Why the Uncontested Scrimmage? by Robert Goodman, 1985 1880 saw the American Intercollegiate Football Association adopt a striking departure in the scrimmage from what had been rugby practice. Here is how Walter Camp, who is given credit for this invention, described the difference some years later: "In the English game, when the ball is held and put down for what they call a `scrummage', both sides gather about in a mass, and each endeavors by kicking the ball to drive it in the direction of the opponents' goal. Naturally, there is a deal of pushing and hacking and some clever work with the feet, but the exact exit of the ball from the `scrummage' can not be predicted or anticipated. When it does roll out, the man who is nearest endeavors to get it and make a run or a kick. The American scrimmage, while coming directly from the English play, bears now no similarity to it. Instead of an indiscriminate kicking struggle we have the snapback and quarter-back play. The snap- back rolls the ball back with his foot; the quarter seizes it and passes it...." (1) The essence of what Camp called the American "outlet" (2) is the right of the snapper to make the first movement of the ball uncontested. What impelled the American Intercollegiate Football Association to such a change? The prevailing explanation is as follows: "Camp had also begun to work out in his own mind, though,without discussing it in open committee, one of the fundamental changes in the shape of the game, a change that was specifically alien to the spirit of Rugby. The rugby scrum, as a method of putting the ball into play after a stoppage, was a necessary convention if `open play' was to be maintained. The scrum gave, and still gives, a moderate advantage to the side putting the ball in, but at the same time left the outcome (as to which side would in fact gain possession) so much in doubt that both teams had to be prepared for attack or defence until the last moment. It was not orderly, but it was exciting, and it added an extra dimension to the game. "Camp was in this, as in almost every stand that he was to take on the rules of the game, in favor of orderliness. Once a team had possession, he argued, they should be given a full opportunity of planning a manoeuvre with the ball; and to do this, they should be allowed to put the ball into play unhampered. It meant, a [hypothetic] British chorus would now argue, the death of open, seesawing play, of defence turned by brilliant inspiration into attack, of sudden, thrilling turn of fortune. On the contrary, a million Americans would retort, it meant the development of brilliantly conceived, dazzlingly executed attacks countered by finely inspired, perfectly drilled defence. The arguments are futile, Camp had his way. The meeting accepted the motion unanimously." (3) From such a viewpoint, comparing modern Rugby Union with American and Canadian football, it's easy to understand such a preference in a single person. But stripping away history since 1880, how are we to understand unanimous acceptance by the Rules Committee? This paper develops an alternative explanation for the appeal of the American uncontested scrimmage. Far from today's disciplined rugby set scrum, with its packs of nearly horizontal, tightly bound players, the early Rugby School scrimmage (later to be called scrummage) bore a closer resemblance to an especially nasty crowd at Grand Central Station, striving for trains on opposite platforms, with a ball on the floor somewhat in their way. There was no tunnel into which to deliver the ball between opposing front rows, nor w ere there front rows. Instead, there was an ill-defined writhing, moiling mass consisting of most of the scores to hundreds of players in the game, among whom the ball was put down by one of their number, or had come to rest from open play. Then, as in soccer, the forwards were seen as the main arm of attack. The object was for a player from behind the ball to work his way into that mass, locate the ball, dribble it through, and emerge on the other side with it at his feet. Scrimmagers stood upright, and encouraged opponents to get out of their way by hacking -- kicking their shins. Backs took first an almost exclusively defensive role, to prevent opponents from dribbling or carrying the ball past when it emerged from scrimmage. A back who managed to intercept an emerging ball would commonly plow it back into scrimmage, or kick ahead out of danger. Later some players -- either backs who crept close to scrummage, or forwards who laid back a little -- tried running more often with a ball that exited fortuitously near them. (4) Rugby's style of football eventually spread off that campus. The years encompassing the founding of the Rugby Football Union in 1871 saw a gradual reduction of hacking and of the number of players on the field. (5) With these changes came a new scrummaging technique. One