| College football | |
|---|---|
_rushes_for_one_of_two_touchdowns_while_being_persued_by_Army_defenders_Cason_Shrode_(54)_and_Taylor_Justice_(42).jpg) Navy fullback Adam Ballard (#22) rushes while being pursued byArmy defenders Cason Shrode (#54) and Taylor Justice (#42) in the 2005Army–Navy Game, a college football rivalry in the U.S. | |
| Governing body | |
| First played | 1869 |
| Club competitions | |
| Audience records | |
| Single match | 156,990 (Tennessee45–24Virginia Tech atBristol Motor Speedway), 10 Sep 2016[1] |
College football isgridiron football that is played by teams of amateurstudent-athletes at universities and colleges. It was through collegiate competition that gridiron footballfirst gained popularity in the United States.
Like gridiron football generally, college football is most popular in the United States and Canada. While no single governing body exists for college football in the United States, most schools, especially those at the highest levels of play, are members of theNational Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). In Canada, collegiate football competition is governed byU Sports for universities. TheCanadian Collegiate Athletic Association (for colleges) governs soccer and other sports but not gridiron football. Other countries, such asMexico,Japan andSouth Korea, also host college football leagues with modest levels of support.
Unlike most other majorsports in North America, no officialminor leaguefarm organizations exist forAmerican football orCanadian football. Therefore, college football is generally considered to be the second tier of American and Canadian football; ahead ofhigh school competition, but belowprofessional competition. In some parts of the United States, especially theSouth andMidwest, college football is more popular than professional football.[2] For much of the 20th century, college football was generally considered to be more prestigious than professional football.[3]
The overwhelming majority of professional football players in theNational Football League (NFL) and other leagues previously played college football. TheNFL draft each spring sees 224 players selected and offered a contract to play in the league, with the vast majority coming from the NCAA. Other professional leagues, such as theCanadian Football League (CFL) andUnited Football League (UFL), hold their own drafts each year which also see primarily college players selected. Players who are not selected can still attempt to obtain a professional roster spot as anundrafted free agent. Despite these opportunities, only around 1.6% of NCAA college football players end up playing professionally in the NFL.[4]
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Even after the emergence of the professionalNational Football League (NFL), college football has remained extremely popular throughout the U.S.[5] Although the college game has a much larger margin for talent than its pro counterpart, the sheer number of fans following major colleges provides a financial equalizer for the game, with Division I programs – the highest level – playing in huge stadiums, six of which have seating capacity exceeding 100,000 people.[6] In many cases, college stadiums employ bench-style seating, as opposed to individual seats with backs and arm rests (although many stadiums do have a small number of chair back seats in addition to the bench seating). This allows them to seat more fans in a given amount of space than the typical professional stadium, which tends to have more features and comforts for fans. Only three stadiums owned by U.S. colleges or universities,L&N Stadium at theUniversity of Louisville,Center Parc Stadium atGeorgia State University, andFAU Stadium atFlorida Atlantic University, consist entirely of chair back seating.
College athletes, unlike players in the NFL, are not permitted by the NCAA to be paid salaries. Colleges are only allowed to provide non-monetary compensation such asathletic scholarships that provide for tuition, housing, and books. With new bylaws made by the NCAA, college athletes can now receive"name, image, and likeness" (NIL) deals, a way to get sponsorships and money before their pro debut.[7]
Modern North American football has its origins in various games, all known as "football", played atpublic schools in Great Britain in the mid-19th century. By the 1840s, students atRugby School were playing a game in which players were able to pick up the ball and run with it, a sport later known asrugby football. The game was taken to Canada by British soldiers stationed there and was soon being played at Canadian colleges.
The first documented gridiron football game was played atUniversity College, a college of theUniversity of Toronto, on November 9, 1861. One of the participants in the game involvingUniversity of Toronto students wasWilliam Mulock, later chancellor of the school. A football club was formed at the university soon afterward, although its rules of play then are unclear.
In 1864, atTrinity College, also a college of the University of Toronto, F. Barlow Cumberland and Frederick A. Bethune devised rules based on rugby football. Modern Canadian football is widely regarded as having originated with a game played in Montreal, in 1865, when British Army officers played local civilians. The game gradually gained a following, and theMontreal Football Club was formed in 1868, the first recorded non-university football club in Canada.
Early games appear to have had much in common with the traditional "mob football" played in Great Britain. The games remained largely unorganized until the 19th century, whenintramural games of football began to be played on college campuses. Each school played its own variety of football.Princeton University students played a game called "ballown" as early as 1820.[8]
In 1827, aHarvard tradition known as "Bloody Monday" began, which consisted of a mass ballgame between the freshman and sophomore classes. In 1860, both the town police and the college authorities agreed the Bloody Monday had to go. Harvard students responded by going into mourning for a mock figure called "Football Fightum", for whom they conducted funeral rites. The authorities held firm, and it was another dozen years before football was once again played at Harvard.Dartmouth played its own version called "Old division football", the rules of which were first published in 1871, though the game dates to at least the 1830s. All of these games, and others, shared certain commonalities. They remained largely "mob" style games, with huge numbers of players attempting to advance the ball into a goal area, often by any means necessary. Rules were simple, and violence and injury were common.[9][10] The violence of these mob-style games led to widespread protests and a decision to abandon them.Yale, under pressure from the city ofNew Haven, banned the play of all forms of football in 1860.[9]
American football historianParke H. Davis described the period between 1869 and 1875 as the 'Pioneer Period'; the years 1876–93 he called the 'Period of the American Intercollegiate Football Association'; and the years 1894–1933 he dubbed the "Period of Rules Committees and Conferences".[11]
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On November 6, 1869,Rutgers University facedPrinceton University, then known as the College of New Jersey, inthe first collegiate football game. The game more closely resembled soccer thanfootball as it is played in the 21st century. It was played with around ball, and used a set of rules suggested by Rutgers captainWilliam J. Leggett, based onThe Football Association'sfirst set of rules, which were an early attempt by the former pupils of England's public schools, to unify the rules of their various public schools.[9][12][13][14]
The game was played at a Rutgers Field inNew Brunswick, New Jersey. Two teams of 25 players attempted to score by kicking the ball into the opposing team's goal. Throwing or carrying the ball was not allowed, but there was plenty of physical contact between players. The first team to reach six goals was declared the winner. Rutgers won by a score of six to four. A rematch was played at Princeton a week later under Princeton's own set of rules (one notable difference was the awarding of a "free kick" to any player that caught the ball on the fly, which was a feature adopted from The Football Association's rules; thefair catch kick rule has survived through to modern American game). Princeton won that game by a score of 8 – 0.Columbia joined the series in 1870 and by 1872 several schools were fielding intercollegiate teams, including Yale andStevens Institute of Technology.[9]
Columbia University was the third school to field a team. The Lions traveled from New York City to New Brunswick on November 12, 1870, and were defeated by Rutgers 6 to 3. The game suffered from disorganization and the players kicked and battled each other as much as the ball. Later in 1870, Princeton and Rutgers played again with Princeton defeating Rutgers 6–0. This game's violence caused such an outcry that no games at all were played in 1871. Football came back in 1872, when Columbia played Yale for the first time. The Yale team was coached and captained by David Schley Schaff, who had learned to play football while attendingRugby School. Schaff himself was injured and unable to play the game, but Yale won the game 3–0 nonetheless. Later in 1872, Stevens Tech became the fifth school to field a team. Stevens lost to Columbia, but beat both New York University and City College of New York during the following year.
By 1873, the college students playing football had made significant efforts to standardize their fledgling game. Teams had been scaled down from 25 players to 20. The only way to score was still to bat or kick the ball through the opposing team's goal, and the game was played in two 45-minute halves on fields 140 yards long and 70 yards wide. On October 20, 1873, representatives from Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and Rutgers met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City to codify the first set of intercollegiate football rules. Before this meeting, each school had its own set of rules and games were usually played using the home team's own particular code. At this meeting, a list of rules, based more on the Football Association's rules than the rules of the recently foundedRugby Football Union, was drawn up for intercollegiate football games.[9]
Old "Football Fightum" had been resurrected atHarvard in 1872, when Harvard resumed playing football. Harvard, however, preferred to play a rougher version of football called "the Boston Game" in which the kicking of a round ball was the most prominent feature though a player could run with the ball, pass it, or dribble it (known as "babying"). The man with the ball could be tackled, although hitting, tripping, "hacking" and other unnecessary roughness was prohibited. There was no limit to the number of players, but there were typically ten to fifteen per side. A player could carry the ball only when being pursued.
