Word: balle
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...football was played in the late eighties and early nineties the kickoff was effected by touching the ball with a man's fool, picking it up, and running behind the other ten men who started as scon as the ball was touched and formed a wedge. The defending team merely laid down in front of the wedge and the entire team went down in a pile having gained perhaps ten yards...
There was no rule to prevent "starting before the ball" on the offensive team but this rule did apply to the defense, and Deland thought that the wedge would be much more effective if it was in motion before the ball was kicked and recovered, and thus had a distinct start on the defending team who had to remain stationary until the ball was kicked...
...therefore had the entire team with the exception of the kicker lineup about ten yards behind the regular line and start before the ball, thus reaching the kicker about the time he was recovering his short kick. Their momentum would carry them into the defense with terrific force, either injuring the player in the way or gaining considerably more yardage than did the former wedge...
...never found out until on a trip to England of the Harvard-Yale combined track team, several years later, Walter Camp. Yale's headcoach of football, disclosed the fact that Yale had known about some new play of Harvard's and had warned its players to watch the ball and not the men. Their information had come in one of the most curious ways imaginable and it allowed them to win the game...
...Yale coaching staff was entirely unawares of what this new play could be but warned the team to "keep their eye on the ball" which prevented their false start and thus sounded the death-knell to the flying wedge in this game, but from this start the wedge developed rapidly and was the basis for Pennsylvania's famous "guards back" offense. It was the start of a series of momentum plays which combined brawn with momentum and had to be legislated out of the game...