side's-forwards would bind together tightly, and lean forward to meet the opposing side. The tightly-bound pack presented an impenetrable barrier to opposing scrummagers. The, opponents were then forced to pack down to meet them; a side which stood up would be shoved off the ball, and physically endangered, by a scrum packed thusly. Such was the game, whose rules were in a state of flux, to which U.S. college students were introduced in the 1870s. The American Intercollegiate Football Association formed in 1876 to administer and promote a game whose rules were a fairly faithful copy of those of the Rugby Football Union of 1875. Central are the following provisions from the RFU rules of this era: "A scrummage takes place when the holder of the ball, being in the field of play, puts it down on the ground in front of him, and all who have closed round on their respective sides endeavor to push their opponents back, and by kicking the ball to drive it in the direction of the opposite goal line. "Every player ... is put off-side if he ... on being in a scrummage gets in front of the ball.... "Every player when off-side...shall not touch the ball in any case whatever, or in any way interrupt or obstruct any player...." (6) These rules led to a tactical dilemma. The tight packs which had evolved by then precluded dribbling through. At the same time, a player stationed directly behind, called half-back in England, sometimes quarter-back in Scotland and Ireland, was in good position. to start an attack with the ball, should it come out on his side. Under the above rules, as a scrimmager (or "rusher" in the quote below), what would you do with a ball directly in front of you? Camp recounts: "The Americans started with the English scrimmage, kicked at the ball, and pushed and scrambled for a season, until it was discovered that a very clever manifestation of the play was to let the opponents do the kicking -- in fact, to leave an opening at the proper moment through which the ball would come, and a man a few feet behind this opening could always get the ball and pass it while the men who kicked it were still entangled in the scrimmage. After a little of this, no one was anxious to kick the ball through, and the rushers began to roll the ball sidewise along between the lines." (7) The situation was the same in England. Scrummages were stalemated, long-lived, and ended only by happenstance. (8) Nor were the prolonged scrums the joyously drawn-out affairs the sado-masochists at Rugby School had produced. Except for some spectators, nobody liked this impasse. Though I don't subscribe in general to mechanistic models of history, the developments which were to take place fit well within the same framework as allopatric speciation, as explained by Odum: "According to this conventional view, two segments of A freely interbreeding population become separated spatially (as on an island or separated by a mountain range). In time sufficient genetic differences accumulate in isolation so that the segments will no longer interchange genes (interbreed) when they come together again, and thereby coexist as distinct species in different niches." (9) The desire to solve the scrimmage problem provided a stress akin to genetic selection pressure. The Atlantic ocean provided separation. Reconsider your plight as a scrummager. You've seen the disadvantage of kicking ahead, as the rules seemed to require. Maybe you'd have liked to kick through to a teammate stationed ahead, but that would violate general provisions of offside stated elsewhere in the rules. It was clearly legal for your pack to try shoving the other side back keeping the ball meanwhile between the front rows, but neither side could obtain possession that way. As Camp said, you could try working the ball to one side between the opposing front rows. That accomplished, one of your side from outside the pack could "foik" -- sweep the ball out with his foot -- and dribble or pick up the ball. Alternatively, your pack could try wheeling that side of the scrum forward through 90 degrees, then breaking off and dribbling; such a wheel would put the opposing pack offside, but your side wouldn't call for play to be stopped while you had such an advantage. The trouble with either move was that the ball would be exposed to the feet of the opposing front row, who could counter by kicking to the opposite side. Besides, your opponents could station their own foiker to counter yours. What you'd really like is to get the ball behind one or more rows of your scrimmagers. The ball so protected, then you could get creative by shoving or wheeling, and then either- heeling the ball to a friendly halfback behind scrimmage, or breaking out with a dribble. But how was one legally to put the ball back there? The rules said you try to kick the ball forward. And if you did somehow get the ball behind you, then you were ahead of