As a result of this, Harvard refused to attend the rules conference organized by Rutgers, Princeton and Columbia at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City on October 20, 1873, to agree on a set of rules and regulations that would allow them to play a form of football that was essentially Association football; and continued to play under its own code. While Harvard's voluntary absence from the meeting made it hard for them to schedule games against other American universities, it agreed to a challenge to play the rugby team ofMcGill University, fromMontreal, in a two-game series. It was agreed that two games would be played on Harvard's Jarvis baseball field inCambridge, Massachusetts on May 14 and 15, 1874: one to be played under Harvard rules, another under the stricterrugby regulations of McGill. Jarvis Field was at the time a patch of land at the northern point of the Harvard campus, bordered by Everett and Jarvis Streets to the north and south, and Oxford Street and Massachusetts Avenue to the east and west. Harvard beat McGill in the "Boston Game" on the Thursday and held McGill to a 0–0 tie on the Friday. The Harvard students took to the rugby rules and adopted them as their own,[9][15][16] The games featured a round ball instead of a rugby-style oblong ball.[16] This series of games represents an important milestone in the development of the modern game of American football.[17][18] In October 1874, the Harvard team once again traveled to Montreal to play McGill in rugby, where they won by three tries.
In as much as Rugby football had been transplanted to Canada from England, the McGill team played under a set of rules which allowed a player to pick up the ball and run with it whenever he wished. Another rule, unique to McGill, was to counttries (the act of grounding the football past the opposing team's goal line; there was no end zone during this time), as well as goals, in the scoring. In the Rugby rules of the time, a try only provided the attempt to kick a free goal from the field. If the kick was missed, the try did not score any points itself.
Harvard quickly took a liking to the rugby game, and its use of thetry which, until that time, was not used in American football. The try would later evolve into the score known as thetouchdown. On June 4, 1875, Harvard facedTufts University in the first game between two American colleges played under rules similar to the McGill/Harvard contest, which was won by Tufts 1–0.[19] The rules included each side fielding 11 men at any given time, the ball was advanced by kicking or carrying it, and tackles of the ball carrier stopped play – actions of which have carried over to the modern version of football played today.[20]
Harvard later challenged its closest rival, Yale, to which the Bulldogs accepted. The two teams agreed to play under a set of rules called the "Concessionary Rules", which involved Harvard conceding something to Yale's soccer and Yale conceding a great deal to Harvard's rugby. They decided to play with 15 players on each team. On November 13, 1875, Yale and Harvard played each other for the first time ever, where Harvard won 4–0. At the firstThe Game (as the annual contest between Harvard and Yale came to be named) the future "father of American football"Walter Camp was among the 2000 spectators in attendance. Walter, a native ofNew Britain, Connecticut, would enroll at Yale the next year. He was torn between an admiration for Harvard's style of play and the misery of the Yale defeat, and became determined to avenge Yale's defeat. Spectators from Princeton also carried the game back home, where it quickly became the most popular version of football.[9]
On November 23, 1876, representatives from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia met at theMassasoit House hotel inSpringfield, Massachusetts to standardize a new code of rules based on the rugby game first introduced to Harvard by McGill University in 1874. Three of the schools—Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton—formed the Intercollegiate Football Association, as a result of the meeting. Yale initially refused to join this association because of a disagreement over the number of players to be allowed per team (relenting in 1879) and Rutgers were not invited to the meeting. The rules that they agreed upon were essentially those ofrugby union at the time with the exception that points be awarded for scoring atry, not just theconversion afterwards (extra point). Incidentally, rugby was to make a similar change to its scoring system 10 years later.[21]
Walter Camp is widely considered to be the most important figure in the development of American football.[12][13][21] As a youth, he excelled in sports liketrack, baseball, and association football, and after enrolling atYale in 1876, he earned varsity honors in every sport the school offered.[21]
Following the introduction of rugby-style rules to American football, Camp became a fixture at the Massasoit House conventions where rules were debated and changed. Dissatisfied with what seemed to him to be a disorganized mob, he proposed his first rule change at the first meeting he attended in 1878: a reduction from fifteen players to eleven. The motion was rejected at that time but passed in 1880. The effect was to open up the game and emphasize speed over strength. Camp's most famous change, the establishment of theline of scrimmage and thesnap fromcenter toquarterback, was also passed in 1880. Originally, the snap was executed with the foot of the center. Later changes made it possible to snap the ball with the hands, either through the air or by a direct hand-to-hand pass.[21]Rugby league followed Camp's example, and in 1906 introduced theplay-the-ball rule, which greatly resembled Camp's early scrimmage and center-snap rules. In 1966, rugby league introduced a four-tackle rule (changed in 1972 to a six-tackle rule) based on Camp's early down-and-distance rules.
Camp's new scrimmage rules revolutionized the game, though not always as intended. Princeton, in particular, used scrimmage play to slow the game, making incremental progress towards the end zone during eachdown. Rather than increase scoring, which had been Camp's original intent, the rule was exploited to maintain control of the ball for the entire game, resulting in slow, unexciting contests. At the 1882 rules meeting, Camp proposed that a team be required to advance the ball a minimum of five yards within three downs. These down-and-distance rules, combined with the establishment of the line of scrimmage, transformed the game from a variation of rugby football into the distinct sport of American football.[21]
Camp was central to several more significant rule changes that came to define American football. In 1881, the field was reduced in size to its modern dimensions of 120 by 531⁄3 yards (109.7 by 48.8 meters). Several times in 1883, Camp tinkered with the scoring rules, finally arriving at four points for a touchdown, two points forkicks after touchdowns, two points for safeties, and five forfield goals. Camp's innovations in the area of point scoring influenced rugby union's move to point scoring in 1890.[citation needed] In 1887, game time was set at two-halves of 45 minutes each. Also in 1887, two paid officials—areferee and anumpire—were mandated for each game. A year later, the rules were changed to allow tackling below the waist, and in 1889, the officials were given whistles and stopwatches.[21]
After leaving Yale in 1882, Camp was employed by the New Haven Clock Company until his death in 1925. Though no longer a player, he remained a fixture at annual rules meetings for most of his life, and he personally selected an annualAll-American team every year from 1889 through 1924. TheWalter Camp Football Foundation continues to select All-American teams in his honor.[22]
| Era | Touchdown | Field goal | Conversion (kick) | Conversion (touchdown) | Safety | Conversion safety | Defensive conversion |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1883 | 2 | 5 | 4 | – | 1 | – | – |
| 1883–1897 | 4 | 2 | 2 | ||||
| 1898–1903 | 5 | 1 | |||||
| 1904–1908 | 4 | ||||||
| 1909–1911 | 3 | ||||||
| 1912–1957 | 6 | ||||||
| 1958–1987 | 2 | 1 | |||||
| 1988–present | 2 | ||||||
| Note: For brief periods in the late 19th century, some penalties awarded one or more points for the opposing teams, and some teams in the late 19th and early 20th centuries chose to negotiate their own scoring system for individual games. | |||||||
College football expanded greatly during the last two decades of the 19th century. Several majorrivalries date from this time period.
November 1890 was an active time in the sport. InBaldwin City, Kansas, on November 22, 1890, college football was first played in the state ofKansas.Baker beatKansas 22–9.[24] On the 27th,Vanderbilt playedNashville (Peabody) atAthletic Park and won 40–0. It was the first time organized football played in the state ofTennessee.[25] The 29th also saw the first instance of theArmy–Navy Game.Navy won 24–0.
Rutgers was first to extend the reach of the game. An intercollegiate game was first played in the state of New York when Rutgers playedColumbia on November 2, 1872. It was also the first scoreless tie in the history of the fledgling sport.[26]Yale football starts the same year and has its first match against Columbia, the nearest college to play football. It took place atHamilton Park inNew Haven and was the first game in New England. The game was essentially soccer with 20-man sides, played on a field 400 by 250 feet. Yale wins 3–0, Tommy Sherman scoring the first goal and Lew Irwin the other two.[27]
After the first game against Harvard, Tufts took its squad toBates College inLewiston, Maine for the first football game played inMaine.[28] This occurred on November 6, 1875.
Penn's Athletic Association was looking to pick "a twenty" to play a game of football against Columbia. This "twenty" never played Columbia, but did play twice against Princeton.[29] Princeton won both games 6 to 0. The first of these happened on November 11, 1876, inPhiladelphia and was the first intercollegiate game in the state ofPennsylvania.
Brown entered the intercollegiate game in 1878.[30]
The first game where one team scored over 100 points happened on October 25, 1884, whenYale routedDartmouth 113–0. It was also the first time one team scored over 100 points and the opposing team was shut out.[31] The next week, Princeton outscored Lafayette 140 to 0.[32]
The first intercollegiate game in the state of Vermont happened on November 6, 1886, betweenDartmouth andVermont atBurlington, Vermont. Dartmouth won 91 to 0.[33]
Penn State played its first season in 1887,[34] but had no head coach for their first five years, from 1887 to 1891.[34] The teams played its home games on theOld Main lawn on campus inState College, Pennsylvania. They compiled a 12–8–1 record in these seasons, playing as an independent from 1887 to 1890.
