I have always thought the first game played every year should be princeton vs rutgers. I know it wouldn't be much of a contest, but it's not much different than when rutgers plays temple or somebody like that. A whole game every year celebrating the origins of football.
The Walter Camp rule about snapping the ball back with your foot sounds very similar to Rugby League play which split from Rugby Union in 1895. For those who don't know what I'm talking about go watch some Rugby League highlights and compare it to Rugby Union and you will see the difference and how Rugby League is much more similar to American football versus Rugby Union. Or go find a video that explains the difference between Rugby League and Rugby Union.
This is a great series so far, i just found this today. Thank you,sir. You deserve way more views and subs than you have rn. Heres to your continued success.
My sophomore year in high school 1979 I wrote a report on this subject. You brought back a lot of memories. I’m now a subscriber. Keep up the good work. 🏈🏈🏈
Listening to that reading at the end, I could see it happening in my head. Great combo of your voice and pace, and the chosen passage being pretty clear in language.
Until the change to the Interference and Downs rules, the game seems a lot like the early version of Rugby League. That sport also needed to invent a rule to limit the number of tackles a team could take while in possession before needing to score or kick away the ball, to prevent dominant teams hogging possession.
Thx for the series. Always fascinating to see how an iconic sport like American football started. I've watched many series and documentaries regarding baseball, but haven't seen many about football, at least in my experience.
I just found this series, great so far. I’ll start by prefacing my understanding of rugby is still limited, but I started watching a few years ago. It’s really interesting to see how the two sports have evolved but still have similarities. There is a lot less chance in the scrum nowadays. When the scrum “starts” the team in possession rolls the ball into the scrum to a position that favors their team being able to kick it backwards, therefore maintaining possession. From that moment, a player (akin to a QB) can pick it up and run with it or lateral to a teammate. The basic strategy of rugby seems to be to create holes between defenders by creating an unbalance like a 2-on-1 to make the defender commit like an option play in our variety of football.
I finished it.. thanks for the hard work. I like it. I understand this was your first production and it's fantastic that you kept it up. I plan to watch the whole series. I would like you to go back, and fill in with more detail the Rugby rules, how they still around in the game mostly... and examine the idea of how closely the current football is to the current rugby.. also a deeper discussion on the Association Football Vs Rugby Vs American Football in the very early years up to the First World War.. anyhow.. keep it up.. good work.
I... like it. It was interesting. The history of things is good when it reveals different perspectives. The downside of talking about something that was boring is it tends to make the subject boring. But het, I felt entertained so, WTG.
This is really interesting. I found the part about the mass of players in the center with the other pushing the players interesting. Sounds like the Eagles tush push. I guess some things never change. 😀
Some things change, and then change back. Helping the runner was outlawed in 1906, but then partly re-legalized in this century in NCAA and NFL rules -- not Federation or Canadian rules, though.
Not Canadian, but I feel the Harvard-McGill game should be recognized as the first College game, because the game then evolves from the Rugby-style rules, rather than Soccer rules.
But there had already been games between college teams in Canada, so how is that the first? Still, I agree that a better case can be made for this than for the 1869 Princeton-Rutgers series.
I am actually reading that book right now. The question I'm struggling with is... how to tell the story? I see it as many parts, but I have to weigh that against how many people really want to watch something like that.
@@CollegeFootballHistory My personal reading was three parts. First part was the mistreatment of Native Americans and how they endured the school system. The second was when the football team began to compete. Even with much younger, and smaller players. The third part is all about Jim Thorpe, and the team made a run at greatness.
Great series of videos. I am enjoying them very much! Question: So, under the 1882 rules, if you lost 10 yards, did you get a new set of downs or was it a turnover?
You got a new set of downs, provided you lost those 10 yards since the series started. (That is, if you went forward 3 and then backwards 10, that was a net of negative 7, so you'd have to lose another 3 on 3rd down -- or gain 12.) The idea was that if you were moving the ball backwards, at least it was moving. However, they later increased the backwards requirement for a new series to 20 yards before eventually abolishing it.
I played highschool football in the late 60's and 1970. They were still liming the field. Never had a problem. Likely it was and has always been calcium carbonate which is often referred to as lime but is not the caustic "slake lime" you are thinking about.
