Talk:History of American football/Archive 1

Size of the field

I think it would be interesting to add a section on the differences in the size of the fields. The US field at some early point was reduced fromBold text the bigger size still used in Rugby, soccer and CFL. It makes a crucial difference in the game. Most US football history books are sketchy on when this happened and why. ThisItalic text article is so well done, I thought someone mightItalic text have access to this information. Ggetzin 22:46, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Rugby union field: 144m x 70m American football field: 120 yards (110 meters) x 53⅓ yards (49 meters) wide.

AFAIK the reduced width of the American field was down to Walter Camp wanting the widest field possible with Yale's facilities which is why it is not a round number.

I don't know that the rugby field was standardised at this point anyway. Soccer still does not have uniform pitches with the length and width merely having to be within a maximum and minimum. Teams have been known to alter pitches to suit their team strength.GordyB 13:35, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

There is also no standard field in Australian rules either. The shape (although they are referred to as "ovals") varies from circular to rectangles with rounded corners and the size from 135-185m long and 110-155m wide. The Australian game emerged as a hybrid of rugby football and other games, in 1858-59. Grant | Talk 05:10, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Shape of the ball

A section should also be added (or merged into the article) about the evolution of the shape of the football itself, which is very much overlooked IMHO. When this sport actually began, the ball certainly wasn't the same shape as we see it today in the NFL. --—Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.166.233.98 (talk • contribs)

GA review comments

I think the article has FAC class data. I am not going to go through an indepth review of the comments now, but want to do the same during FAC review. For the article to be classified as GA, i need the following information:

• As indicated above, data on the "shape of the ball" - either add the info here or provide a summary and a wikilink

• Very little information on some of the modern game formats - Canadian Football league, Arena Football leagues, NFL Europe and the recently announcement from Dan Synder of a rival spring/summer league. The data on these leagues is important in the "History of the game"

Once these 2 points are addressed, please feel free to ping me and i shall classify the article as GA. --Kalyan 08:15, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Just some quick responses:

• I will try to add more about the shape of the football, but the article already has SOME (introduction of manufactured, as opposed to handmade balls, and reduction of circumference to aid passing). With the format of the article the way it is now, having a separate section on just the ball would not fit with its current organization. Such info would more properly belong in an article about the ball itself, rather than the game. I will add what I can without detracting from the overall article.

• Decisions made at various sports wikiprojects have long been arrived at regarding the various codes of football. Basically, to address your second point, the current guideline is to treat all different codes as co-equal, and not subsets, so that Canadian Football is treated as a distinct sport from American Football and not merely a subset of it. Historically, it grew up that way. It has a parallel history to American Football, and did not derive from it, though they both evolved from varieties of Rugby as played around Montral Canada in the middle 1800's. For a similar situation, see how Rugby League and Rugby Union are treated. I will add a SHORT see-also about related sports like Arena Football and Canadian Football, but to give exhaustive treatment here would be not in keeping with established wikipedia guidelines dealing with the sports. I will re-add a small section on other leagues of American Football however. There was a VERY badly written and referenced one, but I removed it. NFL Europa probably needs mentioning, as does some of the more significant foreign leagues.

I will try to make some changes, and let you know when they are done. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 18:32, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

I have added some basic information on other similar sports, and have included a link to the article Football (ball), which is the proper place for a full discussion of the evolution of the object in question. This articled does contain some information about the use of various balls and changes to its shape where appropriate in each relevent era. Please re-review it, and let me know if these changes make this article pass the good article critera as laid out at the page WP:WIAGA. Thanks. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 19:34, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

I think that the current article as it stands qualifies for GA as the basic data and the details as required are present. I however disagree with only one thing - AFL being held outside the modern football section when XFL is mentioned in there. The other missing piece is the announcement of Mark Cuban of a new American football league. The points that i felt were addressed was the canadian football and NFL Europe. However i am very confident that the 2 niggles mentioned above would be sorted out during Peer review and FAC. --Kalyan 05:18, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Except that Arena Football League is really a different sport; not merely a different league playing standard American football. Thanks for taking the time to review this, I really appreciate it! --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:26, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Section headings