In 1891, thePennsylvania Intercollegiate Football Association (PIFA) was formed. It consisted ofBucknell University,Dickinson College,Franklin & Marshall College,Haverford College, Penn State, andSwarthmore College.Lafayette College, andLehigh University were excluded because it was felt they would dominate the Association. Penn State won the championship with a 4–1–0 record. Bucknell's record was 3–1–1 (losing to Franklin & Marshall and tying Dickinson). The Association was dissolved prior to the 1892 season.[34]
The firstnighttime football game was played inMansfield, Pennsylvania on September 28, 1892, betweenMansfield State Normal andWyoming Seminary and ended at halftime in a 0–0 tie.[35] The Army–Navy game of 1893 saw the first documented use of afootball helmet by a player in a game.Joseph M. Reeves had a crude leather helmet made by a shoemaker inAnnapolis and wore it in the game after being warned by his doctor that he risked death if he continued to play football after suffering an earlier kick to the head.[36]
In 1879, theUniversity of Michigan became the first school west of Pennsylvania to establish a college football team. On May 30, 1879, Michigan beatRacine College 1–0 in a game played in Chicago. TheChicago Daily Tribune called it "the first rugby-football game to be played west of theAlleghenies."[37] Other Midwestern schools soon followed suit, including theUniversity of Chicago,Northwestern University, and theUniversity of Minnesota. The first western team to travel east was the1881 Michigan team, which played at Harvard, Yale and Princeton.[38][39] The nation's first college football league, the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives (also known as the Western Conference), a precursor to theBig Ten Conference, was founded in 1895.[40]
Led by coachFielding H. Yost, Michigan became the first "western" national power. From 1901 to 1905, Michigan had a 56-game undefeated streak that included a 1902 trip to play in the first college footballbowl game, which later became theRose Bowl Game. During this streak, Michigan scored 2,831 points while allowing only 40.[41]
Organized intercollegiate football was first played in the state ofMinnesota on September 30, 1882, whenHamline was convinced to playMinnesota. Minnesota won 2 to 0.[42] It was the first game west of theMississippi River.
November 30, 1905, sawChicago defeat Michigan 2 to 0. Dubbed "The First Greatest Game of the Century",[43] it broke Michigan's 56-game unbeaten streak and marked the end of the "Point-a-Minute" years.
Organized collegiate football was first played in the state ofVirginia and the south on November 2, 1873, inLexington betweenWashington and Lee andVMI. Washington and Lee won 4–2.[44] Some industrious students of the two schools organized a game for October 23, 1869, but it was rained out.[45] Students of theUniversity of Virginia were playing pickup games of the kicking-style of football as early as 1870, and some accounts even claim it organized a game against Washington and Lee College in 1871; but no record has been found of the score of this contest. Due to scantiness of records of the prior matches some will claimVirginia v. Pantops Academy November 13, 1887, as the first game in Virginia.
On April 9, 1880, atStoll Field,Transylvania University (then called Kentucky University) beatCentre College by the score of13+3⁄4–0 in what is often considered the first recorded game played in theSouth.[46] The first game of "scientific football" in the South was the first instance of theVictory Bell rivalry betweenNorth Carolina andDuke (then known as Trinity College) held onThanksgiving Day, 1888, at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds inRaleigh, North Carolina.[47]
On November 13, 1887, theVirginia Cavaliers and Pantops Academy fought to a scoreless tie in the first organized football game in the state ofVirginia.[48] Students at UVA were playing pickup games of the kicking-style of football as early as 1870, and some accounts even claim that some industrious ones organized a game againstWashington and Lee College in 1871, just two years after Rutgers and Princeton's historic first game in 1869. But no record has been found of the score of this contest. Washington and Lee also claims a 4 to 2 win overVMI in 1873.[44]
On October 18, 1888, theWake Forest Demon Deacons defeated the North Carolina Tar Heels 6 to 4 in the first intercollegiate game in the state ofNorth Carolina.[49]
On December 14, 1889,Wofford defeatedFurman 5 to 1 in the first intercollegiate game in the state ofSouth Carolina. The game featured no uniforms, no positions, and the rules were formulated before the game.[50]
January 30, 1892, saw the first football game played in theDeep South when theGeorgia Bulldogs defeatedMercer 50–0 atHerty Field.
The beginnings of the contemporarySoutheastern Conference andAtlantic Coast Conference start in 1894. TheSouthern Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SIAA) was founded on December 21, 1894, byWilliam Dudley, a chemistry professor atVanderbilt.[51] The original members wereAlabama,Auburn,Georgia,Georgia Tech,North Carolina,Sewanee, andVanderbilt.Clemson,Cumberland,Kentucky,LSU,Mercer,Mississippi,Mississippi A&M (Mississippi State),Southwestern Presbyterian University,Tennessee,Texas,Tulane, and theUniversity of Nashville joined the following year in 1895 as invited charter members.[52] The conference was originally formed for "the development and purification of college athletics throughout the South".[53]
The firstforward pass in football likely occurred on October 26, 1895, in a game between Georgia andNorth Carolina when, out of desperation, the ball was thrown by the North Carolina back Joel Whitaker instead of punted andGeorge Stephens caught the ball.[54] On November 9, 1895,John Heisman executed a hidden ball trick using quarterbackReynolds Tichenor to getAuburn's only touchdown in a 6 to 9 loss toVanderbilt. It was the first game in the south decided by a field goal.[55] Heisman later used the trick againstPop Warner's Georgia team. Warner picked up the trick and later used it at Cornell against Penn State in 1897.[56] He then used it in 1903 at Carlisle against Harvard and garnered national attention.
The1899 Sewanee Tigers are one of the all-time great teams of the early sport. The team went 12–0, outscoring opponents 322 to 10. Known as the "Iron Men", with just 13 men they had a six-day road trip with five shutout wins overTexas A&M;Texas;Tulane;LSU; andOle Miss. It is recalled memorably with the phrase "... and on the seventh day they rested."[57][58]Grantland Rice called them "the most durable football team I ever saw."[59]
Organized intercollegiate football was first played in the state of Florida in 1901.[60] A 7-game series between intramural teams from Stetson and Forbes occurred in 1894. The first intercollegiate game between official varsity teams was played on November 22, 1901. Stetson beat Florida Agricultural College at Lake City, one of the four forerunners of the University of Florida, 6–0, in a game played as part of the Jacksonville Fair.[61]
On September 27, 1902,Georgetown beat Navy 4 to 0. It is claimed by Georgetown authorities as the game with the first ever "roving center" orlinebacker whenPercy Given stood up, in contrast to the usual tale ofGermany Schulz.[62] The first linebacker in the South is often considered to beFrank Juhan.
OnThanksgiving Day 1903, a game was scheduled inMontgomery, Alabama between the best teams from each region of theSouthern Intercollegiate Athletic Association for an "SIAA championship game", pittingCumberland against Heisman'sClemson. The game ended in an 11–11 tie causing many teams to claim the title. Heisman pressed hardest for Cumberland to get the claim of champion. It was his last game as Clemson head coach.[63]
1904 saw big coaching hires in the south:Mike Donahue at Auburn,John Heisman at Georgia Tech, andDan McGugin at Vanderbilt were all hired that year. Both Donahue and McGugin just came from the north that year, Donahue from Yale and McGugin from Michigan, and were among the initial inductees of theCollege Football Hall of Fame. The undefeated1904 Vanderbilt team scored an average of 52.7 points per game, the most in college football that season, and allowed just four points.
The first college football game inOklahoma Territory occurred on November 7, 1895, when the "Oklahoma City Terrors" defeated theOklahoma Sooners 34 to 0. The Terrors were a mix of Methodist college and high school students.[64] The Sooners did not manage a single first down. By next season, Oklahoma coachJohn A. Harts had left to prospect for gold in the Arctic.[65][66] Organized football was first played in the territory on November 29, 1894, between the Oklahoma City Terrors and Oklahoma City High School. The high school won 24 to 0.[65]
TheUniversity of Southern California first fielded an American football team in 1888. Playing its first game on November 14 of that year against the Alliance Athletic Club, in which USC gained a 16–0 victory. Frank Suffel andHenry H. Goddard were playing coaches for the first team which was put together by quarterback Arthur Carroll; who in turn volunteered to make the pants for the team and later became a tailor.[67] USC faced its first collegiate opponent the following year in fall 1889, playingSt. Vincent's College to a 40–0 victory.[67] In 1893, USC joined the Intercollegiate Football Association of Southern California (the forerunner of theSCIAC), which was composed of USC,Occidental College,Throop Polytechnic Institute (Caltech), andChaffey College.Pomona College was invited to enter, but declined to do so. An invitation was also extended toLos Angeles High School.[68]
In 1891, the firstStanford football team was hastily organized and played a four-game season beginning in January 1892 with no official head coach. Following the season, Stanford captain John Whittemore wrote toYale coachWalter Camp asking him to recommend a coach for Stanford. To Whittemore's surprise, Camp agreed to coach the team himself, on the condition that he finish the season at Yale first.[69] As a result of Camp's late arrival, Stanford played just three official games, against San Francisco'sOlympic Club and rivalCalifornia. The team also played exhibition games against two Los Angeles area teams that Stanford does not include in official results.[70][71] Camp returned to the East Coast following the season, then returned to coach Stanford in1894 and1895.
