“Some people try to find things in the game that don’t exist; but football is two things – blocking and tackling.â€- Vince Lombardi
My great grandfather, my grandfather, my great uncle, my uncle, my father, and myself; we all played college football. Even though I never played without a face-mask (or helmet), and my great grandfather never pass blocked 50 plays a game, we ALL blocked and tackled. American Football, or at least the game we’re familiar with today, was created soon after the first game of American Rugby-Football was played in 1869. That year Princeton defeated Yale 6-4 in a game that didn’t allow the use of hands, but the American Football game with 11 players on each team and a ‘snap’ that initiated ‘the scrum’ was formed in 1880. Since then the game has changed so dramatically that the “Father of American Footballâ€, Walter Camp, may barely recognize it.