Can some of the "the"s and repeat words in section headings be dealt with, per WP:MSH? Also, not sure what to do about number conversions on the field size, etc. Seems silly to give metric conversions on U.S. football, but I suppose we must? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:05, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I will work on the headings. All places where it is NOT a direct quote already have metric conversions. Could you perhaps show me places where I might have missed this? Oh, and I will go through the dash/hyphen issue as well. I thought I caught all of them, but it looks like you found a few more. I will try to fix them ALL. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 01:37, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I Have made all of those changes, and have left a note at User talk:Brighterorange to request the endashing script be run to catch anything else I missed, such as page numbers in refs. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 01:58, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I made a few more tweaks to section headings to eliminate unnecessary repeat words and "The", revert if you don't like them. There are measurements in Rules standardization (1873–1880); I'm not really sure if adding metric to those makes sense. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:46, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

The headers look fine. I tried to fix them where I saw a problem, but I admit I missed a few (proximity to the text can make one a bad copyeditor, as you know). The measurements you note are a direct quote from the source that is footnoted at the end of the previous sentance. If you think that a quote box may make that more clear, I can put that in. Also, if you feel that even direct quotes like this require conversions, I can add that too, but seeing as it is a direct quote, I still disagree with that... This is not a summary of what the rules were, this is a direct quote from an historical document, and as such I thought it proper to leave it as-is, much as one leaves spelling variences in older documents. You, however, have a LOT more clout here than I ever will, and if you disagree, I will defer to your decision. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 00:13, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Recurring phrase

I am doing a copy edit of this article and the phrase "opening up the game" recurs quite a bit. I have no idea what this means (as I am totally ignorant of anything relating to football), but I suppose that people who know football will know what this means? Awadewit | talk 18:15, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Comments

I have finished the copy edit. Here are a few things that crossed my mind as I was copy editing:

• I wonder if you could expand the lead a bit. I didn't really understand it until after I had read the article - it is a little cryptic.
• As the article is quite long, I wonder if you might consider deleting some of the material describing the intricacies of the Bowl Games. That seems more appropriate for the Bowl articles themselves.
• The article seemed heavily tilted toward early versions of football and college football, with not much material on the modern NFL. For example, when did all of those multi-million dollar contracts start being offered? The financial aspect of football seems to be missing here.
• What are the differences between college and professional football? Do they have different rules? It seems like you were hinting at one point that they do, but the differences are not made explicit.
• I would delete the last section - it seems superfluous and would give you extra space to expand in other areas.

As I know nothing about football, these suggestions may be way off the mark. I did find the article very informative and I was able to follow all of it, despite my total ignorance. Nice work. Awadewit | talk 20:26, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

• In response, in order to comments.
  • I will try to expand the lead some. However, I am not sure what to add. What parts of the article do you feel are underrepresented in the lead? I guess since I wrote most of it, I think there is nothing missing. Could you please make some suggestions?
    • It is not necessarily that any information needs to be added per se, but what is there needs to be connected together better. Awadewit | talk 01:44, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
      • EX: Bowl games are tied to rivalries in the article, but not in the lead. The two sentences are next to each other, but the connection between them isn't explicit. I, as the totally ignorant reader, couldn't connect them until after I had read the article.
      • EX: In the lead you write that professional football was primarily a midwestern phenomenon. I think it is worth stressing that college football was and is enjoyed in different areas of the country. Much of the article discusses northeastern states. The compression in the lead is a bit misleading.
  • Will work on paring this down. Good idea. I was looking for places to shorten this up.
  • Modern NFL is a weakness, and I will work on expanding that presently as well. Thanks for the heads up on that. With reducing the bowl-games story, I can expand that section.
  • In terms of game-play, there is actually little difference between college and professional versions of the game. There are a few minor differences in the rules, but such rule differences are so trivial they aren't really worth discussing. I'm sure you nor anyone else came here for a discussion of the evolution of the Fair catch rule vis-a-vis the pro vs. college game; though trust me, BOOKS have been written on it. Really, the casual fan wouldn't notice the difference between the professional and college game.
    • Then there is no reason for such a section. Perhaps it is basketball where things are different? Awadewit | talk 01:44, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Well, that section was added to steer off problems like you see above. I can remove it again, but there seems to be some confusion over the fact that Canadian football and Arena football are not simply different versions of American football, that they are in fact separate games. The reviewer above requested that information be added on them, and the section was added to apease him. I can remove this with little guilt, though, as it doesn't seem to belong. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 00:25, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
    • I wonder if a single sentence to that effect could be added into the article with links to the "differences" pages? Perhaps that would appease all of us? :) Awadewit | talk 01:44, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I dropped by the FAC to see how things were going. I wanted to add my "support" vote, but I noticed right off when I started to reread the article that the very first sentence has become ungrammatical again: "The history of American football is the most popular spectator sport in the United States." It is not the "history" that "is the most spectator sport", as this sentence states. Focus the sentence around the history, rather than American football and you should have an easier time. Awadewit | talk 17:32, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

