Football Camp 1994 CDROM
4521 Barrington Drive
Springfield, IL 62707

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Walter Chauncey Camp (1859-1925) was without question the single most influential figure in the early history of American football. As player and coach at Yale University, as athletic administrator, rulemaker, commentator, and publicist, he oversaw the game's growth from campus recreation to national spectacle. As a student at Yale University Camp played the fledgling sport for seven years (1876-82), three times serving as team captain. On leaving school he began his long tenure as Yale's unpaid "advisory coach," often meeting with players in the evening following his job at the New Haven Clock Company (where he eventually rose to president and board chairman). Camp remained as advisory coach until 1906, during which time Yale dominated college football, compiling a record of 218 wins, 11 losses, and 8 ties. As a student Camp had proposed the two fundamental changes that set the American game apart from rugby: the scrimmage rule (1880) and the downs system (1882). Beginning in 1878 he served continuously on football's rules committees, for twenty-eight years as secretary: his ideas dominated the early committees in particular. Camp's views on football, and on athletics and physical education in general, were disseminated through his voluminous writings, which include countless newspaper pieces, 200 magazine articles, and close to thirty books. The All-America teams he conceived, and selected annually from 1889 to 1925, quickly became the barometer of excellence in college football, and were widely imitated.

Football is thepopular game played between two 11-member teams on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. Each team tries to score points by moving the oval ball over the opponent's goal line for a touchdown (by carrying or passing the ball to a teammate) or by kicking it between the goalposts. A team must advance the ball 10 yards in four attempts, called downs. Defensive and offensive teams alternate positions on the field as the possession of the ball changes from side to side.

American football evolved in the 19th century as a combination of rugby and soccer. The first intercollegiate football match in the United States is usually credited to the game played in 1869 by Princeton University and Rutgers College at New Brunswick, N.J., but that game more resembled the kicking style of association football (soccer) than modern football; there were 25 players on a team, and the game was won by the number of goals scored rather than by touchdowns. In 1873 the first collegiate rules were standardized by Princeton, Yale, Columbia, and Rutgers, and soon afterward the distinct American version of football began to develop. In 1910 the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was formed to govern American intercollegiate competition. Postseason, or "bowl," games played between leading college teams, became popular and now include the Rose Bowl (Pasadena, Calif.), Orange Bowl (Miami), Sugar Bowl (New Orleans), Sun Bowl (El Paso, Texas), Cotton Bowl (Dallas, Texas), and Gator Bowl (Jacksonville, Fla.). Professional football began in the 1890s, but it was not until the rise of television after World War II that it became one of the dominant American sports. In 1922 the American Professional Football Association was reorganized as the National Football League (NFL), which remains the main force of the professional game. A rival league, the American Football League (AFL), was created in 1959, but an agreement in 1966 led to the merger of the two in 1970 under the NFL title. The NFL is now divided into an American and a National conference; the winners of the conferences compete for the Super Bowl championship. In the early 1980s the U.S. Football League (USFL) emerged to threaten the NFL, but it ended after only three seasons. Walter Chauncey Camp was a noted sports authority best known for selecting the earliest All-America teams in U.S. college football but, more importantly, for his role in developing the American game as distinct from Rugby football.

As an undergraduate and then as a medical student at Yale (1876-81), Camp played halfback, served as team captain (at that time equivalent to head coach), and became a member of the Intercollegiate Football Association. From 1880 this ruling body accepted various innovations proposed by Camp: the 11-man team, the quarterback position, the scrimmage line, offensive signal calling, and the requirement that a team give up the ball after failing to advance a specified yardage in a certain number of downs (plays from scrimmage). In 1883 he secured the adoption of a scale of numerical values for scoring by touchdown, try for point after touchdown, field goal, and safety. Although he was an executive of a watch-manufacturing firm from 1883, Camp coached the Yale football team from 1888 through 1892, his teams winning 67 games while losing only 2.

From 1889 through 1896, Camp and Caspar Whitney probably collaborated in choosing the annual All-America football team. From 1897 through 1924 the teams were announced (in the magazine Collier's, the National Weekly from 1898) under the name of Camp alone.

American football evolved as the product of the imagination of early players and coaches who continuously adapted the game to the equipment, the players' skills, and the playing rules in effect during their time. The game played in NFL football began with rules evolved by Camp and his associates. It was coaches such as Walter Camp who developed the fundamentals of play and generated public interest in football.