Walter Camp made the development of football—indeed, its very creation—his lifelong mission. From his days as a college athlete, Camp's love of the game and dedication to its future put it on the course that would allow it to seize the passions of the nation. Roger R. Tamte tells the engrossing but forgotten life story of Walter Camp, the man contemporaries called "the father of American football." He charts Camp's leadership as American players moved away from rugby and for the first time tells the story behind the remarkably inventive rule change that, in Camp's own words, was "more important than all the rest of the legislation combined." Trials also emerged, as when disputes over forward passing, the ten-yard first down, and other rules became so public that President Theodore Roosevelt took sides. The resulting political process produced losses for Camp as well as successes, but soon a consensus grew that football needed no new major changes. American football was on its way, but as time passed, Camp's name and defining influence became lost to history. Entertaining and exhaustively researched, Walter Camp and the Creation of American Football weaves the life story of an important sports pioneer with a long-overdue history of the dramatic events that produced the nation's most popular game.

Americans are obsessed with football, yet they know little about the man who shaped the game to make it uniquely technical, physical, and 'man-making' at once. Walter Camp, the "Father of American Football," was the foremost authority on American athletics and arguably the greatest amateur American athlete of his time. In Walter Camp: Football and the Modern Man, Julie Des Jardins chronicles the life of the clock company executive and self-made athlete who remade football and redefined the ideal man. As a student at Yale University, Camp was a varsity letterman who led the earliest efforts to codify the rules and organization of football-including the line of scrimmage and "downs"-to make it distinct from English rugby. He also invented the All-America Football Team and wrote some of the first football fiction, guides, and sports page coverage, making him the foremost popularizer of the game. Within a decade American football was an obsession on college campuses of the Northeast. By the turn of the century, it was a bona fide national pastime. Since the Civil War, college men of good breeding had not a physical skirmish to harden them. They had grown soft, Americans feared, both in body and attitude. Camp saw football as the antidote to the degeneration of these young men. When massive numbers of college football players enlisted to fight in World War I, Camp held them up as proof that football turned men effective and courageous. His influence over the game, however, was not always viewed as beneficial. Under his watch, dozens of college and high school players were killed or maimed on the gridiron. President Theodore Roosevelt urged him to reform football to prevent administrators from banning it, but Camp was ambivalent about removing the very physicality that made the game man-making in his eyes. The criticism targeted at him over the aggressiveness of football still haunts the game today. In this fast-paced biography, Julie Des Jardins shows how the "gentleman athlete" was as much the arbiter of football as he was the arbiter of modern manhood. Though eventually football took on meanings that Camp never intended, his impact on the professional and college game is simply unsurpassed.

Includes the original texts: American football / by Walter Camp. Franklin Square, New York : Harper & Brothers, 1891 -- A scientific and practical treatise on American football for schools and colleges / by A. Alonzo Stagg and Henry L. Williams. Hartford, Conn. : Press of the Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, 1893 -- Football / by Walter Camp and Lorin F. Deland. Cambridge ; Boston ; and New York : Houghton, Mifflin and Company : The Riverside Press, 1896.

During World War I, American army camps, navy stations and marine barracks formed football's first true all-star teams, competing against each other and top colleges while raising millions of dollars for the war effort. More than fifty college football hall-of-famers, dozens of future generals, and two Medal of Honor winners would play for, coach, or promote military teams during the war, including Dwight Eisenhower, Walter Camp, and George Halas. In War Football: World War I and the Birth of the NFL, Chris Serb recounts a fascinating chapter of military and sports history. He details three of the best but long-forgotten seasons of American football, when college amateurs mixed with blue-collar pros on the field of play. These games showed investors a lucrative market for teams of post-collegiate stars and made players realize that their football careers didn’t have to end after college. Soon the barriers to professionalism began to fall, and within two years of the Armistice the National Football League was born. War Football explores for the first time this lost chapter of sports history and makes a direct connection between World War I and the founding of the NFL. Seven future Hall-of-Famers led the charge of more than 200 military veterans who played in, coached for, and shaped the character of the young league. Football fans, sports historians, and military historians alike will find this book a fascinating read.

Mark Bernstein shows that much of the culture that surrounds American football, both good and bad, has its roots in the Ivy League. With their long winning streaks, distinctive traditions, and impressive victories, Ivy teams started a national obsession with football in the first decades of the twentieth century that remains alive today. In so doing they have helped develop our ideals about the role of athletics in college life.