This was part of a spate of vandalism (check the page history) which was reverted between when it was done and when you saw it. Sorry you saw this, but please don't count random IP vandalism against the quality of the article. I understand how sentance grammar should work, and the words you saw were not mine, they were part of a random vandal's work. I DID focus the sentance around the history. It DOES do that now and as it always has, except for the twenty minutes between when the vandal did it and when it was eventually reverted. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 20:58, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

So sorry! I did not mean to impugn your grammar, only the sentence's grammar. I really don't understand vandals. Awadewit | talk 18:24, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Princeton-Rutgers 1869 contest

Regarding the recent changes made by the anon IP 70.144.24.46; a throw-away comment in his reference notwithstanding, the game, while neither exactly resembling modern soccer nor either version of modern rugby, was clearly closer to soccer than to rugby. Consider a quote from the source he provided [1]: "The ball could be advanced only by kicking or batting it with the feet, hands, heads or sides." Other than the use of the hands to "bat" the ball, which is currently forbidden in modern soccer, this resembles association football (soccer) where the ball is advanced without carrying it; the fundemental thing that makes rugby football, well, rugby, is the ability to advance the ball by running with it in your arms; this was clearly not done in the Princeton/Rutgers game of 1869. A quote from the same souce "Receiving the ball, our men formed a perfect interference around it and with short, skillful kicks and dribbles drove it down the field." You don;t dribble in rugby to advance the ball; you just carry it and run with it. This is a description of soccer (association football) play. Also consider a quote from the source that is currently referenced, the PFRA reference [2]: "The contest is usually called the first intercollegiate football game. American fans celebrated football's centennial in 1969. They were mistaken. The game played was not American football, nor even its more direct ancestor rugby. Rutgers' historic victory was in soccer." The game was a soccer game, not a rugby game. Historically significant, as it was probably the first organized inter-collegiate football games of any sort to be played in the U.S., but was "Association football" not "Rugby football" --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:27, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Calling it a soccer game is obviously inaccurate if they used their hands; it clearly was a direct antecedent of American football. The Rutgers article considers it rugby-style rules. You need to at least claim there is debate as to whether it was closer to rugby or soccer. There was also a clear physical aspect to the game (wedge play, etc.) that is more in line with rugby or American football. Players from the game also speak in terms of advancing the ball, and the wedge play points to football strategy (blocking, with defensive players hitting blockers and not even going for the ball). The game was clearly a mixture of the two. Claiming it is a soccer game is clearly inaccurate. (Rutgers website url: http://www.scarletknights.com/football/history/first-game.asp) - the same anonymous user who made the previous changes

