Latest / Sports History Network / Exploring the Peculiar Rule of Losing Yards for a First Down in Early Football History

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Exploring the Peculiar Rule of Losing Yards for a First Down in Early Football History · Sports History Network

• 0:47
  What if I told you that in early football history taking a 20 yard loss didn't ruin your drive, it gave you a brand new first down?
• 0:54
  It sounds crazy, but in the late 1800s, running backwards on purpose was actually a legitimate strategy to keep the ball.
• 1:02
  We have more on this story with our football archaeologist specialist Timothy P.
• 1:06
  Brown coming up in just a moment.
• 1:08
  Hello, my football friends.
• 1:09
  This is Darin Hayes at pigskindispach.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.
• 1:15
  And it's Tuesday and it's a special day of the week.
• 1:18
  We get to talk to our friend Timothy p.
• 1:20
  Brown of footballarchaeology.com Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen.
• 1:24
  Hey Derin, Good to be back.
• 1:26
  And I couldn't think of anything funny to say, any kind of dad jokey sort of thing, but, you know, this is a story about, you know, we all know about 3 yards and a cloud of dust.
• 1:40
  Today we're going to talk about losing 20 yards in a cloud of dust.
• 1:44
  Well, you're, you're never a loss for, at a loss for words, but tonight you're gonna be at a loss for yards.
• 1:49
  So, yes, there's your dad joking.
• 1:53
  All right.
• 1:54
  Of course, we're referencing Tim's tidbit that's sort of initiated this conversation.
• 1:59
  He titled it Losing Yards for First Downs.
• 2:03
  Tim, what can you tell us about this story?
• 2:05
  Yeah, it's.
• 2:07
  So a lot of times when we do these tidbits, obviously Darin alerts me in advance which ones we're going to talk about.
• 2:15
  And.
• 2:16
  But most of the time, you know, I just go back, reread my article and, you know, then just sit here and talk about it.
• 2:22
  And.
• 2:24
  But this one got me and partly because I'm doing other research in the time period, but it got me to go back and do additional research, which I'll maybe hit that a little bit tonight because I haven't finished,
• 2:36
  you know, haven't finished the research.
• 2:37
  But, but, you know, so it's just the idea, you know, so there, there was a period in football history when you could get a first down by gaining yards or by losing a certain number of yards.
• 2:54
  And so that may seem really strange, but, you know, you kind of have to go back to why we had the rule about three downs to gain five yards.
• 3:06
  You know how that came about.
• 3:08
  And so, you know, that that occurred because in like 1880, 1881, Princeton.
• 3:15
  Well, in 1880, football went to the rule of possession.
• 3:20
  So one team controlled the ball, right?
• 3:23
  And kind of by habit or by Custom, whatever.
• 3:27
  If you didn't move the ball, teams would punt.
• 3:32
  Right.
• 3:33
  It wasn't a rule.
• 3:34
  You didn't have to.
• 3:35
  But maybe after a couple of downs, if you didn't, you know, if you could move the ball, you punted to get it out of, you know, bad territory.
• 3:44
  But so in, you know, what Princeton ended up doing was they basically wanted to stall.
• 3:52
  So they.
• 3:52
  When they played Yale, and so they just, you know, the rules were such that if you had won the previous year's championship and, and then like the chance there was a tie for the league championship the next year,
• 4:08
  then you retained the title.
• 4:12
  So they said, okay, so there's really no reason for us, you know, we'd be perfectly happy with a tie.
• 4:18
  So they went ahead and, you know, they.
• 4:20
  They basically stalled against.
• 4:22
  Yeah.
• 4:22
  And everybody hated it was, you know, the most boring thing you could, you know, you could imagine.
• 4:28
  So in 1880, for the 1882 season, Camp suggested the rule, you know, basically the system of downs.
• 4:37
  So.
• 4:38
  And under.
• 4:38
  In that rule, in 1882, you could get a first down either by gaining five yards or losing 10.
• 4:49
  Okay.
• 4:49
  And the initial rationale for the losing 10 was, you know, you know, bad snap, fumble, you know, kind of chancy sort of things.
• 5:01
  They didn't want a team to be hurt too badly for those things.
• 5:04
  So if you, if you lost 10 yards, you got a fresh set of downs.
• 5:10
  Well, so, you know, so in 1883, it was five yards, and then they changed it to, I'm sorry, 10 yards.
• 5:21
  He had to lose 10 yards to get a set of first up.
• 5:24
  And then I've been searching for instances of people abusing this, and I'm having trouble finding those instances, but there must have been some.
• 5:37
  Either they just felt the threat was enough of somebody using this for stalling or.
• 5:43
  Yeah, whatever.
• 5:45
  But in 1887, they made it.
• 5:47
  You have to lose 20 yards.
• 5:50
  So again, I'm searching for instances of that.
• 5:53
  That's the research, you know, that I'm doing right now.
• 5:56
  And then in.
• 5:58
  In.
• 5:59
  By 1900, they changed the rule to say you can only lose that 20 yards once in a set of possessions.
• 6:07
  Right.
• 6:08
  So if you, if you lose 20 yards twice, well, that's too bad.
• 6:12
  The second time you just lost 20.
• 6:13
  You know, you don't get new duns.
• 6:16
  And then finally in 1904, they just got rid of that whole thing.
• 6:19
  Right?
• 6:19
  So it was.
• 6:21
  It was still three yard or three downs to gain five yards, but they eliminated the loss side of things.
