Today's Tidbit... Remembering and Ignoring the Flying Tackle

The final chapter of my book, How Football Became Football, identified the eleven most important rules and other changes in the history of football. Whether or not I identified the top 11 correctly, among the changes I had on the bubble were the revisions to rugby's tackling rules. Like rugby, football initially allowed tackling only above the waist before allowing tackles above the knees in 1888. The change in regulations led to more effective tackling in general and by defensive ends in partic...