate football game.

That game looked more like soccer than modern American football. Players moved a round ball with their feet and bodies. The two schools had to agree on rules before they started. Rutgers was the home team, so its rules were used.

In 1874, Harvard played McGill University from Montreal, Canada. McGill played a game closer to rugby, where players could pick up the ball and run. Harvard liked it. Soon other eastern colleges moved toward the running and carrying game.

In 1876, several eastern colleges formed the Intercollegiate Football Association. They met in Springfield, Massachusetts. They agreed on rugby-style rules with fifteen players on each side. Now schools could play one another under one written code.

Walter Camp played for Yale and later advised its teams. He went to the rules meetings for many years. In 1880, the colleges accepted his idea to cut each side to eleven players. The number eleven is still used today.

Camp’s 1880 change also created the line of scrimmage. That is the line across the field where each play begins. In rugby, the ball came out of a crowded pile of players. The new line gave the American game its own start.

Soon after 1880, a new problem appeared. A team could keep the ball for a long time without moving forward. In 1882, the colleges passed another Camp idea. A team had three tries, called downs, to gain five yards.

To see five yards, officials needed marks on the grass. Workers chalked lines straight across the field every five yards. From above, the field looked like a cooking grill. People began to call it a gridiron.

In 1906, the distance grew to ten yards. In 1912, a fourth down was added. That same year the field became 100 yards long between the goal lines. These numbers were written into the rules, so every school could mark the same field.

In the 1890s and early 1900s, college football was very rough. Many players pushed forward together in a tight group. This was called mass play. Players wore little padding. Some were badly hurt, and some died.

Newspapers printed lists of the injured and the dead each fall. Some college leaders wanted to end the game. Columbia University dropped football after the 1905 season. Other schools thought about doing the same.

In October 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt invited leaders from Harvard, Yale and Princeton to the White House. He liked football. He asked them to make the game safer so that it could survive.

In 1906, college leaders formed a new group to oversee college sports. It was first called the IAAUS. In 1910 it took the name NCAA, the National Collegiate Athletic Association. It still runs many college sports today.

The 1906 rules made the forward pass legal. A forward pass is a throw toward the other team’s goal. The rules also said a team needed ten yards in three downs. The goal was to spread players out and end the worst piling up.

Rules were printed each year in Spalding’s Official Foot Ball Guide. Coaches, players and officials bought the same small book. At first, the passing rules had many limits. Over the next years, rule makers loosened them.

Early players often wore no helmet at all. Some grew their hair long to soften blows. In the early 1900s, some players began to wear soft leather helmets. These looked like close-fitting caps with flaps over the ears.

Leather helmets were not required at first. Each player chose whether to wear one. They protected the ears and scalp from scrapes. They did little to stop a hard hit to the head.

Around 1940, companies began to sell hard plastic helmets. In 1943, the National Football League made helmets required for its players. Today, school rules require helmets that meet a written safety standard.

The University of Chicago opened in 1892. Its president hired Amos Alonzo Stagg to lead its athletics. Stagg had played at Yale with Walter Camp. He became a full faculty member, not just a hired coach.

In 1895, leaders from several Midwest universities met in Chicago. They formed the Western Conference, a group of schools that played one another under shared rules. Chicago was a founding member. The group later became known as the Big Ten.

Stagg coached at Chicago until 1932. The university’s field was named Stagg Field. Chicago later left the Big Ten, in 1946. Its early teams still show how a college game spread west from the eastern schools.

After World War I, the University of Illinois raised money for a new stadium. Students, alumni and townspeople gave gifts. The stadium in Champaign honors Illinois men and women who died in the war. Their names are carved on its columns.

The stadium was dedicated on 18 October 1924. That day, Illinois played Michigan. Red Grange, a player from Wheaton, Illinois, scored four touchdowns in the first twelve minutes. Newspapers across the country told the story.

A stadium like this is a memorial and a public gathering place at the same time. It holds games, graduations and other events. Its name reminds each crowd why it was built.

In the early 1900s, more American towns built public high schools. Many added football teams. At first, teams often played on open lots or city parks. Later, school districts built their own fields beside the school.

A school district gets much of its money from local property taxes. Voters sometimes approve new bleachers or lights. Booster clubs of parents also raise money. So the field is a public place, shared by the town.

Night lights let games move to Friday evenings, after work. Families could come after the workday. The same field may hold band shows, track meets and graduation. It works like a town square with goalposts.

The IHSA is the Illinois High School Association. It sets rules for school sports across the state. For many years, Illinois high school football had no state playoff. Teams played conference games and ended there.

In 1974, the IHSA started a football playoff. Winning teams kept playing one another until only champions were left. Schools were sorted into classes by size. That way small schools played schools of a similar size.

The playoff turned the school field into a stop on a state road. A small town’s team might travel far to play. Today, the finals are still played each November. Their results are kept in the IHSA’s records.

In medieval England, whole towns played folk football. A crowd pushed a ball through streets and fields toward a goal. There was no set number of players. Games could last for hours, and people were often hurt.

Rulers did not always like it. In 1314, a proclamation in London, made in the name of King Edward II, banned football in the city. It said the noise and pushing caused trouble. Later kings and towns passed similar bans.

