What would our autumn Saturdays be like today, if it had not been for Yale’s Walter Camp? 

Would the great cathedrals have been built - The Big House, The Swamp, The Rose Bowl, The Horseshoe, Neyland, Lane, The Cotton Bowl? Would there be Tiger Walk at Auburn, Midnight Yell at Texas A&M, “dotting the i” at Ohio State, the Red River Rivalry or Army-Navy?  

Would football have survived its infancy, so it could flourish and grow, without Walter Camp?

Walter Chauncey Camp stepped onto the football scene as a player at Yale in 1876, and stayed for a lifetime as coach, administrator and ambassador for the game. He was instrumental in revolutionizing, developing, organizing, defending and promoting football, and he became the game's foremost authority and representative.

When the first game of American football was played between Rutgers and Princeton on November 6, 1869, the game was a cross between rugby and soccer, and often resembled an organized brawl. The playing field was huge in comparison to its present size, and there were 25 players on each team. Play was continuous with a rugby scrum and scoring was accomplished by kicking the ball across the goal line. There was no time limit; the first team to score six goals was the winner.  

The rules were up for grabs in those days, with constant arguments and fights, and slugging and kicking were commonplace. As the guiding force on the Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA) Rules Committee, Camp devised basic rules, bringing structure, stability and establishing the game as we know it today. These rules made the game not only worth playing – but more importantly – they made the game worth watching.

Camp established the start of play with a snap from the line of scrimmage and down-and-distance, which allowed a team to make first downs, retain possession and drive the ball down the field toward the goal line. He was the first to propose painting yard lines on the field, the offside penalty, permitting tackling below the waist, the neutral zone and the long snap on punts.

His other innovations included: reducing the size of the field to it's present-day size (120 yards x 53 1/3 yards), 11 players per team (seven linemen and four backs), backfield positions called  “quarterback” (to receive the snap), two “halfbacks” and a “fullback”, signals called by the quarterback and a scoring system that eventually evolved into the point values we know today for touchdowns, extra points, field goals and safeties.

 In 1876, as a player, Camp threw the first recorded forward pass to Oliver Thompson, who ran for a touchdown, against Princeton. Princeton protested, and the referee flipped a coin to decide the play, awarding the TD to Yale. Camp continually advocated legalizing the forward pass, and it was formally approved in 1906.   

President Theodore Roosevelt, a Harvard grad, was an avid football fan, but he was appalled at the brutality of the game in the early years. In 1905, 18 deaths and 159 serious injuries to players brought a storm of controversy and criticism. In 1906, Roosevelt summoned representatives of college football's "Big Three" – including Harvard’s Bill Reid, Princeton’s Arthur Hildebrand and the IFA Rules Committee's most influential member, Walter Camp of Yale, to the White House.

Roosevelt threatened that unless the game of football was cleaned up, brought under control and made safer, he would abolish it. The President’s warning was heeded. A new, larger association - the Intercollegiate Football Rules Committee (IFRC), forerunner of the NCAA - was formed. Within the IFRC, Camp led the implementation of new rules designed for safety and fairness – including the disqualification of players guilty of “fighting or kneeing.”  With these rule changes and the advent of protective equipment, the game became safer and survived.

Ever-devoted to college football, Camp remained actively involved, writing instruction books, magazine and newspaper articles, selecting his All-America Teams and working for progressive rules changes. A visionary in every sense of the word, his tireless efforts brought substance, shape and momentum to a developing game at a crucial time in its infancy.

Without his efforts would football have survived and grown to be as it is, or would it have died? And if Camp had not come along and football had survived without him, what would a game look like without his influence – a version of soccer or rugby or…?  We'll never know the answers to these questions, but one thing is for sure: every football fan owes a debt of gratitude to the "Father of Football," Walter Camp.

Walter Camp died at a Rules Committee meeting on March 14, 1925, at the age of 65.