Volume 12 , Issue 16

College Football - 1884

Unlike baseball, football started after the Civil War when students at a few eastern colleges combined elements form rugby and soccer to make a new game they called football.

It was Princeton that led the way in 1867 when they established the first rules for the game. It was in 1869 that the first intercollegiate game was played between Princeton and Rutgers. The Ivy league schools took up and agreed upon a set of rules by 1873.

Eye Witness To History states, "Amos Alonzo Stagg contributed much to the development of the sport and remains a football legend. He entered Yale in 1884 as a divinity student which qualified him for a reduction in tuition from $50.00 to $39.80 per semester. He was a natural athlete whose skill on the baseball diamond was a major factor in his admission."

Stagg, After graduation in 1888 became football coach at Springfield College, Massachusetts. He later became athletic director and football coach at the University of Chicago in 1892 and remained there for 41 years.

In 1933 he became a coach at the College of the Pacific and left that post in 1947 at the age of 85. For that same year he became an assistant coach at Susquehanna University (Pennsylvania) and does not go into final retirement until 1952 at the age of 90.

Coach Stagg helped codify the rules of football and introduced several innovative plays such as the lateral pass and the man in motion. He was elected to the Football Hall of Fame as a player and a coach in its inaugural year.
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