On December 25, 1894, Amos Alonzo Stagg'sChicago Maroons agreed to play Camp'sStanford football team in San Francisco in the first postseason intersectional contest, foreshadowing the modernbowl game.[72][73] Future presidentHerbert Hoover was Stanford's student financial manager.[74] Chicago won 24 to 4.[75] Stanford won a rematch in Los Angeles on December 29 by 12 to 0.[76]
TheBig Game between Stanford and California is the oldest college football rivalry in the West. The first game was played on San Francisco'sHaight Street Grounds on March 19, 1892, with Stanford winning 14–10. The term "Big Game" was first used in 1900, when it was played on Thanksgiving Day in San Francisco. During that game, a large group of men and boys, who were observing from the roof of the nearby S.F. and Pacific Glass Works, fell into the fiery interior of the building when the roof collapsed, resulting in 13 dead and 78 injured.[77][78][79][80][81] On December 4, 1900, the last victim of the disaster (Fred Lilly) died, bringing the death toll to 22; and, to this day, the "Thanksgiving Day Disaster" remains the deadliest accident to kill spectators at a U.S. sporting event.[82]
TheUniversity of Oregon began playing American football in 1894 and played its first game on March 24, 1894, defeatingAlbany College 44–3 under head coachCal Young.[83][84][85] Cal Young left after that first game and J.A. Church took over the coaching position in the fall for the rest of the season. Oregon finished the season with two additional losses and a tie, but went undefeated the following season, winning all four of its games under head coach Percy Benson.[85][86][87] In 1899, the Oregon football team left the state for the first time, playing theCalifornia Golden Bears inBerkeley, California.[83]
American football atOregon State University started in 1893 shortly after athletics were initially authorized at the college. Athletics were banned at the school in May 1892, but when the strict school president, Benjamin Arnold, died, President John Bloss reversed the ban.[88] Bloss's son William started the first team, on which he served as both coach and quarterback.[89] The team's first game was an easy 63–0 defeat over the home team, Albany College.
In May 1900, Yost was hired as the football coach atStanford University,[90] and, after traveling home to West Virginia, he arrived inPalo Alto, California, on August 21, 1900.[91] Yost led the 1900 Stanford team to a 7–2–1, outscoring opponents 154 to 20. The next year in 1901, Yost was hired byCharles A. Baird as the head football coach for theMichigan Wolverines football team. On January 1, 1902,Yost's dominating1901 Michigan Wolverines football team agreed to play a 3–1–2 team fromStanford University in the inaugural "Tournament East-West football game" what is now known as theRose Bowl Game by a score of 49–0 after Stanford captain Ralph Fisher requested to quit with eight minutes remaining.
The1905 season marked the first meeting between Stanford and USC. Consequently, Stanford is USC's oldest existing rival.[92] TheBig Game between Stanford andCal on November 11, 1905, was the first played atStanford Field, with Stanford winning 12–5.[69]
In 1906, citing concerns about the violence in American Football, universities on theWest Coast, led byCalifornia andStanford, replaced the sport with rugby union.[93] At the time, the future of American football was very much in doubt and these schools believed that rugby union would eventually be adopted nationwide.[93] Other schools followed suit and also made the switch includedNevada,St. Mary's,Santa Clara, andUSC (in 1911).[93] However, due to the perception that West Coast football was inferior to the game played on theEast Coast anyway, East Coast and Midwest teams shrugged off the loss of the teams and continued playing American football.[93] With no nationwide movement, the available pool of rugby teams to play remained small.[93] The schools scheduled games against local club teams and reached out to rugby union powers in Australia, New Zealand, and especially, due to its proximity, Canada. The annualBig Game between Stanford and California continued as rugby, with the winner invited by theBritish Columbia Rugby Union to a tournament in Vancouver over the Christmas holidays, with the winner of that tournament receiving the Cooper Keith Trophy.[93][94][95]
During 12 seasons of playing rugby union, Stanford was remarkably successful: the team had three undefeated seasons, three one-loss seasons, and an overall record of 94 wins, 20 losses, and 3 ties for a winning percentage of .816. However, after a few years, the school began to feel the isolation of its newly adopted sport, which was not spreading as many had hoped. Students and alumni began to clamor for a return to American football to allow wider intercollegiate competition.[93] The pressure at rival California was stronger (especially as the school had not been as successful in the Big Game as they had hoped), and in 1915 California returned to American football. As reasons for the change, the school cited rule change back to American football, the overwhelming desire of students and supporters to play American football, interest in playing other East Coast and Midwest schools, and a patriotic desire to play an "American" game.[93] California's return to American football increased the pressure on Stanford to also change back in order to maintain the rivalry. Stanford played its 1915, 1916, and 1917 "Big Games" as rugby union againstSanta Clara and California's football "Big Game" in those years was againstWashington, but both schools desired to restore the old traditions.[93] The onset of American involvement in World War I gave Stanford an out: In 1918, the Stanford campus was designated as the Students' Army Training Corps headquarters for all of California,Nevada, andUtah, and the commanding officer Sam M. Parker decreed that American football was the appropriate athletic activity to train soldiers and rugby union was dropped.[93]
TheUniversity of Colorado began playing American football in 1890.Colorado found much success in its early years, winning eight Colorado Football Association Championships (1894–97, 1901–08).
The following was taken from theSilver & Gold newspaper of December 16, 1898. It was a recollection of the birth of Colorado football written by one of CU's original gridders, John C. Nixon, also the school's second captain. It appears here in its original form:
At the beginning of the first semester in the fall of '90 the boys rooming at the dormitory on the campus of the U. of C. being afflicted with a super-abundance of penned up energy, or perhaps having recently drifted from under the parental wing and delighting in their newly found freedom, decided among other wild schemes, to form an athletic association. Messrs Carney, Whittaker, Layton and others, who at that time constituted a majority of the male population of the University, called a meeting of the campus boys in the old medical building. Nixon was elected president and Holden secretary of the association.
It was voted that the officers constitute a committee to provide uniform suits in which to play what was called "association football". Suits of flannel were ultimately procured and paid for assessments on the members of the association and generous contributions from members of the faculty. ...
The Athletic Association should now invigorate its base-ball and place it at par with its football team; and it certainly has the material with which to do it. The U of C should henceforth lead the state and possibly the west in athletic sports. ...
The style of football playing has altered considerably; by the old rules, all men in front of the runner with the ball, were offside, consequently we could not send backs through and break the line ahead of the ball as is done at present. The notorious V was then in vogue, which gave a heavy team too much advantage. The mass plays being now barred, skill on the football field is more in demand than mere weight and strength.
— John C. Nixon,Silver & Gold, December 16, 1898[96]
In 1909, theRocky Mountain Athletic Conference was founded, featuring four members: Colorado,Colorado College,Colorado School of Mines, andColorado Agricultural College. TheUniversity of Denver and theUniversity of Utah joined the RMAC in 1910. For its first thirty years, the RMAC was considered a major conference equivalent to today's Division I, before 7 larger members left and formed theMountain States Conference (also called the Skyline Conference).
College football increased in popularity through the remainder of the 19th and early 20th century. It also became increasingly violent. Between 1890 and 1905, 330 college athletes died as a direct result of injuries sustained on the football field. These deaths could be attributed to the mass formations and gang tackling that characterized the sport in its early years.
No sport is wholesome in which ungenerous or mean acts which easily escape detection contribute to victory.
The 1894 Harvard–Yale game, known as the "Hampden Park Blood Bath", resulted in crippling injuries for four players; the contest was suspended until 1897. The annual Army–Navy game was suspended from 1894 to 1898 for similar reasons.[98] One of the major problems was the popularity of mass-formations like theflying wedge, in which a large number of offensive players charged as a unit against a similarly arranged defense. The resultant collisions often led to serious injuries and sometimes even death.[99] Georgia fullbackRichard Von Albade Gammon notably died on the field from concussions received against Virginia in 1897, causing Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Mercer to suspend their football programs.
