The 1880 Football Rules
Where it all began
The 1880 Football Rules
This is the birth of modern American football:
This small New York Times snippet is the only reference in an American daily newspaper I could find to Walter Camp’s successful efforts to change how football was played in the United States in 1880.
The article is not particularly accurate, of course. There were more than just “a few minor changes in the wording of the rules.”
However, it’s going to likely be impossible to locate original articles covering the changes that were made — other than this one, of course. Note that The Sporting News wasn’t founded until 1886, and that Sporting Life wasn’t founded until 1883. That should give you an idea of just how old all of this really is.
Instead, we have to rely on this research paper that spells it all out.
This is where the “scrum” of rugby morphed into the “scrimmage” of football. It was at this point where the game of American football was truly officially born, including the way that it naturally fits into brief segments of violent action sandwiched by extensive planning sessions.
Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to locate any official record of football rules from 1880. The oldest rulebook I’ve been able to find comes from 1882 — and we’ll talk about that one in a few days.
There’s a reason why there isn’t much out there about football in 1880, by the way. For one thing, very few schools played under the new rules — and they didn’t play many games, either:
It’s not surprising that articles are hard to come by when only a handful of teams played as many as 5 games.