Some old games never stopped. In Ashbourne, in Derbyshire, England, a Shrovetide game is still played each year. Hundreds of townspeople take part over two days. The goals are about three miles apart.

In the 1800s, English public schools such as Eton, Harrow and Rugby each played football their own way. Some let players carry the ball. Others allowed only kicking. When students went to college, they brought different rules with them.

In 1848, students at Cambridge University wrote a shared set of rules. These are called the Cambridge Rules. They tried to blend the school games so that everyone could play together. No copy of the 1848 rules survives today.

In 1857, Sheffield Football Club formed in northern England. It is often called the oldest football club still playing. Its members wrote the Sheffield Rules in 1858. Other clubs in the Sheffield area used them for years.

Ebenezer Cobb Morley was a lawyer and a member of Barnes Football Club. He suggested that London clubs agree on one code. He became the first secretary of the Football Association, or FA. He wrote the first draft of its laws.

The clubs argued over two things. One was carrying the ball in the hands. The other was hacking, which meant kicking an opponent’s shins. The final laws banned both. The Blackheath club disagreed and left the FA.

In December 1863, the FA published its laws. There were thirteen of them. They set the most a field could measure and how a match began. Because they were printed, any club anywhere could read and copy them.

On 30 November 1872, Scotland played England in Partick, near Glasgow. It is counted as the first official international match. About four thousand people watched. The score was 0 to 0.

The Scottish side was made up of players from Queen’s Park, a Glasgow club. England’s players came from many clubs. Both sides played under agreed rules. The match showed that a written code could connect two countries.

That same year, the FA held the first final of its FA Cup. The Wanderers beat the Royal Engineers, 1 to 0, in London. Clubs from across England could now enter one contest under one set of laws.

By the 1880s, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland each had a football association. Their laws were close but not always the same. Matches between them sometimes led to arguments. They needed one group to settle the words.

In 1886, the four associations formed the International Football Association Board, called IFAB. It meets to decide any change to the Laws of the Game. A new law must be approved there before every nation uses it.

FIFA joined IFAB in 1913. Today, FIFA and the four British associations share the votes. IFAB publishes the Laws each year. They are translated into many languages, so referees everywhere read the same rules.

By 1900, football had spread across Europe. Sailors, students, workers and traders had carried it from Britain. Countries began to play one another. They wanted one body to connect their national associations.

On 21 May 1904, seven members met in Paris to found FIFA. They came from France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. FIFA stands for the French words for International Federation of Association Football.

Robert Guérin, a French journalist, became FIFA’s first president. England’s FA joined in 1905. FIFA agreed to follow the Laws written by IFAB. A federation like FIFA joins many national groups into one.

Uruguay’s national team won the Olympic football tournaments of 1924 and 1928. In 1930, the country marked one hundred years since its first constitution. FIFA chose Uruguay to host the first World Cup.

Thirteen teams took part. Only four came from Europe, because the trip by ship took weeks. The United States team reached the semifinals. Uruguay built a new stadium in Montevideo, the Estadio Centenario, for the event.

On 30 July 1930, Uruguay played Argentina in the final. Uruguay won 4 to 2. The Centenario was the host stadium for the final. Uruguay became the first world champion of men’s football.

After 1930, more countries formed football associations and joined FIFA. Many former colonies in Africa and Asia joined after they became independent. Each new member could try to qualify, or earn a place, in the World Cup.

FIFA made the tournament bigger several times. The 1934 World Cup in Italy had 16 teams. The 1982 World Cup in Spain had 24. The 1998 World Cup in France had 32.

The 2026 World Cup is shared by Canada, Mexico and the United States. It has 48 teams, the most ever. More teams give more nations a chance to play on the world stage.

During World War I, many British women worked in factories. Some formed football teams. Dick, Kerr Ladies, from a factory in Preston, drew very large crowds. In 1920, a match at Everton’s ground drew over fifty thousand people.

In December 1921, the FA said football was not suitable for women. It banned women’s teams from playing on its members’ grounds. Women kept playing on other fields, but crowds and money shrank. The ban lasted fifty years.

The FA lifted the ban in 1971. In 1991, FIFA held the first Women's World Cup, in China. The United States won. In 1999, the final at the Rose Bowl in California drew over ninety thousand fans.

For most of the 1900s, soccer was a small sport in American schools. Football filled the fall in most high schools. Many soccer players learned the game in city clubs instead. Chicago had amateur soccer clubs for many decades, often started by immigrant families.

In 1972, the IHSA held its first boys soccer state tournament. That same year Congress passed Title IX, a law that says schools that get federal money may not shut people out because of sex. Girls’ teams grew in the years after.

The IHSA held its first girls soccer state tournament in 1988, sixteen years after the boys. Today boys play in the fall and girls in the spring. Both use the same Laws of the Game, with some school changes.

The United States hosted the men’s World Cup in 1994. The opening match was played at Soldier Field in Chicago on 17 June 1994. Germany played Bolivia. Fans came from around the world to one lakefront stadium.

When it won the right to host, the United States promised to start a new men’s professional league. Major League Soccer began play in 1996. It brought pro soccer to many American cities.

The Chicago Fire was founded on 8 October 1997. That date was the 126th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The club won the MLS Cup in its first season, 1998.