I have it on the authority of an expert's writing I was pointed to via Quora (back when Quora was much good) that 1869 could not have been the year of the first intercollegiate football game in the USA, since teams from Princeton and Princeton Theological Seminary -- at that time an independent institution -- had played each other in a match before 1860. Games like that get ignored in the history of intercollegiate football because they weren't part of the subsequent tradition that led to the IFA, etc. The intervention of the Civil War probably had something to do with that too. So I found out about that match in writing about the history of soccer in North America, which these early games had about as much to do with as subsequent American football.
Tell us how the uniforms, shoes, headgear, and the ball changed over time. How much did tickets cost? Did players train in the off-season? Did players dine at a training table, lift weights? How many referees were there in a game? Was there a bench & a water-bucket, or did substitute players stand along the sidelines?
Hello great channel. I have a question. In the American History of American Football possession of the ball does make it a different game from Rugby, which the ball is always under contest, in theory. However, this is with reguards to the rules of Rugby Union Football. In Rugby League Football a team has possession of the football, like American Football. My question is, Did Rugby League influence the the evolution of American Football possession rules? Rugby League is also very old I think 1895 it separated from Union.
No, Rugby League developed its own rules later than American or Canadian football. You brought up 1895, by which time the American game was different from Rugby Union in regards to putting the ball in play after a tackle. However, few people realize it was actually Rugby Union that diverged from American and Canadian football in requiring immediate release after a tackle. When rugby football came to North America, the RFU had not yet standardized the game. Even after the IFA adopted (almost all) RFU laws in 1876, rugby did not require immediate release after a tackle. Then in the 1877-8 season, the RFU adopted the immediate release requirement.
Back then you could pick up a first down by losing yardage? That's wild. Eventually, of course, you end up with a safety, but what a drive extender that must have been.
Yes. The logic was that if you were retreating, you were giving the other team territory, so your continued possession was being compensated. It was only later that the idea of the turnover on downs as a reward for the defense rather than just a way to prevent freezing the ball was realized.
26 December 1860- The first match between Hallam FC and Sheffield FC took place at Hallam's Sandygate Road ground under the Sheffield Rules. The fixture remains the oldest in world football.[1]
I have never clearly understood the development of football. This video has helped understand it much better. Re the portion at the end - you could fair catch a kick off. Ironic that 140 years later they have gone back to that. Also, it seems like the kicking team would kick it out of bounds twice on purpose, since then the other team had to kick it back to them. But then the 2nd team would do the same thing and on and on forever kicking out of bounds. Dumb rule.. I never thought the 1869 game should be considered the first football game. It was just too much like soccer or rugby or both and hardly like American football at all. To me you have to have the line of scrimmage, certain number of players on the line, center snap, possession of the ball with down and distance and a process for change of possession, blocking ahead of ball carrier. So that would be - mid 1890s? I might even add the forward pass to really be football, so 1906. Great video. Thanks.
Gone back 140 years later? Making a fair catch of an opponent's kickoff has *always* been legal. At that time kicking off was thought advantageous, so losing the privilege of the kickoff wasn't as dumb as you think. It used to be that after you were scored on, your side got to kick off. In Federation and Canadian rules, the choice to kick off after having a touchdown or goal scored against you is still there.