The situation came to a head in 1905 when there were 19 fatalities nationwide. PresidentTheodore Roosevelt reportedly threatened to shut down the game if drastic changes were not made.[100] However, the threat by Roosevelt to eliminate football is disputed by sports historians. What is absolutely certain is that on October 9, 1905, Roosevelt held a meeting of football representatives fromHarvard,Yale, andPrinceton. Though he lectured on eliminating and reducing injuries, he never threatened to ban football. He also lacked the authority to abolish football and was, in fact, actually a fan of the sport and wanted to preserve it. The President's sons were also playing football at the college andsecondary levels at the time.[101]
Meanwhile,John H. Outland held anexperimental game inWichita, Kansas that reduced the number of scrimmage plays to earn a first down from four to three in an attempt to reduce injuries.[102] TheLos Angeles Times reported an increase in punts and considered the game much safer than regular play but that the new rule was not "conducive to the sport".[103] In 1906, President Roosevelt organized a meeting among thirteen school leaders at theWhite House to find solutions to make the sport safer for the athletes. Because the college officials could not agree upon a change in rules, it was decided over the course of several subsequent meetings that an external governing body should be responsible. Finally, on December 28, 1905, 62 schools met in New York City to discuss rule changes to make the game safer. As a result of this meeting, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States was formed in 1906. The IAAUS was the original rule-making body of college football, but would go on to sponsor championships in other sports. The IAAUS would get its current name ofNational Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in 1910,[104] and still sets rules governing the sport.[104][105]
The rules committee considered widening the playing field to "open up" the game, butHarvard Stadium (the first large permanent football stadium) had recently been built at great expense; it would be rendered useless by a wider field. The rules committee legalized theforward pass instead. Though it was underused for years, this proved to be one of the most important rule changes in the establishment of the modern game.[106] Another rule change banned "mass momentum" plays (many of which, like the infamous "flying wedge", were sometimes literally deadly).
As a result of the 1905–1906 reforms, mass formation plays became illegal andforward passes legal.Bradbury Robinson, playing for visionary coachEddie Cochems atSaint Louis University, threw the first legal pass in a September 5, 1906, game againstCarroll College atWaukesha. Other important changes, formally adopted in 1910, were the requirements that at least seven offensive players be on the line of scrimmage at the time of the snap, that there be no pushing or pulling, and that interlocking interference (arms linked or hands on belts and uniforms) was not allowed. These changes greatly reduced the potential for collision injuries.[107] Several coaches emerged who took advantage of these sweeping changes.Amos Alonzo Stagg introduced such innovations as thehuddle, the tackling dummy, and the pre-snap shift.[108] Other coaches, such asPop Warner andKnute Rockne, introduced new strategies that still remain part of the game.
Besides these coaching innovations, several rules changes during the first third of the 20th century had a profound impact on the game, mostly in opening up the passing game. In 1914, the first roughing-the-passer penalty was implemented. In 1918, the rules on eligible receivers were loosened to allow eligible players to catch the ball anywhere on the field—previously strict rules were in place allowing passes to only certain areas of the field.[109] Scoring rules also changed during this time: field goals were lowered to three points in 1909[13] and touchdowns raised to six points in 1912.[110]
Star players that emerged in the early 20th century includeJim Thorpe,Red Grange, andBronko Nagurski; these three made the transition to the fledgling NFL and helped turn it into a successful league. SportswriterGrantland Rice helped popularize the sport with his poetic descriptions of games and colorful nicknames for the game's biggest players, including Notre Dame's "Four Horsemen" backfield andFordham University's linemen, known as the "Seven Blocks of Granite".[111]
In 1907 atChampaign, Illinois Chicago andIllinois played in the first game to have a halftime show featuring amarching band.[112] Chicago won 42–6. OnNovember 25, 1911Kansas played atMissouri in the firsthomecoming football game.[113] The game was "broadcast" play-by-play over telegraph to at least 1,000 fans inLawrence, Kansas.[114] It ended in a 3–3 tie. The game betweenWest Virginia andPittsburgh on October 8, 1921, saw the first live radio broadcast of a college football game when Harold W. Arlin announced that year'sBackyard Brawl played atForbes Field onKDKA. Pitt won 21–13.[115] On October 28, 1922, Princeton and Chicago played the first game to be nationally broadcast on radio. Princeton won 21–18 in a hotly contested game which had Princeton dubbed the "Team of Destiny".[116]
One publication claims "The first scouting done in the South was in 1905, whenDan McGugin and CaptainInnis Brown, of Vanderbilt went toAtlanta to seeSewanee playGeorgia Tech."[117]Fuzzy Woodruff claimsDavidson was the first in the south to throw a legal forward pass in 1906. The following season sawVanderbilt execute adouble pass play to set up the touchdown that beatSewanee in a meeting of the unbeaten for the SIAA championship.Grantland Rice cited this event as the greatest thrill he ever witnessed in his years of watching sports.[118] Vanderbilt coachDan McGugin inSpalding's Football Guide's summation of the season in the SIAA wrote "The standing. First, Vanderbilt; second, Sewanee, a might good second;" and thatAubrey Lanier "came near winning the Vanderbilt game by his brilliant dashes after receiving punts."[119]Bob Blake threw the final pass to centerStein Stone, catching it near the goal among defenders.Honus Craig then ran in the winning touchdown.
Using the "jump shift" offense,John Heisman'sGeorgia Tech Golden Tornado won222 to 0 overCumberland on October 7, 1916, atGrant Field in the most lopsided victory in college football history.[120] Tech went on a 33-game winning streak during this period. The1917 team was the firstnational champion from theSouth, led by a powerful backfield. It also had the first two players from theDeep South selected first-team All-American inWalker Carpenter andEverett Strupper.Pop Warner'sPittsburgh Panthers were also undefeated, but declined a challenge by Heisman to a game. When Heisman left Tech after 1919, his shift was still employed by protégéWilliam Alexander.
In 1906, Vanderbilt defeatedCarlisle 4 to 0, the result of a Bob Blake field goal.[121][122] In 1907 Vanderbilt fought Navy to a 6 to 6 tie. In 1910 Vanderbilt held defending national champion Yale to a scoreless tie.[122]
Helping Georgia Tech's claim to a title in 1917, theAuburn Tigers held undefeated,Chic Harley-led Big Ten championOhio State to a scoreless tie the week before Georgia Tech beat the Tigers 68 to 7. The next season, with many players gone due to World War I, a game was finally scheduled atForbes Field withPittsburgh. The Panthers, led by freshmanTom Davies, defeatedGeorgia Tech 32 to 0. Tech centerBum Day was the first player on a Southern team ever selected first-team All-American byWalter Camp.
1917 saw the rise of another Southern team inCentre ofDanville, Kentucky. In 1921Bo McMillin-ledCentre upset defending national champion Harvard6 to 0 in what is widely considered one of the greatest upsets in college football history. The next year Vanderbilt fought Michigan to ascoreless tie at the inaugural game atDudley Field (now Vanderbilt Stadium), the first stadium in the South made exclusively for college football. Michigan coachFielding Yost and Vanderbilt coachDan McGugin were brothers-in-law, and the latter the protégé of the former. The game featured the season's two best defenses and included a goal line stand by Vanderbilt to preserve the tie. Its result was "a great surprise to the sporting world".[123] Commodore fans celebrated by throwing some 3,000 seat cushions onto the field. The game features prominently in Vanderbilt's history.[124] That same year, Alabama upsetPenn 9 to 7.[125]
Vanderbilt's line coach then wasWallace Wade, who coachedAlabama to the South's firstRose Bowl victory in 1925. This game is commonly referred to as "the game that changed the south".[126] Wade followed up the next season with an undefeated record andRose Bowl tie. Georgia's 1927 "dream and wonder team"defeatedYale for the first time. Georgia Tech, led by Heisman protégéWilliam Alexander, gave the dream and wonder team its only loss, and the next year were national andRose Bowl champions. The Rose Bowl includedRoy Riegels' wrong-way run. On October 12, 1929, Yale lost to Georgia inSanford Stadium in its first trip to the south. Wade's Alabama again won a national championship andRose Bowl in 1930.
Glenn "Pop" Warner coached at several schools throughout his career, including theUniversity of Georgia,Cornell University,University of Pittsburgh,Stanford University,Iowa State University, andTemple University.[127] One of his most famous stints was at theCarlisle Indian Industrial School, where he coachedJim Thorpe, who went on to become the first president of theNational Football League, anOlympic Gold Medalist, and is widely considered one of the best overall athletes in history.[128][129] Warner wrote one of the first important books of football strategy,Football for Coaches and Players, published in 1927.[130] Though the shift was invented by Stagg, Warner'ssingle wing and double wingformations greatly improved upon it; for almost 40 years, these were among the most important formations in football. As part of his single and double wing formations, Warner was one of the first coaches to effectively use the forward pass. Among his other innovations are modern blocking schemes, thethree-point stance, and thereverse play.[127] The youth football league,Pop Warner Little Scholars, was named in his honor.