the ball, offside, and would have to give ground until you no longer obstructed the opposing pack from the ball. A feature inherent, though certainly not unique, to rugby football is that, de facto, the rules are only partially written. The rest is unofficial tradition. Though the RFU Laws have been amplified considerably since 1871, and though the regional Unions would probably deny this assertion, there's still much officiating according to unwritten rules, some of which may even appear to contradict written law. "The referees all call it this way." There's a certain amount of hypocrisy in the failure to codify accepted practice, but it's not all dishonesty; there are many factors. U.S. Americans were cut off from the unwritten traditions of rugby in the 1870s, though they picked up some via football intercourse with Canada. There was opportunity for Canadians to be exposed to unofficial British rugby traditions, though one can surmise some difference emerging between them already. The American Intercollegiate Football Association clarified their written code according to their understanding. (10) The British solved the scrummage stalemate by disregarding, or at least sharply reinterpreting, some of the rules. Let's see first what opportunities there, were for liberal interpretation. Did "all ... endeavor ... by kicking the ball to drive it in the direction of the opposite goal line" mean they had to try to kick forward? That same paragraph said they would "endeavor to push their opponents back". Taken as an obligation, that might, to a rules lawyer, provide justification for a pack to "ruck over" the ball, and to continue to push forward even after getting ahead of the ball, nullifying the requirement not to obstruct any player. Note that the interpretations favoring rucking over the ball require "endeavor" to be construed first permissively, then mandatorily -- and the word occurs only once! How about heeling the ball back? The rules don't specifically say you're not allowed to kick backwards. It could be argued also that putting the ball behind one was not the same as getting in front of the ball, so that a player who backheels could claim not to have put himself offside thereby. After the ball was heeled back, obstruction by players in front of it could be accepted as a fait accompli. This was the same original rationale used in the U.S. (after the uncontested scrimmage was adopted, and the packs had flattened out to rush lines) for allowing forwards to stand their ground and block after the snap. Anyway, heeling came to be accepted in Britain, as various commentors testified. Harry Vassal in 1890 wrote, "For many years there was a feeling against `heeling out'...." (11) In 1894, Charles Marriott observed, "In the old days the obstructionists would have been swept away with a little wholesale hacking, or unceremoniously hauled out for off-side play; but now the manoeuvre [of heeling] having been generally adopted," discussion of its legality was of mere academic interest. (12) But the practice was not codified in their era. Arthur Budd, critical of the change in practice, pointed out the discrepancy as he contrasted the new game with the version of rugby he'd played twenty years earlier in school: "Scrummaging was then the real article. It meant carrying the pack by superior weight and propelling power, and was not at all badly described by the definition which is still to be found in our present code, and which speaks of a scrummage at taking place when the ball is put down, and `all who have closed round on their respective sides endeavour to push their opponents back, and by kicking the ball to drive it in the direction of the opposite goal line.' I cite this definition because it affords a graphic illustration of the magnitude of the change which has occurred since those days in the style of play. In 1870, the above definition presented a very fair picture of what a scrummage was; now (in 1892) it depicts exactly what a scrummage is not. Then, men pushed straight ahead might and main, while to heel out was regarded as unfair and discreditable; to-day, they never by any chance do the former, while they do not scruple to do the latter at their own sweet will. "...