Baylor vs. Texas A&M: Remembering a 1926 tragedy Travis Normand January 2, 2018 I have been looking for this article for some time (I remember having read it a while back) and I finally found it. I am reposting it here for future reference. Enjoy! Baylor vs. Texas A&M: Remembering a 1926 tragedy Web Posted: 09/29/2005 12:00 AM CDT Mark Wangrin - Express-News Staff Writer WACO - Eighty-five miles down the Brazos River from here, in a college town where many hate Texas or Texas Tech with every ounce of their being, Baylor University suddenly is relevant again. The Bears’ 35-34 overtime victory over Texas A&M at Floyd Casey Stadium last season, in which a team that hadn’t defeated the Aggies in 18 years jumped from speed bump to mountain, has Aggies’ emotions normally reserved for Longhorns or Red Raiders boiling over. They are angry with Baylor in College Station, but not as angry as they were in 1926. Not as angry as when one of their own was beaten to death in full view of the crowd at halftime of a game against the Bears. Not angry enough to commandeer a howitzer to shell the Baylor campus. Not angry enough to sever all athletic competition between the Southwest Conference schools for four years. What happened the afternoon of Oct. 30, 1926, at The Cotton Palace in Waco is an event disputed in fact and wrapped in legend. This much is certain: Lt. Charles Milo Sessums of Dallas, a senior in the Corps of Cadets, died at 9 a.m. Halloween morning at Providence Sanitarium in Waco. The cause of death was listed as a blood clot stemming from a fracture at the base of his skull, the result of being severely beaten at halftime of Baylor’s 20-9 victory over A&M the previous afternoon. From here, paths to the truth diverge. Culled from newspaper articles, letters, statements and eyewitness accounts; from sources at research libraries at Texas A&M and Baylor and Baylor’s alumni magazine, this is what likely unfolded: The predominant Baylor version is that a Ford - described as a “stunt” car and flatbed truck in different accounts - was paraded at halftime. Six women, carrying signs with the scores of big Baylor victories over SWC rivals, passed in front of the A&M cheering section. Aggies accounts contend that the cadets thought the women were men in drag, and that the appearance of the car violated an agreement between spirit groups that a “bucking” Ford, which was used in a stunt at the 1924 game and nearly ran over some Aggies players, not be used. Baylor’s yell leader, Frank Wood, denied such an agreement existed. A statement later released by a committee of 10 A&M seniors, while conceding it was not the same Ford, said “it was just as obnoxious and insulting.” Three cadets rushed the car to seize control of it, knocking Louise Normand off the back. “Then almost the entire Baylor student body and most of the Aggie contingent stormed simultaneously onto the field and all Hades broke loose,” recalled former San Antonian A.T. Moses, then a Baylor freshman, to The Baylor Line alumni magazine in 1985. “Precisely what happened next, I could not tell, nor could anyone else, for in a moment, there was a swarming crowd of hundreds in a melee,” Esther Didsun of Houston told the Express-News in an eyewitness account published Nov. 2, 1926. M.M. “Barney” Hale led a wave of Baylor freshmen players, sitting nearby, toward the vehicle. “These were A&M students, had their uniforms on,” Hale told The Baylor Line in January 2005, seven months before he passed away in Brownsville at 100. “And we started picking them up and throwing them over the fence.” A&M’s senior statement said the assault was the result of a misunderstanding. “We apologize to the ladies of Baylor for this incident, because one of our traditions is that no A. and M. man has ever willingly or knowingly harmed a woman,” it read. When that excerpt appeared in The Lariat, the Baylor school paper, it read, “no cadet had ever willingly laid hands on a woman.” Thirty yards behind the melee, someone struck Sessums’ fatal blow. The Aggies seniors’ statement contended that 1,500 Baylor supporters were armed with clubs, stick and iron rods. Another account suggested that the attack was premeditated because Baylor had two trunks filled with sawed-off two-by-fours. Hale denied those charges, saying only football equipment was in the trunks. The likely weapon, the Bears said, was part of the fence or a broken chair. As the public address announcer detailed the riot, the Aggies’ band struck up the opening chords of “The Star Spangled Banner.” The cadets sprang to attention - some later claimed Baylor supporters continued to beat them as they stood - and the riot was quelled. Head Aggie Yell Leader J.D. Langford came over to his Baylor counterparts to apologize and Corps Captain P.L. Ware of the commandant’s office at A&M issued a statement of contrition that read, “The college does not in any degree condone ungentlemanly conduct, and this act this afternoon was the result of three unthoughtful men from the college.” *Other accounts, though, suggest some cadets weren’t so conciliatory. Legend has it that some commandeered a howitzer, loaded it on a flatbed rail car and were headed to Waco to shell the Baylor campus when Texas Rangers felled trees across the tracks to stop them.