Knute Rockne rose to prominence in 1913 as anend for theUniversity of Notre Dame, then a largely unknown Midwestern Catholic school. When Army scheduled Notre Dame as a warm-up game, they thought little of the small school. Rockne and quarterbackGus Dorais made innovative use of the forward pass, still at that point a relatively unused weapon, to defeat Army 35–13 and helped establish the school as a national power. Rockne returned to coach the team in 1918, and devised the powerfulNotre Dame Box offense, based on Warner's single wing. He is credited with being the first major coach to emphasize offense over defense. Rockne is also credited with popularizing and perfecting the forward pass, a seldom used play at the time.[131] The1924 team featured theFour Horsemen backfield. In 1927, his complex shifts led directly to a rule change whereby all offensive players had to stop for a full second before the ball could be snapped. Rather than simply a regional team, Rockne's "Fighting Irish" became famous forbarnstorming and played any team at any location. It was during Rockne's tenure that the annualNotre Dame-University of Southern California rivalry began. He led his team to an impressive 105–12–5 record before his premature death in aplane crash in 1931. He was so famous at that point that his funeral was broadcast nationally on radio.[127][132]
In the early 1930s, the college game continued to grow, particularly in theSouth, bolstered by fierce rivalries such as the "South's Oldest Rivalry", between Virginia and North Carolina and the "Deep South's Oldest Rivalry", betweenGeorgia andAuburn. Although before the mid-1920s most national powers came from theNortheast or theMidwest, the trend changed when several teams from the South and the West Coast achieved national success.Wallace William Wade's1925 Alabama team won the1926 Rose Bowl after receiving its first national title andWilliam Alexander's 1928Georgia Tech team defeatedCalifornia in the1929 Rose Bowl. College football quickly became the most popular spectator sport in the South.[133]
Several major modern college football conferences rose to prominence during this time period. TheSouthwest Athletic Conference had been founded in 1915. Consisting mostly of schools from Texas, the conference saw back-to-back national champions withTexas Christian University (TCU) in 1938 andTexas A&M in 1939.[134][135] ThePacific Coast Conference (PCC), a precursor to thePac-12 Conference (Pac-12), had its own back-to-back champion in theUniversity of Southern California which was awarded the title in 1931 and 1932.[134] TheSoutheastern Conference (SEC) formed in 1932 and consisted mostly of schools in theDeep South.[136] As in previous decades, the Big Ten continued to dominate in the 1930s and 1940s, with Minnesota winning 5 titles between 1934 and 1941, and Michigan (1933, 1947, and 1948) andOhio State (1942) also winning titles.[134][137]
As it grew beyond its regional affiliations in the 1930s, college football garnered increased national attention. Four newbowl games were created: theOrange Bowl,Sugar Bowl, theSun Bowl in 1935, and theCotton Bowl in 1937. In lieu of an actual national championship, these bowl games, along with the earlier Rose Bowl, provided a way to match up teams from distant regions of the country that did not otherwise play. In 1936, theAssociated Press (AP) began itsweekly poll of prominent sports writers, ranking all of the nation's college football teams. Since there was no national championship game, the final version of the AP poll was used to determine who was crowned theNational Champion of college football.[138]
The 1930s saw growth in the passing game. Though some coaches, such as GeneralRobert Neyland at Tennessee, continued to eschew its use, several rules changes to the game had a profound effect on teams' ability to throw the ball. In 1934, the rules committee removed two major penalties—a loss of five yards for a second incomplete pass in any series of downs and a loss of possession for an incomplete pass in the end zone—and shrunk the circumference of the ball, making it easier to grip and throw. Players who became famous for taking advantage of the easier passing game included Alabama endDon Hutson and TCU passer"Slingin" Sammy Baugh.[139]
In 1935, New York City'sDowntown Athletic Club awarded the firstHeisman Trophy toUniversity of Chicago halfbackJay Berwanger, who was also the first everNFL draft pick in 1936. The trophy was designed by sculptorFrank Eliscu and modeled afterNew York University playerEd Smith. The trophy recognizes the nation's "most outstanding" college football player and has become one of the most coveted awards in all of American sports.[140]
During World War II, college football players enlisted in thearmed forces, someplaying in Europe during the war. As most of these players had eligibility left on their college careers, some of them returned to college atWest Point, bringing Army back-to-back national titles in 1944 and 1945 under coachRed Blaik.Doc Blanchard (known as "Mr. Inside") andGlenn Davis (known as "Mr. Outside") both won theHeisman Trophy, in 1945 and 1946. On the coaching staff of those 1944–1946 Army teams was futurePro Football Hall of Fame coachVince Lombardi.[137][141]
The 1950s saw the rise of yet moredynasties and power programs.Oklahoma, under coachBud Wilkinson, won three national titles (1950, 1955, 1956) and all tenBig Eight Conference championships in the decade while building a record 47-game winning streak.Woody Hayes led Ohio State to two national titles, in 1954 and 1957, and won threeBig Ten titles. TheMichigan State Spartans were known as the "football factory" during the 1950s, where coachesBiggie Munn andDuffy Daugherty led the Spartans to two national titles and twoBig Ten titles after joining theBig Ten athletically in 1953. Wilkinson and Hayes, along with Robert Neyland of Tennessee, oversaw a revival of the running game in the 1950s. Passing numbers dropped from an average of 18.9 attempts in 1951 to 13.6 attempts in 1955, while teams averaged just shy of 50 running plays per game. Nine out of ten Heisman Trophy winners in the 1950s were runners. Notre Dame, one of the biggest passing teams of the decade, saw a substantial decline in success; the 1950s were the only decade between 1920 and 1990 when the team did not win at least a share of the national title.Paul Hornung, Notre Dame quarterback, did, however, win the Heisman in 1956, becoming the only player from a losing team ever to do so.[142][143]
The1956 Sugar Bowl also gained international attention when Georgia's pro-segregationistGov. Griffin publicly threatenedGeorgia Tech and its PresidentBlake Van Leer over allowing the first African American player to play in a collegiate bowl game in the south.[144]
Following the enormous success of the1958 NFL Championship Game, college football no longer enjoyed the same popularity as the NFL, at least on a national level. While both games benefited from the advent of television, since the late 1950s, the NFL has become a nationally popular sport while college football has maintained strong regional ties.[145][146][147]
As professional football became a national television phenomenon, college football did as well. In the 1950s, Notre Dame, which had a large national following, formed its own network to broadcast its games, but by and large the sport still retained a mostly regional following. In 1952, the NCAA claimed all television broadcasting rights for the games of its member institutions, and it alone negotiated television rights. This situation continued until 1984, when several schools brought a suit under theSherman Antitrust Act; theSupreme Courtruled against the NCAA and schools are now free to negotiate their own television deals.ABC Sports began broadcasting a national Game of the Week in 1966, bringing key matchups and rivalries to a national audience for the first time.[148]
New formations and play sets continued to be developed.Emory Bellard, an assistant coach underDarrell Royal at theUniversity of Texas, developed a three-backoption style offense known as thewishbone. The wishbone is a run-heavy offense that depends on the quarterback making last second decisions on when and to whom to hand or pitch the ball to. Royal went on to teach the offense to other coaches, includingBear Bryant at Alabama,Chuck Fairbanks at Oklahoma andPepper Rodgers atUCLA; who all adapted and developed it to their own tastes.[149] The strategic opposite of the wishbone is thespread offense, developed by professional and college coaches throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Though some schools play a run-based version of the spread, its most common use is as a passing offense designed to "spread" the field both horizontally and vertically.[150] Some teams have managed to adapt with the times to keep winning consistently. In the rankings of themost victorious programs,Michigan,Ohio State, andAlabama ranked first, second, and third in total wins.
| Growth of bowl games 1930–2022[151] | |
| Year | # of games |
|---|---|
| 1930 | 1 |
| 1940 | 5 |
| 1950 | 8 |
| 1960 | 8 |
| 1970 | 8 |
| 1980 | 15 |
| 1990 | 19 |
| 2000 | 25 |
| 2010 | 35 |
| 2022 | 42 (Plus CFP national championship game)[152] |
In 1940, for the highest level of college football, there were only five bowl games (Rose, Orange, Sugar, Sun, and Cotton). By 1950, three more had joined that number and in 1970, there were still only eight major college bowl games. The number grew to eleven in 1976. At the birth of cable television and cable sports networks likeESPN, there were fifteen bowls in 1980. With more national venues and increased available revenue, the bowls saw an explosive growth throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In the thirty years from 1950 to 1980, seven bowl games were added to the schedule. From 1980 to 2008, an additional 20 bowl games were added to the schedule.[151][153] Some have criticized this growth, claiming that the increased number of games has diluted the significance of playing in a bowl game. Yet others have countered that the increased number of games has increased exposure and revenue for a greater number of schools, and see it as a positive development.[154] Teams participating in bowl games also get to practice up to four hours per day or 20 hours per week until their bowl game concludes.[155] There is no limit on the number of practices during the bowl season, so teams that play later in the season (usually ones with more wins) get more opportunity to practice than ones that play earlier. This bowl practice period can be compared to the spring practice schedule when teams can have 15 on-field practice sessions.[156] Many teams that play late in the bowl season use the first few practices for evaluation and development of younger players while resting the starters.[157]
College teams mostly play other similarly sized schools through the NCAA's divisional system.Division I generally consists of the major collegiate athletic powers with larger budgets, more elaborate facilities, and (with the exception of a few conferences such as thePioneer Football League) more athletic scholarships. However, the size of theDivision I schools can vary widely. With the introduction of NIL (players can be directly paid by universities for their name, image and likeness), this widens the gap between the major conferences such as Southeastern Conference (SEC), Big 10 (BIG10), Big 12 (BIG12), Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and the Group of 5 teams in the American Athletic Conference (AAC), Conference USA (CUSA), Mid-American Conference (MAC), Mountain West Conference (MW), and Sun Belt Conference (SBC). The NIL collective from fans/alumnis is significantly larger in the bigger conferences because ofRevenue Sharing. In the larger conferences Revenue Sharing will add an average of 15,394,899 million dollars per team, and the largerPower 4 conference teams will add an average of 20.5 million dollars This only widens the gap between the big and small conferences, making it nearly impossible to win a National Championship as a smallerDivision I school.