ESPN's Sal Paolantonio explores just how crucial football is to understanding the American psyche Using some of the most prominent voices in pro sports and cultural and media criticism, "How Football Explains America" is a fascinating, first-of-its-kind journey through the making of America's most complex, intriguing, and popular game. It tackles varying American themes--from Manifest Destiny to "fourth and one"--as it answers the age-old question Why does America love football so much? An unabashedly celebratory explanation of America's love affair with the game and the men who make it possible, this work sheds light on how the pioneers and cowboys helped create a game that resembled their march across the continent. It explores why rugby and soccer don't excite the American male like football does and how the game's rules are continually changing to enhance the dramatic action and create a better narrative. It also investigates the eternal appeal of the heroic quarterback position, the sport's rich military lineage, and how the burgeoning medium of television identified and exploited the NFL's great characters. It is a must read for anyone interested in more fully understanding not only the game but also the nation in which it thrives. Updated throughout and with a new introduction, this edition brings "How Football Explains America" to paperback for the first time.

“The story . . . has as much vigor and passion as Roosevelt himself. It’s a fascinating and thoroughly American tale.” —Candice Millard, New York Times–bestselling author John J. Miller delivers the intriguing, never-before-told story of how Theodore Roosevelt saved American Football—a game that would become the nation’s most popular sport. Miller’s sweeping, novelistic retelling captures the violent, nearly lawless days of late 19th century football and the public outcry that would have ended the great game but for a crucial Presidential intervention. Teddy Roosevelt’s championing of football led to the creation of the NCAA, the innovation of the forward pass, a vital collaboration between Walter Camp, Charles W. Eliot, John Heisman and others, and, ultimately, the creation of a new American pastime. Perfect for readers of Douglas Brinkley’s Wilderness Warrior, Michael Lewis’s The Blind Side, and Conn and Hal Iggulden’s The Dangerous Book for Boys, Miller’s The Big Scrum reclaims from the shadows of obscurity a remarkable story of one defining moment in our nation’s history. “The first complete account of Roosevelt’s football rescue . . . a great story.” —The Wall Street Journal “Fascinating . . . At a time when a coalition of suburban soccer moms and misguided caretakers of American athletics are hell-bent on watering down the game of football, you should take the time to read this book.” —Sal Paolantonio, ESPN “A richly detailed history of football’s founding . . . a useful primer, introducing us to some of the sport’s most famous pioneers.” —The New York Times “Enjoyable history of a seldom explored turning point in American sports history.” —Booklist

"This is the first football history to chronicle year by year how playing rules developed the game. Football - a four-dimensional game of rushing, kicking, forward passing, and backward passing - has had more playing rule changes since its inception than any other sport. The Anatomy of a Game follows football rules from the game's European roots through its beginning in the United States to its position as the number-one spectator sport in the 1990s. Highlighted are details of the crisis years that changed the character of the game, with coaches and rules committee members the featured players. David M. Nelson, who served on the NCAA Rules Committee longer than Walter Camp, provides personal insight into all Rules Committee meetings since 1958, as well as an appendix - chronological and by rule - listing every change since 1876." "Ever since the first two human beings kicked, threw, or batted an object competitively, there have been playing rules. Games are mentioned in the Bible, and the Romans brought football's forerunner to Britain, from where it was exported to the United States. It was in the United States that college students decided to make their game rugby rather than soccer. Although the students invented United States football and made the first rules, their ruling power was eventually lost to the faculty, administrators, coaches, rules committees, and the NCAA." "Beginning as a brutal sport, football survived several crises before and after the turn of the century, eventually becoming respectable. The 1931 injury crisis split the high school and college rules and the same year the professionals went their own way, with rules largely based on spectator appeal." "Today the sport is a national treasure primarily because of its playing rules, over seven hundred in total, which make college football unique among the world's team sports. Moreover, football remains an American game, never having the same impact in other countries as do baseball and basketball." "Rules make the game, but people make the rules. Football survived the major crises that threatened the game because committee members adhered to the precepts that had governed football since its inception. The game began with an attempt to have a consistent code of justice, personal accountability, and equality. In some sense the playing rules are a type of moral precept that explains in the simplest terms what can and cannot be done. The Football Code, which first prefaced the rules in 1916, makes the game - more than any other sport - a moral one because it sets standards for coaching, playing, sportsmanship, and officiating."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A portfolio of rare articles by the first football coach & father of the American game.