Also, it should probably have the same basic information as the Rutgers Princeton section in the following article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_football#History —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.252.169.9 (talk) 17:17, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The text as it reads now merely says that it bears a closer resemblance to soccer than to American Football or Rugby; which bears out in that all descriptions of the game; again a single, unbackedup quote from the Rutgers website notwithstanding; all lack a single element that makes rugby what it is: Running with the ball in your hands. This was expressly verboten in the Princeton-Rutgers contest in question; no running with the ball= no rugby. Now, I agree, it wasn't modern soccer either; it probably bore a close resemblence to the mob-style intramural games that existed on college campuses in the earlier 1800's (in all likelyhood, it was probably close to the "ballown" game played at Princeton); however to say closer to rugby because you could bat the ball with your hands is inaccurate: You could not hold the ball, you could not run with it. You could bat it ONLY; this is actually a minor difference with soccer. Methods of strategy (mass formations, wedge play, blocking) can still be done in a game where kicking and striking the ball is the primary means of moving it down the field. Again, the central difference between rugby and soccer is not the use of the hands per se, it is whether or not the ball can be held and carried down the field (which makes the game a rugby-varient) or whether it can only be advanced by propelling the ball without carrying it (which makes it a soccer-varient). Heck, the earliest codified rules of soccer, known as the Cambridge rules of 1848 (see the 1862 version of the same code, named by its author as "The Simplest Game [3]), while also forbidding running with the ball, did not outlaw hand usage (see rule 2); rather only carrying the ball while in motion. Again, read the Wikipedia article on History of football (soccer). While it is not as well referenced as this one; the use of the hands was not disallowed by Association (soccer) football until 1866; in the original FA rules of 1863 it was allowed (see [4], especially rule 8 where hands are allowed for catching a ball on the fly by any player; but it was illegal to pick-up a grounded ball or throw or hand the ball to another player.) Infact, at the original FA meetings, what made soccer set aside from rugby was the banning of "running" with the ball while "carrying" it; not use of hands per se. The Princeton-Rutgers game, based on the description YOU provided YOURSELF closely resembles, almost exactly, the rules of association (soccer) football as laid out in these early Football Association rules. That the author of that page misidentifies this game as rugby does not make it so.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 18:13, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, the physicality of the game may also be an issue, but I know little of association football rules. Obviously, football (soccer) has had a huge impact on the development of American football (hence the same name and the fact that football and rugby developed into American football) and early forms of football had a huge impact on American football. The use of the word soccer does not really fit (it is a modern word), unless we clearly state the role of soccer in developing American football in this section. Also, I have questions about the validity of the sources already in the article and using Rutgers as a source. To be an accurate article, more offline or better online resources should be consulted. BTW, I don't mean to argue with you, but I am simply asking folks to look into these other issues, because the article may be inaccurate. If Rutgers claims it to have been played under rugby-style rules that should at least be investigated instead of going primarily by one other source and generally the history of association football. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.252.169.9 (talk) 20:08, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Here's a compromise. I removed the sentance all together. Since the rules of the game as played were already described in the section; we can leave it up to the reader to reach their own conclusions. This makes the situation more neutral and removes the contested sentance. Since the rules of the game were not in dispute, only whether said rules were closer to modern soccer or to modern rugby, this seems a reasonable compromise.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 02:34, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Uh uh. Soccer in 1869 allowed far greater use of the hands than it does now; therefore the phrase "resembled the English Football Association (soccer) rules of the time" is correct. This is supported by the NFL page cited and by a Princeton page. 124.169.28.37 (talk) 08:42, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Did you even read the discussion above? Yes, you are right. Being right is not what this is about. This was hammered out MONTHS ago. I agree with you. You are 100% correct. And yet, this compromise arrangement is what we agreed on... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 18:07, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'm sorry. I appear to have wandered into some parallel universe where being factually correct is not a priority for encyclopaedias. Bye. 124.169.28.37 (talk) 04:14, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the problem is not that one side is factually right or the other. Some sources use the word "Soccer" and some use the word "Rugby". Again, since you apparently can't be bothered to read the discussion above, I have personally argued ad nauseum that THE ARTICLE SHOULD INCLUDE THE WORD SOCCER SINCE SEVERAL RELIABLE SOURCES CALL IT THAT. Me. I argued that. Still, the arguement devolved into a stalemate. Which you may have seen if you read any of the above. As a compromise, the reference to soccer was removed, since the more neutral way to handle it is to let the reader draw his own conclusions. If you want to re-add the bit about soccer, feel free to do so. Just be aware that someone will dig up one single source (its in the Rutgers website, BTW, see above) that uses the word Rugby. Even though that word is unbacked up by the description of the game or by several other sources (Including the Professional Football Reseqarchers Association) uses the word soccer. Look, you have at it. Add the words. But when the above user comes back to edit war over it, and you both get blocked for edit warring don't blame me. I warned you. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 04:22, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Revert of lead rewrite