[I]n order to screw [(wheel)] successfully it is necessary that your side should first obtain possession of the ball. Having obtained it, the practice is to deposit it behind the first or second row of forwards, where it lies safe from the interference of your opponents, and to there manipulate it till you screw your adversaries off it and rush on with it yourself. ...This modus operandi is extremely unfair, and entirely opposed to the spirit of the offside laws, seeing that the bulk of the scrummagers are in front of the ball. It has, however, by general consent been admitted as legitimate, and it is, I am afraid, too late to protest against its continuance. ...It is not wheeling in itself that I am objecting to, but the modus operandi employed, which is an unfair one...." (13) But the above developments were British. I propose that the American Intercollegiate Football Association's adoption of the uncontested scrimmage was a formal solution to parallel the informal British one. Suppose one side packs only a single row in scrimmage, and that one of them manages to heel the ball back. As soon as the ball is behind them, it's out of scrimmage, and scrimmage is ended. Therefore this side is not offside in scrimmage. (They're still offside under general provisions of offside rules, but presence in such position was tolerated as fait accompli.) The trouble was that a single row scrimmage, or line, would be ineffective against a multi-row pack. Until the tactic was recently made illegal in Rugby Union football, a side would sometimes, in an attempt to get more players into the open sooner, pack only their front row on their own put-in. The tactic was playable by virtue of the advantage a side has with its own scrum-half putting the ball into the tunnel. But at the time in question, the ball had to be put down in front of him by a player in scrummage, whereupon the shoving and kicking would begin. A single row scrimmage can put the force of only three (hooker and props, centre scrimmager and side scrimmagers, or center and guards, whatever they be called) in the vicinity of the ball, while a deeper pack can focus the force of several more. Only by cheating severely when they put the ball down would the single line have a good chance to get the ball heeled back. Further, notwithstanding the tactic Camp related of leaving an opening for opponents to kick through, it would be possible for the ball to be kicked hard through a single line so as to elude the backs; a single line can't form a narrow channel for the ball, as can a deep pack. It's unclear whether Americans had experimented with single lines of scrimmagers before-,the AIFA adopted the uncontested scrimmage. When Camp writes, "Then almost immediately it was discovered that a man could snap the ball backwards with his toe, and the American outlet was installed," (14) did he mean that Americans under the pre-1880 rules had tried the snapback? Or that an unmentioned Yours Truly had devised the method and brought about its adoption by rule? Elsewhere he says, "Soon an adventurous spirit discovered that he could so place his foot upon the ball that by pressing suddenly downwards and backwards with his toe he would drag or snap the ball to the man behind him." (15) Both sentences are in the context of relating the development of the uncontested scrimmage, but neither mentions the fact that a rule change was even involved, let alone that the change was of his devising. Similarly, both writings recount the limitation of possession (three downs to advance 5 or retreat 10 yards) adopted in 1882, but neither mentions that the writer invented the rule. I prefer to think, therefore, that the snapback did not predate its codification. There is a contradictory reference by Frank Cosentino: "One of the problems facing the new unions at this time was the fact that varying rules were used in each. For example, in 1879, the University of Michigan in a game with the University of Toronto team, Varsity, introduced a major innovation. Michigan lined up with their forwards in a single line, and the ball was snapped out to the backs." (16) There is reason to suspect that the game referred to was the return match in November 1880, after the AIFA: change. First, Cosentino's reference to "varying rules" seems to indicate the difference between the AIFA rules Michigan probably followed, and the closer-to-RFU rules Varsity likely used; but these were not so different, if they differed at all, before the 1880-1 season, in the matter of scrimmage. Second, of the 1880 contest, "The Mail reporter did not think much of this first `exposition of open play'. He said it had `neither the advantage of strict football like the Association game, nor the brilliant runs and scrimmages of the old Rugby....'" (17) Reference to "first `exposition of open play'" versus "`scrimmages of the old Rugby'" suggest that the AIFA rules were in force, even on the Canadian team's home field, and that the rules were different from the 1879 match. But maybe the reporter hadn't seen the 1879 game, which was in Detroit; still, the wording suggests the development was new. Still, it's possible the snapback was practiced under the old scrimmage rules. In that case, the uncontested scrimmage was just a codification of the severe cheating the side must have done to put the ball down for the tactic to work. Either way. the 1880 change certainly solved the scrimmage impasse. An accompanying change, prohibiting the quarterback from running the ball forward, prevented the problem from being reintroduced through