• 6:28
  So.
• 6:29
  And then like, especially kind of retrospectively as they were changing stuff in like, 1890, like, for the 1900 season, people were kind of saying, well, the reason they had this rule was to.
• 6:42
  Was to counter the block game, you know, thing.
• 6:46
  So it's.
• 6:47
  Which still doesn't really make too much sense to me.
• 6:49
  But anyways, so it wasn't just the fact that they were.
• 6:54
  They were trying to guard against, you know, bad luck.
• 6:57
  There was also part of the strategy was this whole block game thing.
• 7:02
  And I.
• 7:02
  I've got some quotes by, you know, camp about it, but they kind of don't really make sense.
• 7:07
  You know, I don't know if it was the language of the time or they just didn't quote them properly or what, but it's.
• 7:12
  So far it's not making sense to me.
• 7:14
  So I gotta, you know, kind of look.
• 7:16
  Look in it more.
• 7:17
  But all I can really say is that by the end of the century, people were positioning it much more as this is a way to avoid block games.
• 7:24
  And that was the rationale behind the rule.
• 7:28
  So.
• 7:29
  So it's just a strange thing, but I mean, let me just read the.
• 7:33
  The rule.
• 7:34
  When they first instant, okay, there's Rule 93 in the 1882 rulebook.
• 7:39
  If in three consecutive runs and downs, a team shall not have advanced the ball 5 yards or lost 10, they must give it up to the opposite side at the spot where the fourth down is made consecutive means
• 7:52
  without leaving the hands of the side holding it.
• 7:56
  So again, not the language we would use today.
• 7:59
  Right, but.
• 8:01
  So, you know, you kind of have to read it about 10 times to start figuring it out, but.
• 8:07
  And have read a lot of other stuff like it.
• 8:10
  So anyway, it's just, you know, one of those oddball little things that existed in football for a while, and then, you know, they just said, we don't need this anymore.
• 8:18
  And they've, you know, I mean, it's like things like the return kick is another one of those, you know, it's like an appendix thing that it was part of the game for a long time into the 60s, you
• 8:31
  know, like you could catch a punt and punt it back to the other team, you know, which you can still do in Canada, but not.
• 8:37
  Not here.
• 8:38
  But nobody did it, you know, even though it's legal, you know, other than a couple of high school coaches, you know, who would sneak that into the.
• 8:46
  Their plays, you know, a couple times a season, nobody did it.
• 8:50
  So.
• 8:51
  And free kicks were like that, you know, hardly anybody has a chance to do it.
• 8:55
  And, you know, so anyways, I just.
• 8:57
  Those kinds of things are fun little instances where this thing can't.
• 9:02
  Hangs on even though hardly anybody does it, makes use of it.
• 9:06
  And they finally just, let's get rid of this stupid thing, you know, and, and they, and they do.
• 9:11
  So they, they both those rules just sound so foreign to our modern years because we've been programmed to never retreat.
• 9:18
  You know, you, you go forward until you can't go and then you punt it, you know, to go backwards to get rewarded for it.
• 9:24
  It's almost, you know, it's almost sinful, you know.
• 9:27
  Well, that's, you know, it's kind of like, you know, the UFL rule about, you know, you get an extra point if you kick a field goal from beyond 60 yards.
• 9:37
  Okay, well, hey, Billy, go lose two yards on this play.
• 9:41
  Right?
• 9:43
  You know, I mean, in the right situation, the end of a half, end of a game, that'd be the, that's the play to make, right?
• 9:49
  Yeah, yeah.
• 9:50
  I guess maybe the closest thing we would have to today is if team's trying to run out the clock and they are ready to score and they just fall, you know, fall down at the one yard line or
• 9:58
  something so they don't score and keep possession and.
• 10:00
  Yeah, whatever.
• 10:01
  Yeah, rid of the ball out of the end zone for safety, you know, kind of.
• 10:05
  Yeah, right, right.
• 10:06
  Some of the similar tones, but yeah,.
• 10:08
  Yeah, good, good stuff.
• 10:11
  And you know, you always have some really unique items like this that you write about and you talk about and maybe you could share with folks where, where they can take in some of this information you're putting out.
• 10:22
  Yeah, sure.
• 10:23
  Just go to footballarchaeology.com it's a substack site so you can subscribe, you can follow, you can bookmark, you know, kind of whatever, whatever floats your football boat.
• 10:36
  And you know, then obviously, you know, I'm here every Tuesday night and we'll keep doing that for as long as we.
• 10:46
  As long as we can and as long as you'll have me.
• 10:50
  Hey, we're what, what we say we're 200 some episodes in.
• 10:54
  So this is, this is number 200.
• 10:56
  This 205.
• 10:57
  205.
• 10:58
  So it's.
• 10:58
  That's a good amount of years there.
• 11:00
  It's over four years.
• 11:01
  We've been 205 podcasts and no accidents.
• 11:07
  It's been a safe.
• 11:09
  OSHA is going to be very happy with us.
• 11:11
  Yeah, I'm, I'm glad that when you say no accidents that the cameras, you know, above the waist, because you never know.
• 11:17
  Get some long sessions.
• 11:18
  No, just kidding.
• 11:19
  But we we appreciate Tim you're coming on here and sharing, you know for 205 times coming on here and sharing one of your stories and we like to do it again next week and make it 206.
• 11:30
  Very good sir.
• 11:33
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