* There is no known substantiation for any part of that story. Fixing blame proved impossible. A.B. Sessums, the dead cadet’s father, demanded an investigation, and Baylor president S.P. Brooks and A&M president T.O. Walton met in College Station on Nov. 4. After 10 hours of consideration, they issued a three-page statement that tried to explain what happened and expressed the regrets of both schools. The statement set off a rebellion at Baylor. Within hours The Lariat published an extra edition decrying the statement and immediately circulated a petition calling for the ending of athletic relations between the schools. By the end of the day the petition had 500 signatures. A&M’s seniors, concerned their school was being assigned the blame, said in a statement they were “indifferent” as to whether the series should continue. On Dec. 8, Brooks and Walton co-signed an agreement that voided all athletic contracts between the schools “that at some future time a renewal of games may be made, and the games played according to the high ideals that govern both institutions.” They would not play again until 1931, a game A&M won 33-7 in College Station. Waco and McLennan County police investigated the incident. A.B. Sessums asked Lancaster attorney Byrd White to look into his son’s death, telling him he “had a man placed” as his son’s assailant. Brooks, in a letter to White, explained a local detective had full run of the campus to investigate. “I told him frankly I thought he was on a cold trail,” Brooks wrote. “He said he promptly thought I was correct.” Available records show no one was charged in Sessums’ death. On Nov. 1, 1926, 2,000 fellow cadets gathered outside the YMCA for a tribute in place of the normal yell practice. Eulogies were given, and the band played “Nearer My God To Thee.” The brief ceremony closed with a solitary trumpet playing “Taps.” The next day Sessums was buried in Dallas. A full-page tribute, entitled “In Line of Duty,” was published in The Longhorn, the 1927 A&M yearbook. Beneath Sessums’ photo was a poem, “At The Eleventh Hour.” “Aggie of ours, in manhood’s prime, Time leaves little but names. But you and yours will always live In Aggie halls of fame.” Sessums’ death quickly faded from the headlines in Waco, replaced by another, more personal tragedy for Baylor. On Jan.22, 1927, a bus carrying the Bears’ basketball team on a misty Saturday afternoon skidded onto railroad tracks in Round Rock. A northbound passenger train, the “Sunshine Special,” rammed into the rear of the bus, telescoping it and killing 10 players. Sessums’ death has faded, too, in Aggies lore. Earlier this week, a senior Corps officer who asked not to be quoted said he was unfamiliar with the incident or the Corps’ legendary plan for revenge. He referred the matter to A&M spokesperson Lane Stephenson, who said, “I’ve been here 40 years, and I hadn’t heard about that. At A&M we’re more concerned with today’s service than the past, even the tragic.” The Corps of Cadets did not attend a game in force in Waco again until 1995. Then, on an overcast Oct. 22 morning, hours before the Aggies took on the Bears, they marched. Thirty companies strong paraded down Franklin Avenue and then turned left onto 32nd Street, ending at the Baylor track stadium. When they were done, all was quiet
That Web Ellis story is bullshit. Carrying the ball was about as common in local football rules as "kick only" That "first football game" is bullshit too All this reminds me of Abner Doubleday US football starts when possession isn't contested after every tackle, and really and was complete when the forward pass was legalized, much later.
I've always thought it was weird the 1869 game was the 'first game of college football' but I suppose the Northeast had early lobbying rights over everybody else.
@@CollegeFootballHistoryThere is no really good choice for "first game of intercollegiate football" unless you count one of rugby between a couple of teams from different Canadian colleges in the early 1860s. Still, there were intramural games on college campuses, games between college and non-college teams -- do those count as "college football"? And I have one source that says Princeton played Princeton Theological Seminary before 1860, which is definitely intercollegiate but seems to have been swept under the rug, maybe because the institutions later merged, or because the Civil War rather interrupted everything. But the Ellis story is indeed bullshit and akin to the Doubleday one. The only thing that can be said for it is that Ellis was actually a student there during that time, while Abner Doubleday can be proven to not have been on site at the claimed time.
11:44 compared to any other flavor of football, American Football is boring.. im sorry. but the constant stop in the action makes it so... the drama is just from bad referee calls using TV images that are not from the proper angle.. but hey.. im still watching.
This is the beginning of my series on the early foundations of American Football. I hope you watch the rest! Thank you!
Great stuff!! Amazing to think I live less than a mile from where some of this took place @Yale. Thanks again!
I have always thought the first game played every year should be princeton vs rutgers. I know it wouldn't be much of a contest, but it's not much different than when rutgers plays temple or somebody like that. A whole game every year celebrating the origins of football.
Great idea
Temple is a million times better cfb program than Princeton lol...
Your vids are excellent and you’ve got a good natural narrative voice - looking forward to your vis with improved graphics and the like.
The Walter Camp rule about snapping the ball back with your foot sounds very similar to Rugby League play which split from Rugby Union in 1895. For those who don't know what I'm talking about go watch some Rugby League highlights and compare it to Rugby Union and you will see the difference and how Rugby League is much more similar to American football versus Rugby Union. Or go find a video that explains the difference between Rugby League and Rugby Union.
This is a great series so far, i just found this today. Thank you,sir. You deserve way more views and subs than you have rn. Heres to your continued success.
