American College Football: How It's Changed and How It Hasn't
A Look at American College Football Throughout the Years
From substitutions to players, college football of the past would look very different to a 21st-century visitor.
We take a fascinating trip through time, looking at how American college football has changed since the 1930s - and how it hasn’t.
American college football has experienced a few changes since the 1930s
Like baseball, American college football has changed so little over the past century that anyone transported from the 1930s to today would have no problem following the action.
And yet, anyone travelling back that same distance in time would wonder why they were playing the game the way they did.
The most striking thing the visitor from the 21st century would notice is the lack of substitutions. Nobody seemed to leave the game even when the ball changed hands.
Actually, a coach could send in a whole new team at any time, but any players who came out could not go back in until the next quarter. That meant a player not only needed endurance, he had to be strong on both offense and defense just to make the team.
Each player had strengths and weaknesses, but the specialist was unknown. If a team had no dependable kicker who could handle the responsibilities of a running back, they ran a play for an extra point after a touchdown. Either way, it was good for only one point.
It was not unusual for seven or eight men on each team to play the entire sixty minutes. Sometimes teams played entire games with the same eleven men on the field, week after week.
The last team to play an entire game with no substitutions was Yale in 1934.
A less visible but equally significant difference was this: the game belonged to the players. The quarterback was the field commander, calling all the plays.
He could see the coaches on the sidelines, but there could be no communication between them: no sending in subs with plays, no signals of any kind from the sidelines, no conferring during a timeout. A violation drew a five-yard penalty.
This put a tremendous burden on the quarterback. If the coach had designed some trick plays, it was up to the quarterback to decide when to use them.
A player taken out at the end of a quarter could not go back in until after one play had been run in the next quarter to prevent his being sent back in with instructions.
No substitute at any time was allowed to speak until after one play had been run, and officials watched the players in the huddle.
The football, which in its original form had resembled a pumpkin, had gradually become slimmer. As a result, the forward pass had begun to open up the offense from its “three yards and a cloud of dust” origins, but its use was restricted to prevent the game’s deterioration into a “wild passing game.”
The passer had to be at least five yards behind the line of scrimmage. There was a five-yard penalty for any incomplete pass after the first in a series of downs.
An incomplete pass into the end zone on fourth down turned the ball over to the defense on the 20 yard line. Attempts to draw the defense offside by calling signals in a faster or slower pace were illegal.
Until 1934, punters had to drop the ball from their hands before kicking it.
When the rule was changed to allow them to hold it until they kicked it, the quick kick became a frequently used tactic to drastically change a team’s field position. That meant somebody in the backfield had to be a good punter as well as a runner or passer.
All things considered, college football fans have been wild about the game for more than a century through all its rule changes and variations.
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