Division II primarily consists of smaller public and private institutions that offer fewer scholarships and no Revenue Sharing unlike Division I.Division III institutions also field teams, but do not offer any scholarships tied directly to athletics. However, these teams usually give academic scholarships to aid student athletes.
Football teams in Division I are further divided into theBowl Subdivision (consisting of the largest programs) and theChampionship Subdivision. The Bowl Subdivision has historically not used an organized tournament to determine its champion, and instead teams compete in post-seasonbowl games. That changed with the debut of the four-teamCollege Football Playoff at the end of the 2014 season, However, the NCAA does not operate that tournament, and its winner is not automatically crowned National Champion.
Teams in each of these four divisions are further divided into various regional conferences.
Several organizations operate college football programs outside the jurisdiction of the NCAA:
A college that fields a team in the NCAA is not restricted from fielding teams in club or sprint football, and several colleges field two teams, a varsity (NCAA) squad and a club or sprint squad (no schools, as of 2025, field both cluband sprint teams at the same time).
Although rules for the high school, college, andNFL games are generally consistent, there are several minor differences. Before 2023, a single NCAA Football Rules Committee determined the playing rules for Division I (both Bowl and Championship Subdivisions), II, and III games (theNational Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) is a separate organization, but uses the NCAA rules). As part of an NCAA initiative to give each division more autonomy over its governance, separate rules committees have been established for each NCAA division.
Currently, the NCAA Division I football teams are divided into two divisions – the "football bowl subdivision" (FBS) and the "football championship subdivision"(FCS). As indicated by the name, the FBS teams are eligible to play in post-season bowls. The FCS teams, Division II, Division III, National Junior College teams play in sanctioned tournaments to determine their annual champions. There is not now, and never has been, an NCAA-sanctioned tournament to determine the champion of the top-level football teams.
With the growth of bowl games, it became difficult to determine a national champion in a fair and equitable manner. As conferences became contractually bound to certain bowl games (a situation known as atie-in), match-ups that guaranteed a consensus national champion became increasingly rare.
In 1992, seven conferences and independent Notre Dame formed theBowl Coalition, which attempted to arrange an annual No. 1 versus No. 2 matchup based on the final AP poll standings. The Coalition lasted for three years; however, several scheduling issues prevented much success; tie-ins still took precedence in several cases. For example, the Big Eight and SEC champions could never meet, since they were contractually bound to different bowl games. The coalition also excluded the Rose Bowl, arguably the most prestigious game in the nation, and two major conferences—the Pac-10 and Big Ten—meaning that it had limited success.
In 1995, the Coalition was replaced by theBowl Alliance, which reduced the number of bowl games to host a national championship game to three—theFiesta, Sugar, and Orange Bowls—and the participating conferences to five—theACC,SEC,Southwest,Big Eight, andBig East. It was agreed that the No.1 and No.2 ranked teams gave up their prior bowl tie-ins and were guaranteed to meet in the national championship game, which rotated between the three participating bowls. The system still did not include theBig Ten,Pac-10, or theRose Bowl, and thus still lacked the legitimacy of a true national championship. However, one positive side effect is that if there were three teams at the end of the season vying for a national title, but one of them was aPac-10/Big Ten team bound to theRose Bowl, then there would be no difficulty in deciding which teams to place in the Bowl Alliance "national championship" bowl; if thePac-10 /Big Ten team won theRose Bowl and finished with the same record as whichever team won the other bowl game, they could have a share of the national title. This happened in the final year of the Bowl Alliance, withMichigan winning the1998 Rose Bowl andNebraska winning the1998 Orange Bowl. Without thePac-10/Big Ten team bound to a bowl game, it would be difficult to decide which two teams should play for the national title.
In 1998, a new system was put into place called theBowl Championship Series. For the first time, it included all major conferences (ACC, Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-10, and SEC) and four major bowl games (Rose, Orange, Sugar and Fiesta). The champions of these six conferences, along with two "at-large" selections, were invited to play in the four bowl games. Each year, one of the four bowl games served as a national championship game. Also, a complex system of human polls, computer rankings, and strength of schedule calculations was instituted to rank schools. Based on this ranking system, the No.1 and No.2 teams met each year in the national championship game. Traditional tie-ins were maintained for schools and bowls not part of the national championship. For example, in years when not a part of the national championship, the Rose Bowl still hosted the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions.
The system continued to change, as the formula for ranking teams was tweaked from year to year. At-large teams could be chosen from any of theDivision I-A conferences, though only one selection—Utah in 2005—came from a BCS non-AQ conference. Starting with the 2006 season, a fifth game—simply called theBCS National Championship Game—was added to the schedule, to be played at the site of one of the four BCS bowl games on a rotating basis, one week after the regular bowl game. This opened up the BCS to two additional at-large teams. Also, rules were changed to add the champions of five additional conferences (Conference USA [C-USA], theMid-American Conference [MAC], theMountain West Conference [MW], theSun Belt Conference and theWestern Athletic Conference [WAC]), provided that said champion ranked in the top twelve in the final BCS rankings, or was within the top 16 of the BCS rankings and ranked higher than the champion of at least one of theBCS Automatic Qualifying (AQ) conferences. Several times since this rule change was implemented, schools from non-AQ conferences have played in BCS bowl games. In 2009,Boise State playedTCU in theFiesta Bowl, the first time two schools from non-AQ conferences played each other in a BCS bowl game. The last team from the non-AQ ranks to reach a BCS bowl game in the BCS era wasNorthern Illinois in 2012, which played in (and lost) the2013 Orange Bowl.
The longtime resistance to a playoff system at the FBS level finally ended with the creation of theCollege Football Playoff (CFP) beginning with the 2014 season. The CFP is a multi-team single-elimination tournament (originally four teams; expanded to 12 teams in the 2024 season) whose participants are chosen and seeded by a selection committee. Originally, the semifinals were hosted by two of the group of traditional bowl games known as the New Year's Six, with hosts rotating in a three-year cycle. In the current format, the first round is held at campus sites, with the quarterfinals and semifinals hosted by New Year's Six bowls. In both formats, semifinal winners advance to theCollege Football Playoff National Championship, whose host is determined by open bidding several years in advance.
The 10 FBS conferences are formally and popularly divided into two groups:
Starting in the 2014 season, fourDivision I FBS teams were selected at the end of regular season to compete in a playoff for the FBS national championship. As the playoff got expanded in the offseason following the 2024 season, there had to be a committee gathered to vote on the 12 teams making the expanded playoff. The playoff committee is made up of 12 men and 1 woman.[158] These people were chosen by the “CFP Management Committee” and mostly are made up of past coaches, players and Athletic Directors.[159] They were tasked to choose 12 of the ‘best’ or ‘most qualified’ teams in the country. This was modified prior to the2024 season, allowing twelve teams, four of which being conference champions, to compete for a FBS national championship. The inaugural champions for the four-teamand twelve-team playoff were the2014 Ohio State Buckeyes (four-team) and the2024 Ohio State Buckeyes (twelve-team). TheCollege Football Playoff replaced theBowl Championship Series, which had been used as a selection method to determine the national championship game participants since in the 1998 season. The Ohio State Buckeyes won the most recent playoff 34–23 over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the 2025 College Football Playoff. The inaugural 12 team playoff field consisted of : Oregon, Georgia, Boise State, Arizona State, Texas, Penn State, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Tennessee, Indiana, SMU, and Clemson.
At theDivision I FCS level, the teams participate in a 24-team playoff (most recently expanded from 20 teams in 2013) to determine the national championship. Under the current playoff structure, the top eight teams are all seeded, and receive a bye week in the first round. The highest seed receives automatic home field advantage. Starting in 2013, non-seeded teams can only host a playoff game if both teams involved are unseeded; in such a matchup, the schools must bid for the right to host the game. Selection for the playoffs is determined by a selection committee, although usually a team must have an 8–4 record to even be considered. Losses to an FBS team count against their playoff eligibility, while wins against a Division II opponent do not count towards playoff consideration. Thus, only Division I wins (whether FBS, FCS, or FCS non-scholarship) are considered for playoff selection. The Division I National Championship game is held inFrisco, Texas.