I reverted edits by an IP address 199.48.25.10. They seemed to be well intentioned edits, however I disagree that they improved the article. First, the article link and reference was changed from football to football (soccer), which is not strictly correct. The football article discusses all varieties of football, not just one, which seems most appropriate for this link. Also, it is not strictly correct to say American football derived most directly from soccer; it more directly descends from Rugby, which itself may or may not be older than soccer (the first written Rugby rules predate the first written Association football rules by several years, though BOTH versions have existed in some form for some tiem before that and it is difficult to determine which is truly older... but I digress). Anyhoo, the general link to the football article seems most appropriate. Also, the wording was sort of cumbersome, I think the prior wording was cleaner and easier to read. Those are the reasons I removed the edits. If anyone would like to discuss this, please feel free to do so.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 06:23, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Harvard/McGill and Harvard/Tufts

Good information. Which is why it is ALREADY IN the article. Please read ahead, these two important games are already discussed in detail in the section below where they are being added. No need to discuss the games twice. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:03, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

should the subject be in bold

I think a heard somewhere that the subject should only be in bold if it is an offical title or name. Buc (talk) 16:16, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope, something relating to the article namespace should always be bolded.--SeizureDog (talk) 05:43, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Lead section. The article's subject, and any common alternate titles (incoming redirects), should usually be in bold in the intro. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:43, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

minor league men's & women's football

As in many places one looks, it's as if adult amateur & semi-pro American football didn't exist. Gotta get around to adding this some time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Robert Goodman (talk • contribs) 01:25, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Whoa, need refs

This is a great article all around, but the section "Minor league adult football" either needs refs or needs to go - this is front page material and there is not a single source in that section. I'm not sure when this was added (but definitely after the FAC). Update: added by User:Robert Goodman at 2:10 today. Joshdboz (talk) 14:08, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

That was me. I can't always dig out references, and hardly ever can I do so quickly. Therefore I put in the material as a place mark to be documented later by myself or other readers. That's how I always edit here. The article as written gives the impression that adults don't play American football except in colleges or as professionals, and that's wildly inaccurate. Better to be temporarily unsubstantiated than immediately wrong. Some of the sources are easily had online (such as links to the women's leagues' sites), but the Wikipedia entry on football leagues is woefully inadequate (there are many more than that) but also impossible to maintain (many come and go quickly, often via merger or other reorganiz'n). Mostly I know about this subject by going to games myself.

I thought of adding a smaller section on touch & flag football as well. - <email removed to prevent spam> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.254.143.3 (talk) 21:48, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Padding, helmets, armour

Hi. Possibly I've missed it, but I couldn't see any references to the gradual adoption of forms of padding in the standard football uniform. The only article I can find offhand is History of the football helmet (possibly excluded because it's only start-class? I've tagged as orphan). This seems to be a fairly key difference from it's origin in rugby, that I think merits a full section here, or a few mentions at the very least. Thanks :) -- Quiddity (talk) 20:39, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Semi-related, nice picture here: http://www.shorpy.com/node/2942 from October 23, 1914. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:35, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

disambig

Upward needs disambig. Randomblue (talk) 21:33, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

(Just a note. Upward redirected to Up until 5 minutes ago. I've created a dab page for upward. The article's link still needs to be disambiguated though. The organization it refers to doesn't seem to have an article currently, though a previous revision of Upward included info which might help you start one for it) -- Quiddity (talk) 21:50, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Canadian, Arena, and American football

There have been many recent additions to the section on "Other leagues" which add lots of intense detail and information on Candian and Arena football in the United States. I have removed these sections for a few reasons. First of all, especially with regard to Candian football, lots of the information was unsourced analysis, such as explanations of why the CFL expanded and why such an expansion was unsuccessful. Such unsourced analysis needs references. However, the second and more important problem is that this article is about American football. Canadian football and Arena football are different codes of football, with their own independent rules, history, and tradition. They are not merely minor varients of American football, but different sports. The section on other codes of football already mentions them, and given that they are different sports, they can be discussed at a higher level of detail in a more appropriate article, which is not this one. The information that I removed, if properly sourced, may be quite good to put in another article... But this one isn;t it. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 04:54, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

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