Great info. 👍
My sophomore year in high school 1979 I wrote a report on this subject. You brought back a lot of memories. I’m now a subscriber. Keep up the good work. 🏈🏈🏈
Very interesting thanks, coming from a rugby fan.
Listening to that reading at the end, I could see it happening in my head. Great combo of your voice and pace, and the chosen passage being pretty clear in language.
Until the change to the Interference and Downs rules, the game seems a lot like the early version of Rugby League. That sport also needed to invent a rule to limit the number of tackles a team could take while in possession before needing to score or kick away the ball, to prevent dominant teams hogging possession.
This is incredible to learn
Thx for the series. Always fascinating to see how an iconic sport like American football started. I've watched many series and documentaries regarding baseball, but haven't seen many about football, at least in my experience.
I knew most of this but I loved your presentation.
Thank you!
I just found this series, great so far. I’ll start by prefacing my understanding of rugby is still limited, but I started watching a few years ago. It’s really interesting to see how the two sports have evolved but still have similarities. There is a lot less chance in the scrum nowadays. When the scrum “starts” the team in possession rolls the ball into the scrum to a position that favors their team being able to kick it backwards, therefore maintaining possession. From that moment, a player (akin to a QB) can pick it up and run with it or lateral to a teammate. The basic strategy of rugby seems to be to create holes between defenders by creating an unbalance like a 2-on-1 to make the defender commit like an option play in our variety of football.
I watch Rugby sevens now all the time because it is so fast moving and really exciting.
I finished it.. thanks for the hard work. I like it. I understand this was your first production and it's fantastic that you kept it up. I plan to watch the whole series.
I would like you to go back, and fill in with more detail the Rugby rules, how they still around in the game mostly... and examine the idea of how closely the current football is to the current rugby.. also a deeper discussion on the Association Football Vs Rugby Vs American Football in the very early years up to the First World War.. anyhow.. keep it up.. good work.
I will probably update this at some point. I've had a lot of comments on the Rugby thing. Plus... these are kind of cringy compared to later videos!
I... like it. It was interesting. The history of things is good when it reveals different perspectives. The downside of talking about something that was boring is it tends to make the subject boring. But het, I felt entertained so, WTG.
Very entertaining and informative. I enjoyed every thing about this video 😊
Thank you!
This is really interesting. I found the part about the mass of players in the center with the other pushing the players interesting. Sounds like the Eagles tush push. I guess some things never change. 😀
Some things change, and then change back. Helping the runner was outlawed in 1906, but then partly re-legalized in this century in NCAA and NFL rules -- not Federation or Canadian rules, though.
Awesome video, great job. Spoiler alert, what year was the forward pass invented?
Not Canadian, but I feel the Harvard-McGill game should be recognized as the first College game, because the game then evolves from the Rugby-style rules, rather than Soccer rules.
But there had already been games between college teams in Canada, so how is that the first? Still, I agree that a better case can be made for this than for the 1869 Princeton-Rutgers series.
really enjoying your channel
Thank you! Tell your friends! Your neighbors! Your neighbor's dogs!
Would you consider doing a video on Carlisle? I recommend “The Real All Americans” by Sally Jenkins as a starting point.
I am actually reading that book right now. The question I'm struggling with is... how to tell the story? I see it as many parts, but I have to weigh that against how many people really want to watch something like that.
@@CollegeFootballHistory My personal reading was three parts. First part was the mistreatment of Native Americans and how they endured the school system. The second was when the football team began to compete. Even with much younger, and smaller players. The third part is all about Jim Thorpe, and the team made a run at greatness.
That was an excellent presentation - very concise and understandable.
Thank you!
When I first saw the title of this video, I thought “somebody is stealing Jon’s work. “. Surprise, it’s you!
Great series of videos. I am enjoying them very much! Question: So, under the 1882 rules, if you lost 10 yards, did you get a new set of downs or was it a turnover?
You got a new set of downs, provided you lost those 10 yards since the series started. (That is, if you went forward 3 and then backwards 10, that was a net of negative 7, so you'd have to lose another 3 on 3rd down -- or gain 12.) The idea was that if you were moving the ball backwards, at least it was moving. However, they later increased the backwards requirement for a new series to 20 yards before eventually abolishing it.
I played highschool football in the late 60's and 1970. They were still liming the field. Never had a problem. Likely it was and has always been calcium carbonate which is often referred to as lime but is not the caustic "slake lime" you are thinking about.
