Camp, Walter C.
Football
b. April 7, 1859, New Haven, CT
d. March 14, 1925
Camp almost single-handedly created American football from a rugby-like sport as a student at Yale University and later as a graduate member of the rules committee. He enrolled at Yale in 1875 and joined the school's new football team, which was about to play Harvard for the first time. Other colleges were playing a type of soccer, but Harvard students had learned rugby and insisted on playing under the rules of that sport, with some minor variations.
After the Harvard-Yale game, other U. S. colleges began to play rugby in preference to soccer. Camp graduated from Yale in 1880 but entered the medical school and continued to play, a common practice at the time. He captained the team in 1878, 1879, and 1881.
The first step toward transforming rugby into American football was taken in 1880, on a proposal by Camp. In rugby, when the ball goes out of bounds or a player is downed, possession is decided by a "scrummage" or "scrum," in which lines of players from each team push and shove against one another.
Camp proposed using a "scrimmage" instead, allowing the team that had the ball to retain possession and put it into play by snapping it back to the quarterback.
The trouble with the scrimmage was that it enabled a team to get possession of the ball indefinitely. Camp in 1882 came up with a solution to that problem, requiring a team to gain 5 yards or lose 10 in three scrimmage to retain possession.
Because he couldn't stand the sight of blood, Camp dropped out of medical school in 1882 and took a job at a New Haven clock factory. Even though he couldn't attend afternoon practices, he served as advisory coach to the Yale football team, meeting with the captain every night. After he married in 1888, his wife attended practices and took notes for Camp's review.
In 1884, Camp devised football's first numerical scoring system, assigning 1 point to a safety, 2 to a touchdown, 4 to a goal following touchdown (which we now call a conversion), and 5 to a field goal. Until then, there had often been disputes about who had won a game because some teams felt a field goal should beat a goal after touchdown and others felt it should work the other way around.
Yale appointed its first official head football coach in 1893, but Camp continued to serve as an adviser through the 1906 season. During the period he was in that role, Yale won 218 games, losing only 11 and tying 8.
Camp was secretary of the rules committee from 1894 through 1905 and from 1911 until his death. He died of a heart attack while attending the committee's annual meeting in 1925.
Besides helping to shape the sport, Camp promoted football through many articles and a number of books. He helped Caspar Whitney select the first All-America team in 1889 and he chose All-America teams for Collier's magazine from 1898 through 1924.