the back door, by returning the ball into scrimmage. The rulemakers wanted the ball to get clearly out of scrimmage. Open play didn't last long in American football, however, and those offside forwards were to pose a rules dilemma of similar magnitude to the problem they'd presented in scrimmage, while uncontested possession was to create its own problem -- that of freezing the ball. The RFU had written rule changes between 1875 and 1880, the most important of which required a tackled player, when the ball was "fairly held", to put the ball down immediately for scrummage. But after 1880, speciation had occurred, and there was no chance of reconciling the U.S. and British games, even had they tried a transatlantic series of matches. Slowly the U.S. football, pulling Canadian football with it, became a deliberate game with long periods of ball possession by one side, while the RFU game went the opposite way in that aspect. Allopatric speciation was on its way with New Zealand Rugby as well, but the separation with Britain wasn't as great there. The 1870s and '80s saw development of some major rules differences in New Zealand, though they later conformed to RFU laws. Contact with England ultimately prevented speciation. Regarding scrimmage, it was considered illegal to heel back in New Zealand, until a visit in 1888 by a British team set their hosts on track with the British interpretation (or disregarding) of the offside in scrum. (18) The Rugby League, in administering the play-the-ball after a tackle, followed a similar tack to the RFU's scrummage laws, in that a technical violation was consistently discounted to give the side the play was awarded to an advantage. According to one observer of Rugby League play-the-ball, "If the ball was played to the letter it would make the chances of retaining it extremely risky." (19) Today's RFU laws provide that everyone properly bound in a scrummage is automatically onside, and say nothing about having to kick the ball forward. American and Canadian football rules today carry no hint that the scrimmage had any such problems associated with it. The problem is solved, and the split is irrevocable, the games terminally differentiated. Notes 1. Walter Camp, "Intercollegiate Foot-Ball in America", first installment, St. Nicholas 17:1. November 1889. Camp erred in that hacking had long been illegal "in the English game". 2. Camp, American Football, 1894 ed. The snapper-back was by rule allowed to kick in any direction. 3. Nicholas Mason, Football! (New York: Drake, 1975), pp. 64- 5. Mason's use of the phrase "open play" here is idiosyncratic. 4. See for example Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days, quoted by Arthur Guillemard in Football: The Rugby Union Game, 1892, Frank Marshall, ed., pp. 18-22. Also Mason, op. cit., p. 43; U.A. Titley and Ross McWhirter, Centenary History of the Rugby Football Union (London: Redwood, 1970), pp. 29, 32. The latter book repeats much of Marshall. 5. Marshall, Titley & McWhirter, Mason, op. cit. RFU laws still didn't specify the number of players, but 14 to 20 a side was customary in the 1870s. 6. RFU rules (later to be called Laws) 11, 22, and 23, 1879. I assume the 1875 rules to have been identical in these particulars. Seen in Peck & Snyder, The Revised and Latest Rules of Football, 1879. 7. Camp, op. cit. 1894; see also op. cit. 1889. 8. See Guillemard in Marshall, op. cit., pp. 76-8. 9. Eugene Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1971), 3rd ed., p. 241. 10. Camp, op. cit. 1894. 11. Harry Vassal, Football, The Rugby Game, 1890. 12. Charles Marriott, "The Rugby Union Game" in Football, ed. C.W. Alcock ("Oval" series, 1894). 13. Arthur Budd in Marshall, op. cit., pp. 115-6, 124-5. Emphasis was Budd's. 14. Camp, 1894, 15. Camp, 1889. 16. Frank Cosentino, Canadian Football! The Grey Cup Years (Toronto: Musson, 1969), p. 14. (Adapted from his 1969 U. of Alberta thesis, "A History of Canadian Football 1909-1968".) "New unions" refers to rugby unions in Canada, which did develop their own rules. Of those points which were specified by RFU rules, I don't know whether any Canadian rules contradicted these in 1879. 17. The Blue and White, 1944, p. 87. This is a history of men's intercollegiate athletics at the University of Toronto, and was kindly copied for me by Paul Carson, their S.I.D., who suspects, however, that the rules were an ad hoc mix. "This seems to have been the practice at other U.S.-Canadian games at that time." 18. Arthur Swan, History of New Zealand Football, vol. 1, 1870-1945 (1948) . 19. Jack Pollard, This Is Rugby League, 1962 (endorsed by, but not an official publication of, the Australian Rugby League Board). Cf. RL rules with ABC Sports films of RL Challenge Cup Final highlights; however, the 1985 play-the-ball looked fairer than previous years' in these films. Thanks to Jon Prusmack for the use of his collection.