It shouldn't be called "lime" if it's chalk.
I have it on the authority of an expert's writing I was pointed to via Quora (back when Quora was much good) that 1869 could not have been the year of the first intercollegiate football game in the USA, since teams from Princeton and Princeton Theological Seminary -- at that time an independent institution -- had played each other in a match before 1860. Games like that get ignored in the history of intercollegiate football because they weren't part of the subsequent tradition that led to the IFA, etc. The intervention of the Civil War probably had something to do with that too. So I found out about that match in writing about the history of soccer in North America, which these early games had about as much to do with as subsequent American football.
Tell us how the uniforms, shoes, headgear, and the ball changed over time. How much did tickets cost? Did players train in the off-season? Did players dine at a training table, lift weights? How many referees were there in a game? Was there a bench & a water-bucket, or did substitute players stand along the sidelines?
I think we'll get into equipment very soon.
Hello great channel.
I have a question. In the American History of American Football possession of the ball does make it a different game from Rugby, which the ball is always under contest, in theory. However, this is with reguards to the rules of Rugby Union Football. In Rugby League Football a team has possession of the football, like American Football. My question is, Did Rugby League influence the the evolution of American Football possession rules? Rugby League is also very old I think 1895 it separated from Union.
No, Rugby League developed its own rules later than American or Canadian football. You brought up 1895, by which time the American game was different from Rugby Union in regards to putting the ball in play after a tackle.
However, few people realize it was actually Rugby Union that diverged from American and Canadian football in requiring immediate release after a tackle. When rugby football came to North America, the RFU had not yet standardized the game. Even after the IFA adopted (almost all) RFU laws in 1876, rugby did not require immediate release after a tackle. Then in the 1877-8 season, the RFU adopted the immediate release requirement.
One thing has never changed in football, rules have always been up for debate.
Who doesn’t like a good old game of hand egg?
These are really cool! Thank you.
Back then you could pick up a first down by losing yardage? That's wild. Eventually, of course, you end up with a safety, but what a drive extender that must have been.
Yes. The logic was that if you were retreating, you were giving the other team territory, so your continued possession was being compensated. It was only later that the idea of the turnover on downs as a reward for the defense rather than just a way to prevent freezing the ball was realized.
If I already saw the corresponding TH-cam on Corn Nation, is this one revised enough that I should watch it all the way thru?
I think I just revised some of the editing. I appreciate your comments. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing and I am a rather slow learner!
26 December 1860- The first match between Hallam FC and Sheffield FC took place at Hallam's Sandygate Road ground under the Sheffield Rules. The fixture remains the oldest in world football.[1]
I have never clearly understood the development of football. This video has helped understand it much better. Re the portion at the end - you could fair catch a kick off. Ironic that 140 years later they have gone back to that. Also, it seems like the kicking team would kick it out of bounds twice on purpose, since then the other team had to kick it back to them. But then the 2nd team would do the same thing and on and on forever kicking out of bounds. Dumb rule.. I never thought the 1869 game should be considered the first football game. It was just too much like soccer or rugby or both and hardly like American football at all. To me you have to have the line of scrimmage, certain number of players on the line, center snap, possession of the ball with down and distance and a process for change of possession, blocking ahead of ball carrier. So that would be - mid 1890s? I might even add the forward pass to really be football, so 1906. Great video. Thanks.
Gone back 140 years later? Making a fair catch of an opponent's kickoff has *always* been legal.
At that time kicking off was thought advantageous, so losing the privilege of the kickoff wasn't as dumb as you think. It used to be that after you were scored on, your side got to kick off. In Federation and Canadian rules, the choice to kick off after having a touchdown or goal scored against you is still there.
Imagine getting a first down by loosing 10 yards nowadays. I kind of like that idea.
Baylor vs. Texas A&M: Remembering a 1926 tragedy
Travis Normand
January 2, 2018
I have been looking for this article for some time (I remember having read it a while back) and I finally found it. I am reposting it here for future reference. Enjoy!
Baylor vs. Texas A&M: Remembering a 1926 tragedy
Web Posted: 09/29/2005 12:00 AM CDT
Mark Wangrin - Express-News Staff Writer
WACO - Eighty-five miles down the Brazos River from here, in a college town where many hate Texas or Texas Tech with every ounce of their being, Baylor University suddenly is relevant again.