Division II andDivision III of the NCAA also participate in their own respective playoffs, crowning national champions at the end of the season. TheNational Association of Intercollegiate Athletics also holds a playoff.
Unlike other college football divisions and most other sports—collegiate or professional—theFootball Bowl Subdivision, formerly known as Division I-A college football, has historically not employed a playoff system to determine a champion. Instead, it has a series of postseason "bowl games". The annual National Champion in the Football Bowl Subdivision is then instead traditionally determined by a vote of sports writers and other non-players.
This system has been challenged often, beginning with an NCAA committee proposal in 1979 to have a four-team playoff following the bowl games.[162] However, little headway was made in instituting a playoff tournament until 2014, given the entrenched vested economic interests in the various bowls. Although the NCAA publishes lists of claimed FBS-level national champions in its official publications, it has never recognized an official FBS national championship; this policy continues even after the establishment of theCollege Football Playoff (which is not directly run by the NCAA) in 2014. As a result, the official Division I National Champion is the winner of the Football Championship Subdivision, as it is the highest level of football with an NCAA-administered championship tournament. (This also means that FBS student-athletes are the only NCAA athletes who are ineligible for theElite 90 Award, an academic award presented to the upper class player with the highest grade-point average among the teams that advance to the championship final site.)
The first bowl game was the1902 Rose Bowl, played betweenMichigan andStanford; Michigan won 49–0. It ended when Stanford requested and Michigan agreed to end it with 8 minutes on the clock. That game was so lopsided that the game was not played annually until 1916, when the Tournament of Roses decided to reattempt the postseason game. The term "bowl" originates from the shape of theRose Bowl stadium inPasadena, California, which was built in 1923 and resembled the Yale Bowl, built in 1915. This is where the name came into use, as it became known as theRose Bowl Game. Other games came along and used the term "bowl", whether the stadium was shaped like a bowl or not.
At the Division I FBS level, teams must earn the right to bebowl eligible by winning at least 6 games during the season (teams that play 13 games in a season, which is allowed forHawaii and any of its home opponents, must win 7 games). They are then invited to a bowl game based on their conference ranking and the tie-ins that the conference has to each bowl game. For the 2009 season, there were 34 bowl games, so 68 of the 120 Division I FBS teams were invited to play at a bowl. These games are played from mid-December to early January and most of the later bowl games are typically considered more prestigious.
After the Bowl Championship Series, additional all-star bowl games round out the post-season schedule through the beginning of February.
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Partly as a compromise between both bowl game and playoff supporters, the NCAA created theBowl Championship Series (BCS) in 1998 to create a definitive national championship game for college football. The series included the four most prominent bowl games (Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Fiesta Bowl), while the national championship game rotated each year between one of these venues.[163][164] The BCS system was slightly adjusted in 2006, as the NCAA added a fifth game to the series, called the National Championship Game. This allowed the four other BCS bowls to use their normal selection process to select the teams in their games while the top two teams in the BCS rankings would play in the new National Championship Game.
The BCS selection committee used a complicated, and often controversial, computer system to rank all Division I-FBS teams and the top two teams at the end of the season played for the national championship.[165] This computer system, which factored in newspaper polls, online polls, coaches' polls, strength of schedule, and various other factors of a team's season, led to much dispute over whether the two best teams in the country were being selected to play in the National Championship Game.
The BCS ended after the 2013 season and, since the 2014 season, theFBS national champion has been determined[166] by a four-team tournament known as theCollege Football Playoff (CFP). A selection committee of college football experts decides the participating teams. Six major bowl games known as theNew Year's Six (NY6)—theRose,Sugar,Cotton,Orange,Peach, andFiesta Bowls—rotate on a three-year cycle as semi-final games, with the winners advancing to theCollege Football Playoff National Championship.[167] This arrangement was contractually locked in until the 2026 season, but an agreement was reached on CFP expansion to 12 teams effective with the 2024 season.[168]
In the new CFP format, no conferences will receive automatic bids. Playoff berths will be awarded to the top six conference champions in the CFP rankings, plus the top six remaining teams (which may include other conference champions). The top four conference champions receive first-round byes. All first-round games will be played at the home field of the higher seed. The winners of these games advance to meet the top four seeds in the quarterfinals. The NY6 games will host the quarterfinals and semi-finals, rotating so that each bowl game will host two quarterfinals and one semi-final in a three-year cycle. The CFP National Championship will continue to be held at a site determined by open bidding several years in advance.[169]
With college football being a business that brings in over 1 billion dollars a year, there are some points of controversy. Usually corruption is involved with businesses that bring in that much money and college football is no different. The only difference is that the universities are ill-equipped to deal with said corruption.[170][171][172] According to William E. Kirwan, chancellor of theUniversity of Maryland System and co-director of theKnight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, "We've reached a point where big-time intercollegiate athletics is undermining the integrity of our institutions, diverting presidents and institutions from their main purpose."[173] Football coaches often make more than the presidents of the universities which employ them.[174] Athletes are alleged to receive preferential treatment both in academics and when they run afoul of the law.[175] Although in theory football is an extra-curricular activity engaged in as a sideline by students, it is widely believed to turn a substantial profit, from which the athletes receive no direct benefit. There has been serious discussion about making student-athletes university employees to allow them to be paid.[176][177][178][179] In reality, the majority of major collegiate football programs operated at a financial loss in 2014.[180]
There had been discussions on changing rules that prohibited compensation for the use of a player's name, image, and likeness (NIL), but change did not start to come until the mid-2010s. This reform first took place in the NAIA, which initially allowed all student-athletes at its member schools to receive NIL compensation in 2014,[181] and beginning in 2020 specifically allowed these individuals to reference their athletic participation in their endorsement deals.[182] The NCAA passed its own NIL reform, very similar to the NAIA's most recent reform, in July 2021, after its hand was forced by multiple states that had passed legislation allowing NIL compensation, most notablyCalifornia.[183][184] NIL deals have allowed college athletes to entertain pushing off entering the draft given their ability to earn large wages while finishing their degrees.[185]
On June 3 of 2021, "The NCAA's board of directors adopted a temporary rule change that opened the door for NIL activity, instructing schools to set their own policy for what should be allowed with minimal guidelines" (Murphy 2021). On July 1 of 2021, the new rules set in and student athletes could start signing endorsements using their name, image and likeness. "The NCAA has asked Congress for help in creating a federal NIL law. While several federal options have been proposed, it's becoming increasingly likely that state laws will start to go into effect before a nationwide change is made. There are 28 states with NIL laws already in place and multiple others that are actively pursuing legislation" (Murphy 2021).
Charlie Baker called for a ban on all college football betting (and betting on college sports in general) because ofprop bets for student athletes. With past scandals and threats to college athletes, Baker requested states with sports betting to adjust their regulations to remove these bet types. While some were quick to do so (including Louisiana, Colorado, Ohio), others rejected the notion and continued to offer sports betting the same way.[186][187]
According to 2017 study on brains of deceasedgridiron football players, 99% of tested brains ofNFL players, 88% ofCFL players, 64% of semi-professional players, 91% of college football players, and 21% ofhigh school football players had various stages ofCTE. The study noted that it has limitations due to "selection bias" in that the brains donated are from families who suspected CTE, but "The fact that we were able to gather so many instances of a disease that was previously considered quite rare, in eight years, speaks volumes."[188] This study however, is dated and there has been some speculation that this was an attempt at shutting down football for children as it only picked the prolonged CTE patients and heavily injured professional players. Over the last decade injury prevention has taken leaps and bounds in all levels of football.
With the large amount of injuries that happen in college football, there had to be something done to lower the risk of head and neck
related injuries. With this, the NCAA and NFL have pushed the bar in helmet technology. With the introduction of National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment in 1978,[189] helmet standards has taken leaps and bounds toward being safer for players. These new helmets are packed with sensors, gel padding and new age technology. With these advanced helmets being used now, there has been a downturn in concussions across all levels of college football.[190] With the push for safer helmets comes the introduction of the Guardian Cap, this is a soft shell like pad that goes over the helmet of a player in practice that reduces the chances of head injury by 40%.[191] This cap is worn by most players in practice but very few use the cap in game because of the large diameter it adds to the helmet. Furthermore, the NCAA mandates that all teams put their respective helmets through recertification. This puts the helmets through testing, cleaning and calibration to ensure greater safety for all players.[189]
Canadian football, which parallels American football, is played by university teams in Canada under the auspices ofU Sports. (Unlike in the United States, no junior colleges play football in Canada, and the sanctioning body for junior college athletics in Canada,CCAA, does not sanction the sport.) However, amateur football outside of colleges is played in Canada, such as in theCanadian Junior Football League. Organized competition in American football also exists at the collegiate level in Mexico (ONEFA), the UK (British Universities American Football League), Japan (Japan American Football Association,Koshien Bowl), and South Korea (Korea American Football Association).
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