The Bears’ 35-34 overtime victory over Texas A&M at Floyd Casey Stadium last season, in which a team that hadn’t defeated the Aggies in 18 years jumped from speed bump to mountain, has Aggies’ emotions normally reserved for Longhorns or Red Raiders boiling over.
They are angry with Baylor in College Station, but not as angry as they were in 1926.
Not as angry as when one of their own was beaten to death in full view of the crowd at halftime of a game against the Bears.
Not angry enough to commandeer a howitzer to shell the Baylor campus. Not angry enough to sever all athletic competition between the Southwest Conference schools for four years.
What happened the afternoon of Oct. 30, 1926, at The Cotton Palace in Waco is an event disputed in fact and wrapped in legend.
This much is certain: Lt. Charles Milo Sessums of Dallas, a senior in the Corps of Cadets, died at 9 a.m. Halloween morning at Providence Sanitarium in Waco. The cause of death was listed as a blood clot stemming from a fracture at the base of his skull, the result of being severely beaten at halftime of Baylor’s 20-9 victory over A&M the previous afternoon.
From here, paths to the truth diverge. Culled from newspaper articles, letters, statements and eyewitness accounts; from sources at research libraries at Texas A&M and Baylor and Baylor’s alumni magazine, this is what likely unfolded:
The predominant Baylor version is that a Ford - described as a “stunt” car and flatbed truck in different accounts - was paraded at halftime. Six women, carrying signs with the scores of big Baylor victories over SWC rivals, passed in front of the A&M cheering section.
Aggies accounts contend that the cadets thought the women were men in drag, and that the appearance of the car violated an agreement between spirit groups that a “bucking” Ford, which was used in a stunt at the 1924 game and nearly ran over some Aggies players, not be used. Baylor’s yell leader, Frank Wood, denied such an agreement existed.
A statement later released by a committee of 10 A&M seniors, while conceding it was not the same Ford, said “it was just as obnoxious and insulting.”
Three cadets rushed the car to seize control of it, knocking Louise Normand off the back.
“Then almost the entire Baylor student body and most of the Aggie contingent stormed simultaneously onto the field and all Hades broke loose,” recalled former San Antonian A.T. Moses, then a Baylor freshman, to The Baylor Line alumni magazine in 1985.
“Precisely what happened next, I could not tell, nor could anyone else, for in a moment, there was a swarming crowd of hundreds in a melee,” Esther Didsun of Houston told the Express-News in an eyewitness account published Nov. 2, 1926.
M.M. “Barney” Hale led a wave of Baylor freshmen players, sitting nearby, toward the vehicle.
“These were A&M students, had their uniforms on,” Hale told The Baylor Line in January 2005, seven months before he passed away in Brownsville at 100. “And we started picking them up and throwing them over the fence.”
A&M’s senior statement said the assault was the result of a misunderstanding.
“We apologize to the ladies of Baylor for this incident, because one of our traditions is that no A. and M. man has ever willingly or knowingly harmed a woman,” it read.
When that excerpt appeared in The Lariat, the Baylor school paper, it read, “no cadet had ever willingly laid hands on a woman.”
Thirty yards behind the melee, someone struck Sessums’ fatal blow. The Aggies seniors’ statement contended that 1,500 Baylor supporters were armed with clubs, stick and iron rods. Another account suggested that the attack was premeditated because Baylor had two trunks filled with sawed-off two-by-fours.
Hale denied those charges, saying only football equipment was in the trunks. The likely weapon, the Bears said, was part of the fence or a broken chair.
As the public address announcer detailed the riot, the Aggies’ band struck up the opening chords of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
The cadets sprang to attention - some later claimed Baylor supporters continued to beat them as they stood - and the riot was quelled.
Head Aggie Yell Leader J.D. Langford came over to his Baylor counterparts to apologize and Corps Captain P.L. Ware of the commandant’s office at A&M issued a statement of contrition that read, “The college does not in any degree condone ungentlemanly conduct, and this act this afternoon was the result of three unthoughtful men from the college.”
*Other accounts, though, suggest some cadets weren’t so conciliatory. Legend has it that some commandeered a howitzer, loaded it on a flatbed rail car and were headed to Waco to shell the Baylor campus when Texas Rangers felled trees across the tracks to stop them.*
There is no known substantiation for any part of that story.
Fixing blame proved impossible. A.B. Sessums, the dead cadet’s father, demanded an investigation, and Baylor president S.P. Brooks and A&M president T.O. Walton met in College Station on Nov. 4. After 10 hours of consideration, they issued a three-page statement that tried to explain what happened and expressed the regrets of both schools.
The statement set off a rebellion at Baylor. Within hours The Lariat published an extra edition decrying the statement and immediately circulated a petition calling for the ending of athletic relations between the schools. By the end of the day the petition had 500 signatures.
A&M’s seniors, concerned their school was being assigned the blame, said in a statement they were “indifferent” as to whether the series should continue.
On Dec. 8, Brooks and Walton co-signed an agreement that voided all athletic contracts between the schools “that at some future time a renewal of games may be made, and the games played according to the high ideals that govern both institutions.”
They would not play again until 1931, a game A&M won 33-7 in College Station.
Waco and McLennan County police investigated the incident. A.B. Sessums asked Lancaster attorney Byrd White to look into his son’s death, telling him he “had a man placed” as his son’s assailant.
Brooks, in a letter to White, explained a local detective had full run of the campus to investigate.
“I told him frankly I thought he was on a cold trail,” Brooks wrote. “He said he promptly thought I was correct.”
Available records show no one was charged in Sessums’ death.
On Nov. 1, 1926, 2,000 fellow cadets gathered outside the YMCA for a tribute in place of the normal yell practice. Eulogies were given, and the band played “Nearer My God To Thee.” The brief ceremony closed with a solitary trumpet playing “Taps.”
The next day Sessums was buried in Dallas.
A full-page tribute, entitled “In Line of Duty,” was published in The Longhorn, the 1927 A&M yearbook. Beneath Sessums’ photo was a poem, “At The Eleventh Hour.”
“Aggie of ours, in manhood’s prime,
Time leaves little but names.
But you and yours will always live
In Aggie halls of fame.”
Sessums’ death quickly faded from the headlines in Waco, replaced by another, more personal tragedy for Baylor. On Jan.22, 1927, a bus carrying the Bears’ basketball team on a misty Saturday afternoon skidded onto railroad tracks in Round Rock. A northbound passenger train, the “Sunshine Special,” rammed into the rear of the bus, telescoping it and killing 10 players.
Sessums’ death has faded, too, in Aggies lore. Earlier this week, a senior Corps officer who asked not to be quoted said he was unfamiliar with the incident or the Corps’ legendary plan for revenge. He referred the matter to A&M spokesperson Lane Stephenson, who said, “I’ve been here 40 years, and I hadn’t heard about that. At A&M we’re more concerned with today’s service than the past, even the tragic.”
The Corps of Cadets did not attend a game in force in Waco again until 1995. Then, on an overcast Oct. 22 morning, hours before the Aggies took on the Bears, they marched. Thirty companies strong paraded down Franklin Avenue and then turned left onto 32nd Street, ending at the Baylor track stadium.
When they were done, all was quiet
I will look into this, than you for the reference.
"It wasn't like anything we know today called football. " from the description.... except for Association Football ? LoL ..
That Web Ellis story is bullshit. Carrying the ball was about as common in local football rules as "kick only"
That "first football game" is bullshit too
All this reminds me of Abner Doubleday
US football starts when possession isn't contested after every tackle, and really and was complete when the forward pass was legalized, much later.
I've always thought it was weird the 1869 game was the 'first game of college football' but I suppose the Northeast had early lobbying rights over everybody else.
@@CollegeFootballHistoryThere is no really good choice for "first game of intercollegiate football" unless you count one of rugby between a couple of teams from different Canadian colleges in the early 1860s. Still, there were intramural games on college campuses, games between college and non-college teams -- do those count as "college football"? And I have one source that says Princeton played Princeton Theological Seminary before 1860, which is definitely intercollegiate but seems to have been swept under the rug, maybe because the institutions later merged, or because the Civil War rather interrupted everything.
But the Ellis story is indeed bullshit and akin to the Doubleday one. The only thing that can be said for it is that Ellis was actually a student there during that time, while Abner Doubleday can be proven to not have been on site at the claimed time.
Early rules sounds like Aussie rules football
The tackling rules should go back to the rugby rules.
Football tackling is absurdly dangerous.
American Football created in the Northeast, NOT the South!!!!
11:44 compared to any other flavor of football, American Football is boring.. im sorry. but the constant stop in the action makes it so... the drama is just from bad referee calls using TV images that are not from the proper angle.. but hey.. im still watching.